فصل بیست و سوم

chapter-23

“And now,” announced Dr. Zinchenko, “it is time for today’s second game. This way, please.” The teams followed her from the third-floor railing to the nearby Electronic Learning Center. All the video games and flight simulators were dark. The arcade was eerily quiet. Kyle noticed something new in what had always been his favorite room in the library: One whole wall was covered, floor to ceiling, with a panoramic (but blank) video screen. As Kyle squinted at the wide swath of shiny white, he noticed a series of evenly spaced glowing green LEDs at eye level on the wall.

Kyle couldn’t move closer to examine the screen, because the area fifteen feet in front of it had been fenced off with a series of brass poles and velvet ropes.

Suddenly, the floor on the other side of the ropes opened. Up came the smiling head and extremely long neck of a life-size Apatosaurus—what everybody used to call a Brontosaurus, thanks to The Flintstones.

The giant dinosaur had leaves stuck between its teeth. Its breath reeked of rancid salad, smelling worse than the middle school cafeteria that time all the refrigerators stopped working on Taco Tuesday.

“Woo-weee!” cried Mr. Lemoncello, who, in a complete cowboy costume, was riding in a saddle strapped around the giant audio-animatronic Apatosaurus’s neck. “I knew the dinosaurs were extinct, but I didn’t know they were extra stinky, too.” He took in a deep breath. “Ah, isn’t smell-a-vision wondermous?” He unbuckled some sort of seat belt and hopped out of his saddle.

“Thank you, Brontie,” he said to the big Apatosaurus. “By the way, I love your sister Charlotte. Now, please—go floss.” The enormous creature roared pleasantly, rattling all the blank video screens in the game room, then disappeared back into the floor, which closed up around it like a collapsing ring of tiles.

“Since today is all about flights of fancy and fancy flights, our next contest is to see which of you would make the paleontologically perfect prehistoric pterodactyl.” Mr. Lemoncello flung open his arms toward the wide screen filling the back wall.

“This room was recently equipped with my Imagination Factory’s brand-new, revolutionary Gesticulatron Gameware. Motion sensors in that hugerific video wall can read a gamer’s body language and use human gestures to control the actions of your avatar inside the video game. Yes, with the Lemoncello Gesticulatron Motion Detector, you can fly through the sky like Harriet the Spy, if Harriet the Spy could fly.” Marjory Muldauer sighed very audibly and, once again, shot her arm into the air.

“I see from my own internal gesticulation sensors that we have a question,” said Mr. Lemoncello. “Either that or Ms. Muldauer is attempting to hail a taxi indoors.” All the other kids (including Marjory’s teammates) chuckled.

Marjory ignored them.

“Yes, Ms. Muldauer?” said Mr. Lemoncello.

“What does flying like a dinosaur have to do with libraries?”

“Actually,” said Mr. Lemoncello, “pterodactyls were not dinosaurs but rather flying reptiles that existed from the Late Triassic through the Jurassic and most of the Cretaceous eras. They missed, however, the disco era, for which they were extremely grateful. All of this information I first learned, years ago, at my local library. Now we can learn even more by bringing these extinct creatures back to virtual yet historically accurate life. This is how the library of the future can present the facts of the past. Dr. Zinchenko? Kindly explain how this next game will be played.” He tugged at his fringed leggings. “I’ll be monitoring this fourth contest from my private suite down the hall. I need to change out of my chaps before I chafe.” Spurs jingling, Mr. Lemoncello moseyed out of the Electronic Learning Center.

“For our next competition,” announced Dr. Zinchenko, “each team will choose one player who will report back here in two hours. Your chosen flier will, with arm gestures and body movements, control the flight of a single pterodactyl. The player to reach the finish line of our airborne obstacle course first will be today’s second medalist. Launch time is four p.m. Until then, all of the library’s vast resources are available to you. Including, of course, all the games here in the Electronic Learning Center.” The blackened video screens on all the game consoles filling the room sprang to life. Dings, pings, bells, whoops, and techno music filled the air.

“Awesome,” said a kid from the Southeast team when the Mars rover simulator whirred awake. “Who wants to race around the rings of Saturn with me?” Kyle was tempted.

In fact, he was practically drooling.

Then Akimi tapped him on the shoulder.

“You’re flying our pterodactyl, correct?”

“Sure. If you guys think I should.”

“Yo,” said Miguel. “It’s a video game. You’re our gamer.”

“The only flying I’ve ever done,” said Sierra, “was with Max, Fang, Iggy, and Nudge in James Patterson’s Maximum Ride books.” Kyle stared at all the kids blasting through outer space, flinging catapults of fire at castle walls, or scuba diving with dolphins on the glowing game screens surrounding him.

“So,” he said, sighing, “where do I learn about dinosaurs?”

“The five hundreds room,” his three teammates said in unison (because they’d all paid attention during those after-school Dewey decimal drills).

“It’s downstairs,” said Akimi. “Right below us. You can’t miss it. There’s a big Apatosaurus named Brontie inside.”