The Forgetting Machine Read online

  May you never forget what is worth remembering, nor ever remember what is best forgotten.

  —an Irish blessing

  1

  Dead Trees

  I found my dad in his study with his nose in a book made out of dead trees. Dad can be embarrassingly retro at times. A lot of the times, actually. Like every day. I mean, who reads paper books anymore?

  Dad has more paper books than he has hairs on his head. Not that he has that many hairs anymore. But still . . . a lot of books. His entire study is lined with the nasty papery things.

  He was reading something called The Island of Dr. Moreau. I wondered why a doctor would want to live on an island, but I’d learned to never ask my father about any book ever—a simple polite inquiry was likely to turn into a fifteen-minute lecture.

  I took a deep breath and said, “Dad, why is our town called Flinkwater?”

  He frowned and shrugged. “Because of the flink in the water?”

  “Dad!”

  “Maybe flink is some sort of fish, Ginger. I wouldn’t know.” One of my father’s many quirks is that he hates fish. He won’t even eat a tuna sandwich.

  “There’s no such word as ‘flink,’” I said. “I looked it up.”

  He sighed and closed the book over his index finger to keep his place. If he’d been reading on his tablet, he wouldn’t have that problem.

  “Why do you ask, Ginger?”

  “It’s for this stupid school report.”

  “Maybe the town was founded by somebody named Flinkwater.” He shrugged. “I really couldn’t say.”

  “But . . . you’re supposed know everything!”

  “Apparently I don’t,” he said.

  “Isn’t your finger getting squished?”

  “A little bit,” he said, flipping open the book to ease the pressure.

  “How come you don’t just read on your tab?”

  In my not-so-humble opinion, a proper book should be represented by an icon on a screen. Printing books on paper is as primitive as wearing animal skins or recording music on a plastic disk. Paper books won’t let you make the font bigger or smaller, they aren’t illuminated, and there’s no search function. Also, they take up a lot of space, and they are heavy, unsanitary, unsightly, and noisy—the sound of someone flipping through those dry, whispery pages sets my teeth on edge.

  “Studies have shown that reading paper books results in greater memory retention,” he said.

  “I don’t have any problem remembering,” I said.

  “Well, I certainly do. I didn’t grow up with e-books. When I was your age, we were still reading on stone tablets.”

  “Dad!”

  He laughed. “Okay, we did have e-books, but they were pretty primitive. Anyway, I’m not taking any chances, what with all the forgetting going on these days.”

  “All what forgetting?” I asked.

  “Several of our people at ACPOD have been experiencing abnormal memory loss,” he said. “It’s become an epidemic. Just yesterday one of our engineers asked me my name, and he’s been working with me for the past ten years.”

  ACPOD, in case you’ve been living under a rock for your entire life, is the world’s largest manufacturer of Articulated Computerized Peripheral Devices. If you own a robot, it probably came from Flinkwater, Iowa. My parents—along with half the adult population of Flinkwater—work at ACPOD.

  “Fortunately, one of our neuroprosthetics experts, Ernie Rausch, has developed an experimental memorization technique that is quite remarkable. He gave me a demonstration, and I now know all fourteen hundred lines of Longfellow’s poem ‘Evangeline.’”

  “That’s a lot of lines,” I said. “How did you do it?”

  “The funny thing is, I don’t remember! One minute I was in the neuroprosthetics lab, and the next thing I knew I was back at my desk with my head full of Longfellow. And I couldn’t remember my ACPOD password.”

  “It’s Mom’s maiden name backward, plus the first seven digits of pi,” I said.

  He gave me a sharp look. “How do you know that?”

  I pointed at the sticky note on the corner of his computer display, where he had written KNUF3.141592—not exactly the best way to keep your secret password secret.

  “Oh yeah,” he said. “Like I said, my memory has been playing tricks on me.”

  “And you think reading books printed on pulverized wood pulp is the answer?”

  “I guess I just prefer real books,” he said.

  I like books too. But I read them on my tablet. Like a normal person.

  “Think of all the trees they had to cut down to make the paper,” I said.

  “Yes, but how many prehistoric trees do you think it took to make the crude oil used to make the plastic case for your tablet?”

  “Oil doesn’t come from trees,” I said. “It comes from hundred-million-year-old algae.”

  He laughed. “Apparently that ‘stupid school’ is teaching you something. As for the origin of Flinkwater, your mother has lived here her whole life. Ask her.”

  • • •

  Before I go on—and I can go on—I should introduce myself.

  Presenting the fabulous Guinevere Crump—recently turned fourteen, speller of difficult words, defender of helpless animals, fiancée of the smartest boy in the universe, problem solver extraordinaire, revolutionary rabble-rouser, social-justice crusader, and ravishing red-haired beauty—at your service. You may call me Ginger, or on formal occasions, Your Majesty.

  So there. I’m glad we got that out of the way.

  • • •

  “Ask your father,” said my mother.

  “He told me to ask you! Your family has been here forever, right? You can’t answer a simple question?”

  She shot me her glittery, narrow-eyed witch queen look. “Ginger, if it’s so simple, why do you ask?”

  My mother doesn’t scare me. Usually. But she tries.

  “It’s for school.”

  “Look it up.”

  “I tried,” I said. Which wasn’t completely true. Actually, I’d thought it would be easier to just ask. My mistake. “Do you even know?”

  “Of course I know. I’ve lived here my entire life. But I’m sure you can figure it out on your own.”

  “I’m trying to figure it out by asking you.”

  “Ginger, I’m not going to do your homework for you. I’m busy.” She went back to her oh-so-important task: trying to reprogram our DustBot swarm by stabbing at the DustBot control module with her red-nailed fingers. She didn’t think the bots were doing a good enough job sucking Barney’s cat hair off the carpet. It’s Barney’s fault. He keeps flipping the bots onto their backs, leaving them to buzz and spin around until somebody turns them right side up.

  She might have better luck reprogramming the cat.

  “If I get an F, it’ll be your fault,” I said.

  She lowered the control module and gave me a look that was supposed to freeze the blood in my veins. I countered with my wide-eyed-innocent look. It was a mother-daughter standoff.

  “Ask your school librarian,” she said after a moment.

  “Mom, it’s Saturday. No school. And next week we get off Monday and Tuesday for teachers’ conferences. And my report is due Wednesday.”

  She arched one precisely plucked eyebrow. “Then you’ll just have to go to Flinkwater Memorial.”

  I was afraid she’d say that.

  2

  The Stacks

  Being the headquarters of ACPOD, Flinkwater is home to a large number of robots. We have more robots than we do humans. Many of the bots, of course, are the little DustBots that keep our houses clean. There are also lawn bots, messenger bots, information bots, and dozens of other specialize
d robots. But most of Flinkwater’s bots work at ACPOD, where they are used to make even more robots.

  Flinkwater Memorial Library is one of the few places in town that has no robots whatsoever. I would be forced to deal with a live human being—in this case, the Pformidable Pfleuger.

  Ms. Olivia Pfleuger rules the library from behind a wooden counter so high I could rest my chin on it. Both she and the counter have been there since the dawn of time, or possibly before. From her perch she can see into every corner of the library. Her eyeglasses are as thick as my thumb, but she misses nothing, and she has a memory like an ACPOD server.

  As I entered her lair, she peered down at me and said, “Ginger Crump.”

  She made it sound like an insult. I admit that Crump is not the most elegant and flattering last name in the world, but I’m stuck with it on account of my parents. You might wonder why my mother didn’t keep her maiden name when she married my father. It might have to do with the fact that before they got married her name was Amanda Funk, which is even worse than Crump.

  “I have not forgotten you, Ms. Crump,” said the Pformidable Pfleuger.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Harrumph,” she replied.

  The Pformidable Pfleuger was referring to the Gum Incident of eight years ago when she caught me sticking a wad of bubble gum to the underside of a chair during a read-aloud event. I was just saving the gum for later, but Ms. Pfleuger didn’t see it that way. You’d have thought I’d burned the place down, the way she yelled at me.

  I pointed at my open mouth. “Look, no gum.”

  “Harrumph,” she said again.

  “I have a question,” I said.

  “You will find your answer here,” she said, waving a thick-fingered hand at the thousands of books lining the walls and stacked on the shelves.

  A large sign on the wall above the shelves read COMPUTER-FREE ZONE. Unlike most libraries, Flinkwater Memorial had no computers. It was completely different from the Flinkwater County Library in Halibut, which had about forty computer terminals, and no paper books at all. But Flinkwater Memorial, like Ms. Pfleuger herself, was a holdover from the previous millennium—strictly dead trees. Most of the people who went there were old people like my father, people nostalgic for outdated technologies. At the moment there were two men and one woman, all gray-haired and wrinkly, sitting on those uncomfortable wooden library chairs reading furiously.

  “I’m not sure where to look,” I said.

  Ms. Pfleuger compressed her already compressed lips. “What is your question?”

  “How come Flinkwater is called Flinkwater?”

  I could barely make out her eyes behind those thick glasses, but I was pretty sure they narrowed slightly.

  “I would imagine it has to do with the flink in the water,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

  “I’m doing a report for school. And there’s no such word as ‘flink.’”

  “I see,” she said.

  I thought I saw the hint of a smile, but I must have been mistaken. Ms. Pfleuger elevated herself from her chair and descended from her podium. She was a large woman in every dimension other than height, but she moved like a dancer, every step precise. I felt scrawny and awkward next to her.

  “Come with me to the stacks,” she said.

  “Stacks?” I followed her around the desk into a musty-smelling back room I hadn’t even known existed. The “stacks” turned out to be where she kept all the old books that nobody wanted to look at: books of all shapes and sizes, presumably organized according to some arcane librarian logic.

  I began to sneeze. I’m kind of allergic. Old books are the worst.

  “I believe the information you seek may be in Wilhelm Krause’s A History of Flinkwater, Iowa. Now, let me see if I can find it. . . .” While Ms. Pfleuger perused the crowded shelves, I noticed what appeared to be a stuffed gray cat sitting on the large central table in front of an open book. I had seen stuffed deer heads and so forth, but never an entire stuffed cat. I was wondering why somebody would do that when the cat licked its right paw and turned the page.

  “Ms. Pfleuger?” I said, my voice coming out all creaky and weird. “Do you know you have a live cat in your library?”

  “Oh, that’s just Mr. Peebles.”

  “Did you know your cat is reading a book?”

  Mr. Peebles looked at me, emitted a perfunctory merp, and went back to his reading.

  “Mr. Peebles is only pretending to read, and he is not my cat. He visits from time to time. I don’t mind—he is much better behaved than some of my patrons. Ah, here it is!” She pulled an oversize, frighteningly thick volume from the bottom shelf and handed it to me. I almost dropped it—it must have weighed ten pounds.

  “This is volume one. If you can’t find the answer to your question there, we also have volumes two and three.”

  “Can’t you just tell me?” I said. “I’m kind of in a hurry.”

  “Please refrain from sneezing on the books,” she said, then left me to the mercy of the stacks.

  I looked at Mr. Peebles. Mr. Peebles looked at me.

  “Stupid cat,” I said.

  Mr. Peebles hissed.

  I sneezed.

  3

  The Tisks

  Wilhelm Krause’s A History of Flinkwater, Iowa was twelve hundred pages of small, single-spaced font with very few pictures, no index, and no search function. The first two chapters were about the geology of central Iowa. The next three chapters chronicled the various native tribes that had inhabited the area before the arrival of Europeans. The next six chapters were about the Krause family history back in Germany. Needless to say, I flipped through the first half of the book as quickly as I could turn the pages. Except for the title page, the word “Flinkwater” did not appear until chapter 12, which began:

  The town of Flinkwater was founded by Gunter Krause in the year 1887 on the banks of the Raccoona River. . . .

  The chapter went on to list the names of Gunter Krause’s wife and twelve children, followed by a lengthy description of their original homestead, which included all of what was now downtown Flinkwater. The book mentioned some of the other early settlers: the Johnsons, the Grossmans, and the Funks. I was surprised by that last one. I knew my mom’s family had lived in Flinkwater for several generations, but I didn’t know they had lived here before the town was even a town.

  I skimmed through the rest of the book but could find no clues as to why Gunter Krause had named the town Flinkwater. By the time I got to the end, the only thing keeping me from slipping into a coma was my sneezing.

  “This is ridiculous,” I said to Mr. Peebles.

  “Merp.”

  “I agree.” I closed the book and returned it to its place, more or less—I was sneezing ferociously at the time and may have got it on the wrong shelf. Mr. Peebles followed me back into the main room, where Ms. Pfleuger was being confronted by the infamous Tisks.

  Mr. and Mrs. Tisk looked like a set of salt-and-pepper shakers. She, with her fluffy crown of bleach-blond hair, was salt. Mr. Tisk, with a similar bouffant in gray-speckled black, was pepper. They were about the same size and shape, with shiny, hairless faces perched atop rounded shoulders, bodies swelling below to bulbous middles, then tapering down to two smallish pairs of shoes, hers white, his polished black.

  Standing behind them, staring at the floor with slumped shoulders, was Dottie Tisk. I hardly recognized her. She was wearing a long dress, almost to her ankles, and a pair of lace-up granny shoes. Her mouse-brown hair was pulled back tight in a short ponytail, and her skin was white as lard.

  Back in the sixth grade, Dottie had been the first girl in school to wear makeup. She would slather on lipstick and eyeliner on the way to school, and sometimes pin up her skirt to make it a few inches shorter. Some kids thought she looked glamorous, others considered her kind of trampy. I just thought she was interesting, even though we were never close friends. I remember she was really smart, even by Flinkwater standards.r />
  After school, on her way home, she would wipe off the makeup and lower the hem of her skirt. Her parents must have caught her, because halfway through the year they pulled her out of school, and I never saw her around town after that. I had heard they sent her off to some super-religious boot camp.

  Mr. Tisk was the pastor of Glorious Heart Ministries, a hard-core evangelical church located outside of town, just downwind of Elwin Hogg’s hog farm. Mr. Tisk’s congregation was small but avid, with a tremendous tolerance for hellfire-and-damnation sermons and the smell of pig poop.

  “Hey, Dottie,” I said.

  She gave me a quick look, then returned her eyes to the floor. I got the sense she was embarrassed. Her parents did not acknowledge me at all. Mr. Tisk was glaring at Ms. Pfleuger, who was glaring back at him. Mrs. Tisk was smiling blankly, gripping her purse with both hands.

  Mr. Tisk was holding a book in his right hand. He raised it above his head and slammed it down onto the counter.

  “This,” he proclaimed loudly, “is wicked, sacrilegious filth!”

  I looked at the book cover. To my surprise, it was Charlotte’s Web, a book I had been meaning to read. In fact, I had it loaded up on my tab. If I’d known it was all wicked and sacrilegious I’d have read it sooner.

  The Pformidable Pfleuger’s glare intensified to a degree that should have set his eyebrows on fire, but Mr. Tisk had no eyebrows. Perhaps he had lost them in an earlier encounter.

  “Talking pigs!” he said. “Talking rats! Talking spiders!” He thumped the Bible he carried in his other hand. “There are no talking animals in the Bible!”

  I said, “What about the serpent in the Garden of Eden?”

  Mr. Tisk aimed his glare in my direction.

  “The voice of Satan!” he said. I wasn’t sure if he was talking about me or the serpent.

  “I’m just saying,” I said.

  Mr. Tisk’s normally fish-belly-white face flared red. He turned back to Ms. Pfleuger and thumped the cover of Charlotte’s Web with his finger—“This is not suitable for children!”