
“Give it a number,” said Sam. “Quick!”
I punched in my phone number.
The red light blinked three times. “Wrong number.”
Fred kicked the back of the robot. “Maybe we can knock out its power.”
The red light blinked three times. “You got five seconds, buddy.”
Sam covered his head with both arms. “I can’t believe I’m going to be zapped by a vacuum
cleaner. Good-bye, cruel world.”
“Three, two, one,” said the robot. It jetted back a bit to get us all in its sights, then pointed
its weapon directly at us.
TWO
But before the Time Warp Trio meets its end by vacuum cleaner, let me freeze time, then
go back in time to explain how we got to this time.
It was all our teacher’s fault. It was Mr. Chester’s brainstorm to take our class on a field
trip to the American Museum of Natural History “To learn about how to live in the future
from how people used to live in the past.” That’s what he said. Honest. We had to write it
down on our Museum Worksheet.
Now don’t get me wrong. I love the Museum. It’s one of the best places in New York City.
They’ve got a prehistoric alligator skull that’s bigger than you, a herd of charging stuffed
elephants, and a car with a hole in it from where it got bashed by a meteorite. If you sit close
enough to the animal exhibits, it feels like you’re right in the jungle or the mountain or the
desert. And on hot summer days I like to go sit under the blue whale hanging from the ceiling
in the ocean life room. It’s blue, and quiet, and cool. And it has an excellent pack of killer
whales.
But going to the museum on a class trip is a whole different story. You can’t go look at the
war clubs in the Iroquois longhouse. You can’t hang around the stuffed gorillas, And you can
never check out the rubber ants in the gift shop. You always have to stay together and answer
the questions on the dreaded Museum Worksheet.
So there we were—standing under the huge Barosaurus skeleton in the museum lobby with
our whole class, listening to Mr. Chester.
“. . . which some people didn’t even believe existed. Does anyone know its name? It says
Barosaurus on the plaque. Right. Now we’ll go in and look at the exhibits that show how
people lived from 1890 up to 1990. Take a look and think about what things have changed in
a hundred years. Stay together. You can either take notes for your worksheet or write out the
complete answers as we go. Questions? No, you cannot check out the rubber ants in the gift
shop.”
The whole mob of us trailed behind Mr. Chester. We stopped at the 1890s room, There was
an old-fashioned phone on the desk, big round glass lamps, and one of those record players
with a hand crank that you see in history books. A lady mannequin dressed in a long dress
stood by the table. A boy and a girl model were posed on the floor surrounded by marbles,
checkers, and jacks.
“Oh boy,” whispered Fred. “Just what I was hoping to see. Dummies dressed in old
clothes.”
“How did those poor kids live?” said Sam. “No TV, no Walkman, no computer, no fun.”
“But look,” said Fred. “That ad out the window says BEER 5 cents. I’ll bet pizza was a
penny.”
“. . . and changed the way people lived,” Mr. Chester droned on. “Question Two on your
sheet says, ‘List five inventions we use today that people didn’t use one hundred years ago.’
Can anyone tell me one?”