Linda: Hey, we’re telling the truth.
Officer: Calm down—
Wendy: Get off me!
Luanne: Get your hands off my mom.
Officer: I’m warning you, lady—
Luanne: Hit him with a lawn chair!
At this point, the officer fired his Taser three times, incapacitating the Bakers. They were arrested for assault and filing a false crime report. All three were being held in the Summit County Jail.
If Gerdie Baker actually exists, her whereabouts are unknown.
SEE ATTACHED COMPOSITE DRAWING OF “GERDIE BAKER.”
Matilda and the NERDS returned to the Playground to make their report. With talking dogs, radiation spots, blackouts, and psychotic cheerleaders, Matilda could barely make sense of the evidence, so she was stunned when Ruby said she knew who had caused it all.
“Her code name was Mathlete,” Ruby said. “She was one of us.”
“Back up,” Matilda said. “How do you know it was a member of NERDS responsible for all this weird stuff?”
“The Mathlete’s real name was Gerdie Baker,” Ruby said.
“The missing girl with the plastic surgery!” Matilda said.
“Gerdie? She can’t be responsible for this,” Ms. Holiday said. “She was always so sweet.”
Ruby shook her head. “I’m afraid the evidence says otherwise. While you were talking to dogs, Benjamin and I dug up everything we could on Gerdie—history, case files, recent actions … Benjamin?”
The little blue orb hovered over the hole in the glass desk. Clicking and spinning, it projected a moving hologram of a very awkward young girl. She was fighting off a team of ninja assassins with gleaming swords in their hands. They rushed at her, but the girl matched their assault fist for fist. Without warning, her attackers flew backward and hit the wall, where they crumbled like children’s toys.
“I like her style!” Matilda said.
Benjamin chirped. “Team, this is Gertrude Baker, formerly code-named Mathlete. Her talent was with equations, and her upgrades allowed her brain to process complex problems at lightning speed.”
“What kind of a lousy upgrade is that?” Matilda asked.
“Lame!” Jackson agreed.
Ruby shook her head. “With her supercalculator head she could predict the actions of her opponents and exploit their weaknesses. She could also calculate the correct balance and leverage needed to move impossibly heavy things.”
An image appeared of the girl leaping onto a beam jammed underneath a car. The car popped up and flipped several times.
“OK, that was cool,” Flinch said.
“Math made her into a superhero,” Duncan said. “So why’d she leave?”
“Her mother moved the family to Ohio when she divorced Gertrude’s father,” Ms. Holiday said. “Like many members of the team, her parents were unaware of her secret life. Parents in the dark sometimes make decisions for their children that take them away from us. Gerdie’s nano improvements were removed, and Matilda was brought in to be her replacement.”
“I was her replacement?” Matilda asked.
“Indeed. Though it appears she has continued to use her superior math skills,” Benjamin said.
“And they’ve led her to a life of crime,” Agent Brand said, joining the meeting with a stack of files under his arm. “We’re certain she’s behind the chaos in Ohio.”
Ms. Holiday gasped. “Alexander, I only met her once, but I can’t believe she would do such a thing.”
“How many thought the same of Heathcliff Hodges? Now he’s in a mental hospital for the criminally insane.”
“Actually, I had my suspicions about him,” Jackson said.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Holiday, but Mr. Brand is right,” Duncan said. “From what I’ve read, Gerdie is the only person in Akron—maybe even in North America—who has the brainpower to create a device that steals electricity. Though all that electricity is probably being used to power something else—something a lot more dangerous. I believe she’s messing around with the multiverse.”
“Huh?” Flinch asked.
“The multiverse,” Duncan said. “Didn’t you guys read Bartlett’s Quantum Irregularities paper in Scientific American magazine?”
“Sorry, I must have missed that one,” Jackson said.
“I’ll try to simplify it as much as possible,” Ms. Holiday said. “You’ve all heard of the universe, correct?”
“Sure,” Matilda offered. “The universe is everything—Earth, the moon, the stars, forever and ever.”
“That’s right, Wheezer,” Ms. Holiday said. “The universe is everything. Now imagine there was another ‘everything.’ Imagine there was another Earth, and moon, and stars—existing in the exact same place, only in a different dimension. Imagine it had people and animals and oceans and land.”
“Two Earths?” Pufferfish said.
“More than just two. Imagine there are thousands, millions, even billions of universes like ours—only in their own dimensions. Benjamin, could you be so kind as to visually demonstrate?”
Benjamin projected a holographic image of Earth before their eyes. Then it duplicated the image. Then again, and again, and again, until the copies filled the entire room.
Matilda could barely wrap her head around the idea. “Exactly like ours?”
Ms. Holiday shook her head. “Not exactly, and that’s where the multiverse gets interesting. Some of these Earths are a lot like ours, while some you wouldn’t even recognize.”
“I have to admit I’m a bit lost,” Agent Brand said.
“Think of it like this,” Ms. Holiday told them. From her handbag she took two candy bars, which she placed in front of Flinch on the desk. “Flinch has two candy bars. He can choose to eat the coconut-peanut bar here or he can choose the one made from nougat and honey. Which one does he choose?”
Flinch looked distressed. It was clear that making this choice was probably the hardest thing he had ever had to do in his short life. His head went back and forth from one treat to the other, like he was watching a tennis match, until he finally snatched the coconut bar. He tore open its packaging and ate it greedily.
“So Flinch made a choice and the rest of his life will move forward according to that choice. But the multiverse allows for other possibilities. If the theory is correct, there is another Flinch, in another universe, in another dimension, where he chose the nougat-and-honey candy bar.”
“Who cares which candy bar he ate?” Matilda said. “What difference will it make?”
“Very little, probably,” Ms. Holiday replied. “But sometimes the decisions are much bigger and have much wider consequences. In the multiverse there’s an Earth where the Germans won World War II. There’s an Earth where Native Americans still control this continent. There’s probably even an Earth where everyone is a pro wrestler.”
“Awesome,” Matilda said.
“Is there an Earth out there where I ate both candy bars?” Flinch asked, eyeing the other treat.
Ms. Holiday giggled. “Yes. There could even be one where you didn’t eat them. Maybe you had carrots and hummus instead.”
“I assure you there is not,” Flinch said, licking his fingers. “There might be a trillion versions of me, but not one of them would pick carrots and hummus over a chocolate bar.”
“There might be a Flinch who is allergic to peanuts and coconut and got very sick from eating the candy bar. There’s one where he is a donkey who likes candy. Another, where he was never born. Still another, where candy was never invented, and so on and so on. All of them exist—they are real—on their own Earths, at least according to the theory. Do you understand?”
“Sure, I get it,” Pufferfish said. “There are a billion different me’s, some good, some bad, some that don’t swell up like a balloon whenever I eat eggs. What does this have to do with Mathlete and her machine?”
Duncan stepped forward. “We can’t be sure until we question her, but I believe she’s using some s
ort of device that builds a bridge from our world into those alternate Earths.”
“Someone’s been watching too much Star Trek!” Matilda said. “Even if she did build something like that—why? What would she gain from it?”
“We think we know,” Benjamin said. The tiles on the walls flipped over to reveal a massive television screen displaying Gerdie Baker’s face. “Four weeks ago Mathlete visited a dentist. She ordered a set of porcelain veneers for her teeth and had her jaw fractured to correct an unfortunate under-bite. The procedures in total cost nearly thirty-five thousand dollars.”
“So maybe her mother got a good job or won the lottery,” Jackson said.
“According to this report, Gerdie didn’t pay with money. She paid with this.” Brand snapped his fingers and the image changed from sad Gerdie Baker to an ancient treasure chest overflowing with gold coins, pearls, and silver chalices.
Flinch stuffed the other candy bar into his mouth. “Where did she get that?”
“Certainly not from around here. This was found with it,” Benjamin said as one of the coins zoomed into focus. On it was a picture of a strange animal with the head of an owl, the body of a bear, and a long tail like a snake. The creature was wearing a crown. An inscription read, Coin of the Realm. His Royal Highness Doogan the Fifth, King of Zedavia and Surrounding Realms.
“Zedavia?” Matilda asked. “I’ve never heard of the kingdom of Zedavia.”
“That’s because it didn’t exist—at least not on our world. I’ve researched every history book in our database,” Ms. Holiday said. “If it was a real place, I would be able to find it. I may be a spy, but I’m a librarian, too.”
Gerdie’s face came back onscreen, and Brand continued. “A week later, Ms. Baker went to a dermatologist where she was given a laser dermabrasion procedure and a facial and pore treatment that cost nearly two thousand bucks. She ordered a package of ten spray-on tans and a tea bag massage. She paid with this.”
An image of a painting appeared on the screen. It looked a lot like the Mona Lisa.
“She stole the Mona Lisa out of the Louvre?” Matilda asked.
“This isn’t the Mona Lisa. Look closer,” Benjamin chirped as the image zoomed in on the famous painting.
Matilda studied the portrait. It was the same painting she had seen a million times in books. But when she peered closer, she saw something peculiar in the background: silver half-moon–shaped crafts hovering in the sky shooting lasers down on the countryside below.
“An alien invasion!” Matilda said.
“Some idiot painted a copy and added a joke,” Ruby said.
Mr. Brand shook his head. “No, we’ve had art historians study the brushstrokes. This painting was made by Leonardo da Vinci—or at least a Leonardo da Vinci. We found a strand of a brush in the paint and had it tested for age. It dates back to the sixteenth century. The signature is also an exact duplicate.”
“There’s more,” Benjamin said. “The next day, Ms. Baker had a consultation with Dr. Abigail Contessa, a plastic surgeon to the stars in Los Angeles. The day after that she received fifty thousand dollars worth of procedures, including a nose job, collagen injections in her lips, a brow lift, and an ear tuck.”
“You can do that?” Duncan said as he self-consciously tugged on his lobes.
“Let me guess,” Jackson said. “She paid with something that shouldn’t exist?”
Brand nodded and live video of an odd bird appeared on the screen. It had gray feathers, thick yellow talons, and a large beak shaped like the end of a wooden spoon.
“It’s a dodo,” Ms. Holiday said. “Dodos have been extinct for nearly three hundred years.”
“So Gerdie Baker is stealing from alternate worlds to pay for makeovers,” Matilda said. “What do we do? We don’t have jurisdiction over the multiverse.”
“It’s much worse than some interdimensional shoplifting,” Agent Brand said. “There have been what we’ve come to call ‘crossovers.’ Things have been coming into our world—things that should not be here.”
“Like the talking dogs?” Duncan asked.
“Worse,” Brand said.
The screen showed four strange creatures with black tentacles all over their faces. Though shaped like men, each had a wide wound of a mouth filled with sharp, pointy teeth. They were locked in a jail cell, shouting angrily.
“OK,” Jackson said. “I’m officially freaked out.”
“That’s just the beginning,” Brand said.
Matilda’s mind filled with worst-case scenarios. “So we track down Mathlete and arrest her.”
“Not so simple,” Mr. Brand said. “She’s had extensive work done on her face, and her doctors are reluctant to talk to us. Performing plastic surgery on a minor is unethical. Who knows if her face would have changed naturally as she got older? Besides, the doctors only saw her swollen face when she left their offices. Mathlete never came back for her followups.”
“We don’t know what she looks like?” Pufferfish asked.
“No one knows what she looks like. Not even her mother and sisters—as you know, she ran away from home.”
Matilda rolled her eyes. Why would someone have surgery to change their appearance? She liked how she looked, and who cared what other people thought of it?
“Let me get this straight,” Jackson said. “We’re searching for someone who has been trained as a spy. We have no idea what she looks like. If we find her, she has a machine that lets her escape into other worlds.”
Brand nodded.
“Grubblin-oogh!” Flinch said, pounding on his chest. The sugar from the candy was coursing through him.
“We do think we have a lead,” Brand said. “The National Cheerleading Association is hosting several week-long camps for its elite performers that end with a national competition here in D.C. We believe Gerdie has tried out and made one of the junior teams and is now practicing at one of the camps. Based on more strange electrical activity, we think we know which camp.”
“The bad guy is a cheerleader?” Jackson asked.
“Aren’t they all?” Matilda said. “I hate cheerleaders with their stupid skirts and phony smiles. I don’t know how anybody could have such little self-respect to cheer for a bunch of muscle-heads throwing a ball around. Well, I’m going to enjoy this mission! We go to the camp, figure out which one is Gerdie, then lay the smackdown on her! Better yet, we lay the smackdown on the entire squad until one of them confesses, and I get to try out a few new submission holds. Everyone wins!”
Brand shook his head. “There will be no laying of the smack. We’re thinking something subtler than a steel-cage match. One of you is going undercover. The rest will act as information and tactical support.”
“Awesome! I always wanted to go undercover. I finally get to be James Bond,” Jackson said.
“Not you, Jackson.”
“What?? I’m perfect for this! I’m the most charming, I wear clothes that fit—”
“Unless you want to wear a skirt and a wig, I don’t think this job is right for you,” Ms. Holiday said.
The lunch lady overheard as he passed through the lab and grunted angrily.
“This camp is girls-only. The perfect agent for this assignment is Matilda,” Agent Brand said.
“Me?”
“Yes. You’re going to become a competitive cheerleader.”
Matilda stared at Brand and Holiday like they were speaking a different language.
“I can’t be a cheerleader!” Matilda cried. “Didn’t you just hear me? I hate cheerleaders! Besides, if you haven’t noticed, I’m nothing like a cheerleader. They have to be nice and friendly and full of positive energy. I have season tickets to the monster truck rally. I arm-wrestle college students for money every Saturday in the park. I spend my free time analyzing Ultimate Fighting. I’m not cheerleader material.”
“Plus, she’s a spaz,” Jackson said.
Matilda reached for Jackson and put him in a headlock. He struggled but could no
t free himself. “See what I just did? Do cheerleaders put their friends into choke holds?”
“Agent Wheezer!” Brand bellowed before Ms. Holiday interrupted him.
“Matilda, you are the most agile member of the team—cheerleaders have to be agile. You are also the most fearless—and cheerleaders have to be fearless.”
“You are also loud and obnoxious. You’re perfect for this mission,” Flinch argued.
“You want to be in a choke hold, too? Send Pufferfish!”
“I’m allergic to pom-poms,” Ruby said, scratching at her arm. “And organized sports and … being peppy. And talking about organized sports and being peppy.”
Matilda released Jackson’s head. “If you haven’t noticed, I’m like leader of the tomboys.”
“We’re bringing someone in who can help,” Brand said. “She’ll teach you all the moves.”
“It’s going to take more than that,” Jackson said. “She’s kind of a mess.”
“Oh, that’s not offensive at all,” Matilda said, then forced him back into the choke hold.
“Your cheerleading coach will teach you the routines and make you look the part. She’s got a lot of experience,” Brand said. “Mindy?”
A door opened, and a gorgeous platinum-haired girl in a black bodysuit stepped into the room. Her legs had knives strapped to them and her belt was lined with razor-sharp throwing stars.
“Brand, if you call me Mindy one more time, I’m going to give you a makeover with my boot. The name is the Hyena.”
AFTER THAT LAST QUIZ, I’M CONVINCED THAT YOU AREN’T WELL. BUT DESPITE THE FACTS, THE HEAD OFFICE STILL WANTS TO CONTINUE THE TESTING. COMPLETE. WASTE. OF. TIME.
AGAIN, ANSWER THE QUESTIONS, THEN TOTAL YOUR POINTS.
______________
1. A DOG BITES YOU. WHAT DO YOU DO?
a. RUN CRYING TO THE HOSPITAL (4 POINTS)
b. ENJOY THE BEAUTIFUL PAIN AND THANK THE DOG (9 POINTS)
c. TRACK THE DOG BACK TO ITS FAMILY AND EXACT REVENGE ON ALL OF THEM (9 POINTS)