15 Franny Ketches Up to the Robot

CHAPTER FIFTEEN FRANNY KETCHES UP TO THE ROBOT Franny slid quietly into the library. She knew the robot was in there somewhere.

第十五章弗兰妮追上机器人弗兰妮悄悄溜进了图书馆。 她知道机器人就在那里。

She could have overlooked the graffiti. Franny had made inaccurate speculations about butts before. Butts are an imprecise science; errors occur. And she might even have been able to find some merit in giant spit wads. She had to admit that they had a sort of charm to them, like a fresh snowfall—a fresh snowfall that smelled like the inside of somebody's mouth. But Franny loved books. She loved everything about them. Most of what Franny knew she had learned from books. A creature this stupid could be in the library for only one reason: to destroy books. And an act that stupid was not going to be tolerated. She moved silently and cautiously. And then she heard it: the sad, sick sound of a page slowly being torn from a book. She crept through the aisles.

她可能忽略了那些涂鸦。 弗兰尼以前对屁股做过不准确的推测。 屁股是一门不精确的科学；错误发生。 她甚至可能在巨大的吐痰团中找到一些优点。 她不得不承认它们有一种魅力，就像刚下的雪——一场闻起来像某人嘴里的雪。 但弗兰妮喜欢读书。她喜欢他们的一切。 弗兰尼的大部分知识都是从书本上学来的。 这么蠢的生物出现在图书馆只有一个原因：毁书。 这种愚蠢的行为是不会被容忍的。 她默默地小心翼翼地移动着。 就在这时，她听到了：一页纸慢慢从书上撕下来的悲伤、恶心的声音。 她蹑手蹑脚穿过过道。

She rounded a corner and saw the robot there, happily destroying books. It was clear to Franny that this mechanical imbecile would not stop until it had destroyed all of them. As she studied the horrible creation, she suddenly felt confident that defeating this robot was going to be quite easy. In fact, she felt very confident. Evidently Erin, Lawrence, and Phil had installed an off switch right in the middle of the robot's chest.

她转过一个拐角，看见机器人在那儿，开心地毁书。 弗兰妮很清楚，这个机械白痴不把它们全部毁掉是不会罢休的。 当她研究这个可怕的创造物时，她突然感到自信，击败这个机器人将是相当容易的。 事实上，她感到非常自信。 显然，艾琳、劳伦斯和菲尔在机器人胸部正中安装了一个开关。

All Franny had to do was quietly walk up to it, totally unseen, and flip the switch. "Actually, that was pretty clever of them," Franny whispered, "to install an off switch in such a convenient location." And if Franny had thought it through for just a split second longer, she would have realized that Erin, Phil, and Lawrence were not qualified to come up with something as clever as a chest-mounted off switch that would actually work.

弗兰妮所要做的就是悄无声息地走到它跟前，完全没人看见，然后按下开关。 “事实上，他们很聪明，”弗兰妮低声说，“在这么方便的地方安装了一个开关。” 如果弗兰尼再多想一秒钟，她就会意识到，艾琳、菲尔和劳伦斯没有资格想出一个像装在胸前的开关这样聪明的东西来。

But she hadn't thought it through, and she did flip the switch, which was not wired to turn off the robot, of course, but was wired to squirt a huge gush of ketchup from its newly installed ketchup nozzle.

但她没有想清楚，她确实按下了开关，当然，这个开关不是用来关闭机器人的，而是用来从新安装的番茄酱喷嘴中喷出大量番茄酱的。

The books! Franny leapt through the air and dove in front of a shelf full of books, heroically protecting them from the sloppy condiment onslaught but at the same time taking the full impact of the ketchup herself, thus rendering herself totally visible to the robot.

的书!弗兰妮从空中跳了起来，跳到一个摆满书的书架前，英勇地保护它们不受草率调味品的冲击，但同时她自己也受到了番茄酱的全部影响，因此机器人完全可以看到她自己。