The map trap, p.1
The Map Trap, page 1
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Names: Macintosh, Cameron. | Atze, Dave, illustrator.
Title: Map trap / Cameron Macintosh, illustrated by Dave Atze.
Description: New York: West 44, 2021. | Series: Max Booth: future detective
Identifiers: ISBN 9781538384749 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781538384732 (library bound) | ISBN 9781538384756 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Detective and mystery stories. | Robots--Juvenile fiction. | Maps--Juvenile fiction. | Museums--Juvenile fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.M335 Ma 2021 | DDC [F]--dc23
Published in 2021 by
Enslow Publishing LLC
101 West 23rd Street, Suite #240
New York, NY 10011
Copyright © 2021 Cameron Macintosh. Original edition published in 2017 by Big Sky Publishing.
Cover design and Illustrations: Dave Atze
Typesetting: Think Productions
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer.
Printed in the United States of America
CPSIA compliance information: Batch #CS21W44: For further information contact Enslow Publishing LLC, New York, New York at 1-800-542-2595.
For Mum, Dad, and Georgie
CONTENTS
Chapter 1 Phone and Games
Chapter 2 Museum Mayhem
Chapter 3 Charging Ahead!
Chapter 4 Homeward Bound
Chapter 5 A Big Holo-hop
Chapter 6 Sculp-Escape
Chapter 7 Holographic History
CHAPTER 1
Phone and Games
One thing no one ever tells you about Skyburb 6 is how many incredible gaming arcades we have up here. You name it, you can play it. We even have arcades where people and their robo-dogs can play together – and that’s exactly what Oscar and I are doing when a call comes through from our friend Jessie.
Today, we’re playing a game called Grimecraft. It was really popular 400 years ago, and in this particular arcade, it’s all the rage. A few people have even come dressed in 21st-century clothing to make a big party of it. There’s a player nearby, dressed in real denim pants and a check shirt made from real cotton. They must be worth a fortune!
I’ve taken a real liking to Grimecraft. It’s a nice escape from everyday worries – and we have plenty of those! The aim of the game is to build a world of your own with digital blocks. Other people can join you online, helping you build your houses and roads. It all seems incredibly old-fashioned compared to the 5D games we play these days, but I can see why people liked it so much all those years ago.
I’m just about to put the final tile on top of a hospital I’ve been building when the call comes through. Oscar’s back panel pops open and the name “Jessie” flashes across his screen. I reach down and grab the phone goggles from inside the panel.
“Hi, Jessie,” I say, sliding the goggles over my eyes. “What’s going on back there?”
Back there means: back at the Bluggsville City Museum Storeroom, where Oscar and I have secretly lived since we escaped the Skyburb 7 Home for Unclaimed Urchins, just over two years ago. Jessie manages the storeroom, and lets us live in the middle of it, in an old wooden packing case. It works out well for all of us – Oscar and I have a place to sleep, and Jessie has two of the most devoted helpers she could ever find. Whenever she can’t identify an ancient object for the Museum, we help her out. And – without meaning to brag or anything – we’re quite good at it! She even pays us a few dollars when we’re successful.
“I’ve got something pretty special today,” she says. “I think you’d better come straight in and take a look.”
We always get a bit excited when Jessie says something like that. It usually means she’s found something incredible, like a prehistoric pencil sharpener, or an ancient apple peeler. Sometimes it’s even something electronic – a big specialty of ours.
“Can’t you just show us through the goggles?” I ask.
“Why ruin the surprise!?” she laughs. “You’ll love it, I promise.”
Even though we still have $110 of credit left on the game, I take my phone goggles off and hand them back to Oscar.
Five minutes later, we’re darting into the dark alley we use to get into Jessie’s storeroom. We take a quick look back to make sure no one’s seen us go in, and hurry toward the far end of the alley. Just on our right, there’s a little ventilation grate at ground level. I shake it loose, and pass Oscar through to the other side. I hear him sliding down the metal pipe we’ve set up inside, and bouncing onto the mattress at the bottom. I climb in, close the grate behind me, and slide down after him.
We both jump up and dust ourselves off. It takes a lot of effort to un-dust ourselves in such a huge, dusty storeroom! From here, I can see our packing case, and the endless mountains of mysterious old items lying around, waiting to be identified and categorized. At the far end of the storeroom, Jessie is sitting at her computer in her workshop. We run straight over and tumble through the doorway.
“Wow,” she says, “that was quick!”
“All part of the service,” I reply. “Where’s this exciting item of yours?”
Jessie walks over to a desk on the other side of the room. There’s a small square shape on the desk, covered by a plastic sheet.
“Hold your breath,” she says. “You’ve never seen anything like this.”
As we all gather around the desk, Jessie grabs the edge of the sheet and whisks it off. We find ourselves looking at a small metal box, with two long, rectangular holes at the top of it.
“What do you think about this?” Jessie asks.
Oscar and I look at each other. I can tell he’s as disappointed as I am.
Jessie’s eyebrows drop. “You’ve seen one of these before, haven’t you?”
“Sorry to disappoint you, Jess, but yes. I’m sure I’ve seen a few of these around. If I recall correctly, it’s a letter holder, from the days when people had to send their mail on paper.”
“Why would they need a holder for their mail?”
“I suppose they just stored it in there until they got around to reading it.”
Jessie frowns. “That makes sense, I suppose. Sorry to drag you away from your game for something so dull.”
“That’s okay,” I say. “It’s certainly in good condition, and it does have some buttons on the side that I don’t remember seeing before.”
“Hmmm,” says Jessie, “it does seem odd for a letter holder to have those kinds of buttons on it.”
There’s one particularly big button – a black one with some numbers or letters beside it – but they’re all too faded to read. It has a long power cord too. It’s the first time I’ve seen one of those on a letter holder.
“Maybe we’ve got this wrong,” I say. “It’d be very dangerous to put paper letters in an electric device like this.”
“You’re right,” Jessie says. “They’d go up in flames. That’d make them a bit difficult to read!”
Suddenly the item is slightly more interesting than it was a few seconds ago.
“So, what do you think it could be?” asks Jessie.
“Let’s find out!”
I press the black button, and we all jump back as a rectangular piece of plastic pops up and out of it.
Oscar leaps up and grabs it before it crashes to the floor. He hands it directly to me.
“Wow,” I say to Jessie, “another present!”
“To my eyes it looks like a broken phone from the late 2020s. We’ve found at least five of those this week.”
I turn it around in my hand and look at both sides. “Yeah,” I agree. “It’s a strange place to find one, but I think you’re right.”
I drag the trash can out from under the desk and reach out to drop the old phone into it. Just as it leaves my hand, Oscar leaps into the air and grabs hold of it.
“Let it go, Oscar!” I say. “There’s enough junk around here already!”
Oscar sits up and shakes his head slowly from side to side.
“You really want me to have another look, don’t you?”
Oscar’s tail wags as he lifts his snout back up to my hand.
“Alright, pup. Hand it over.”
Jessie and I both look at the old phone very closely. Maybe Oscar’s right. It doesn’t seem to have many of the holes and buttons we usually see on these things. Maybe it’s a special kind of phone … or maybe it isn’t a phone at all.
“So, what do you think it actually is?” I ask Oscar.
He shakes his head, but points a paw at the scanner on his back.
“You’re right,” I say. “It’s time to refer this matter to the Splinternet.”
Oscar switches on his scanner, and I hold the device in front of it. Right away, a green box appears in the air above Oscar’s back, with a pair of eyes darting from side to side. That’s how the Splinternet tells us it’s in search mode. I hold my breath as we wait for a result.
A moment later, Oscar’s shoulders slump as the green box changes shape and a frowning monkey appears in the air above his back. That’s the Splinternet telling us it’s never seen this item before, which means one thing – whatever it is, it’s extremely old. It must’ve been made before the year 2037, the year the old internet melted down and took all its information with it.
Jessie groans.
I give Jessie a wink. “If there’s anyone on the planet who can help us identify this thing, Oscar and I will find them.”
“Sorry, Max, I think we may have bitten off more than you can chew this time.”
“You’re probably right, but when has that ever stopped us?”
Jessie laughs. “That’s true. But I’ve actually just thought of something. Down on the ground, in Bluggsville North-South-South, there’s a mobile phone museum. It’s run by a private collector – a very wealthy man, obsessed with old phones. We’d love to buy some of his items for the Museum, but he won’t sell them to anyone. Maybe we could go down and show him this discovery of ours. He might know something about it.”
“That sounds fantastic,” I reply. “Let’s go down right now!”
“Erm, sorry,” Jessie sighs. “I’ve got to categorize five decades’ worth of toenail clippers by 5 p.m. for a new exhibition. I might have to let you take care of this one by yourselves.”
“That’s fine by us. If there’s anything to be learned about this funny old thing, we’ll get to the bottom of it, won’t we, Oscar?”
Oscar winks and runs straight over to our packing case. He plugs himself into his charger to give himself the extra battery power he’ll need for the rest of the day.
“But what about the letter holder thing?” I ask Jessie. “We still don’t know what that is.”
“Actually, I think I’ve figured it out,” says Jessie. “It’s a thing called a toaster. People used to put sliced bread in those things. It heated up the bread and made it dark and crunchy.”
“What a waste of good bread! That would’ve been like eating charcoal.”
“I know!” laughs Jessie. “People had very strange tastes back in the 21st century!”
“Wow … imagine having burnt bread for breakfast! I’m very glad I was born in the 25th century!”
CHAPTER 2
Museum Mayhem
It’s a good day to be taking an aircell down to ground level. Today there’s no clouds or smog, and there’s only a faint orange tint in the air.
We sit at the Skyburb Down-station for two or three minutes, before our home, Skyburb 6, docks above the Up-station below. The next thing we know, we’re stepping into an aircell and zipping down toward the ground. It’s an incredible feeling. I always get an excited gurgle in my stomach as our cell slows down and comes to a gentle stop in the station below.
Before the attendant has time to check if we have tickets, we leap over the side barriers and tumble onto the footpath outside.
“Can I see a map?” I ask Oscar. “I’ve already forgotten where we need to go.”
Oscar’s back panel flips up and he beams a glowing map into the air above him. A red dot on the map tells us where we are now, and a white cross shows us where we need to get to – the Romero Telecommunications Museum. It’s actually quite a long way from here. Even worse, it doesn’t seem to be near a zip-coaster station. I ask Oscar to calculate the best way to get there.
According to the information box at the top of his map, it will take us seven hours to walk there. Or, we could take three zip-coasters and walk for 20 minutes, which will take nearly two hours in total. Or … if we had an air-cab, we could be there in 20 minutes.
“Well,” I say to Oscar, “that sounds like the best option. What a shame we can’t afford to take an air-cab.”
Oscar just gives me a wink, as if to say, Don’t worry – I’ll sort this out!
“Oh no,” I moan. “You’re not planning to do that again, are you?”
Oscar winks again and walks up to a yellow shelter on the side of the road. I have no choice but to follow him. In the shelter, I can see people lining up for air-cabs. Oscar joins the line, behind another five people.
For a moment, he just sits there quietly, like the polite robo-dog he usually is. Then, without warning, he starts barking and sniffing at the other people, and walks to the front of the line. As he stops beside the first passenger, something falls out from his side panel. He’s put his 3D printer to good use – I know it’s just a plastic printout, but from here, it looks like a very real doggy dropping! The other passengers yelp and stagger backward, pinching their noses.
These days, real dogs are so rare that the sight of a plastic dropping is enough to terrify most people. They scatter in all directions, looking for another air-cab stop. Suddenly Oscar and I are at the front of the line – with no one behind us!
“I hope you’re not going to leave that there,” I say to Oscar.
He smiles and grabs the unattractive piece of plastic between his front paws and drops it in a trash can, just as the first empty air-cab pulls to a stop in front of us.
“Where can I take you?” asks the driver.
“Bluggsville North-South-South,” I say.
“Can do!”
Oscar and I tumble into the back seat. It’s extremely comfortable, but there’s still one problem – how are we going to pay for our ride? The last time we did this, I actually had a few dollars in my pocket. This time, all I’ve got is a strange old phone in one pocket and a few robo-dog treats in the other.
I tap Oscar on his front paw. “I hope this ride is free,” I whisper. “Otherwise we’re in trouble.”
Oscar just smiles and climbs over the seat into the driver’s area. The next thing I know, he’s squirting water on one of the side windows. He turns around, puts his tail into spin mode, and polishes the window until it’s so clean he can admire himself in the reflection.
“Wow!” says the driver. “I’ve never seen a robo-dog do that.”
“He’s quite clever, isn’t he,” I reply. “Would you like him to do the outside of all the windows too?”
“Oh no, I couldn’t possibly let him do that.”
“Well, if you really like his work, maybe he could clean all of your windows as payment for our ride?”
The driver rubs his chin and tilts his head, then turns to me with a smile. “You’ve got a deal,” he says. “You’ll save me a trip to the Woosh-washer!”
Finally, I can sit back and enjoy the ride. I’ve always loved air-cab rides – especially with a driver like this. He swerves between buildings, and scoots over and under the other flying vehicles like a stunt pilot. It’s better than a ride at a 6D amusement park! It’s a great way to see the city, too. Most days up on Skyburb 6, we can’t even see the ground due to all the pollution. At least this way, we can get a close-up look at the incredible buildings of Bluggsville, especially the ancient ones, built back in the 22nd century. They have the craziest designs of all – fruit shapes, twisting tops, and glowing roofs.
The moment we land, I open the back door and Oscar leaps out. Before the driver or I have the chance to say anything, he leaps up onto the windshield and starts polishing it with his tail. It only takes him a few minutes to clean every window on the air-cab. By then, his rump is covered in orange dust, but the air-cab looks sparkling new.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” says the driver. “Look at my cab! It’s shining like a polished power-parrot!”
The moment the air-cab flies off, I look across the road and see our destination, the Romero Telecommunications Museum. It’s in another old building, shaped like a telephone from the 20th century. It even has a winding cord dangling from the receiver, made from twisted metal bands.
As the doors slide apart to let us in, a young woman asks us if we’d like a robo-guide to show us through the exhibits.
“No thanks,” I say. “We’re here looking for one very special item.”
“Oh, what’s that?” she asks.
I realize I’ve already said too much. “Well, we’re really just looking for old phones from the 21st century.”
“In that case, you’ve definitely come to the right place. Take the first door on the right and turn left at the end. You’ll find yourself in the 21st Century Telecommunications Hall. There’s no bigger collection of ancient phones in all of Bluggsville.”
“Thank you!”
