Chapter 4

Chapter 4 YOU SAY "FOTATO." I SAY DUCK!* Doc was more flustered than Harper had ever seen her. The teacher was wearing an overstuffed tool belt and a slightly panicked expression. She kept dabbing her forehead with a handkerchief. "I appreciate the help," she said, looking from Harper to Jodi. "This is too big a job for me alone." Harper smiled widely. Doc Culpepper was her favorite teacher. That was because Doc didn't just teach science, she lived it! She had worked in a government laboratory before coming to Woodsword. And she still experimented in her free

time. The amazing VR goggles that allowed them to enter Minecraft were just one example of Doc's handiwork. Though Doc didn't know just how powerful her goggles were. Doc had a reputation for letting experiments and inventions get out of hand. Even so, could she really be responsible for the chaos affecting the school? Doc held up a clipboard. "Before we can fix the problem, we need to determine how extensive it is. I've written down all the malfunctions I've seen so far. But there are a few more areas to check." Doc led them to the auditorium first. Harper knew the drama club used that space for their performances and rehearsals. She was expecting to find problems with the stage lights or the sound equipment. She was not expecting snow. "It's magic!" Jodi cried. She ran in tight little circles through the snow that drifted down from the high ceiling. "Magic is real! I knew it all along and

no one listened to me, Harper!" Harper stuck out her tongue to catch a snowflake. It didn't melt, but it quickly got soggy. She flicked it away. "It's paper," she said. "Confetti. Special effects." Jodi slid through the artificial snow. "Stage

magic is still magic!" she insisted. Doc jotted a note on her clipboard. "The drama club spent an entire afternoon loading up their snow cannons. They are not going to be happy about this." "Neither are the janitors," Harper said. She kicked a little pile of paper snowflakes. "I hear the vacuums aren't exactly working, either." Doc sighed, nodded, and wrote another note on her clipboard. "Let's move on," she said. As they trailed Doc to their next stop, Jodi cleared her throat. "I know nobody wants to be the first to say it. But I think we need to discuss the possibility that gremlins are behind all this." "Gremlins?" said Harper. "The little green creatures? People used to blame them for all sorts of problems, right?"

"I don't think they mean to cause trouble," Jodi

said, her tone completely serious. "But they enjoy riding the electrostatic fields of the stratosphere. As you can imagine, that can really mess things up." Harper grinned. She had no idea where Jodi came up with this stuff. "I'm afraid there's a simpler explanation," said Doc. "Human error." She rummaged through her tool belt and pulled out a tiny computer chip. "I wanted Woodsword to be the most advanced school in the county. So I networked the whole school. I put a computer chip in, well, everything. And now everything is broken." Harper's heart felt a little heavy when she saw her teacher so defeated. "That doesn't mean you're to blame," Harper said. "It might be a hardware issue. Maybe the computer chips were faulty? Or it might be a software problem. We could double-check the code that keeps everything automated." "Or it could be gremlins," Jodi added, her eyes