Chapter 2

Chapter 2 This Computer Lab Isn't Big Enough for the Two of Us (And All of Our Computers, and a Pile of Experimental Technology). After school, everybody rushed to the new computer lab. They were eager to see Doc and maybe play some Minecraft. The lab was just a short walk away, connected to the library. Harper was the first to arrive. She waited outside for everybody else. "This is unacceptable!" A man's voice boomed from behind the door. Harper jumped. Theo turned the corner just in time to hear it, and his eyes widened in surprise.

"It's inconceivable!" the man continued. "It's against the rules, it's irregular, and it's absolutely not correct!" "Who is that?" Harper whispered. Theo peeked through the door's window to see inside. "It's Principal Ferris," Theo explained. The man was standing in front of Doc Culpepper, his face red. He was much taller than Doc and wore a suit with a dark tie that looked as sharp as a blade. "I saw his picture on the website."

"I welcomed you and your students to this school, but I draw the line at this… this junk." The principal was pointing at several piles of technology: Doc's inventions! In between the thingamajigs and whozawhatsits, Harper and Theo spotted a pair of their old VR goggles, one of the Stonesword Library's computer monitors, and the server that hosted their Minecraft world. It was all there!

"That's not junk!" Theo grumbled. "That's our stuff!" Doc Culpepper and Ms. Minerva had fought before about Doc's inventions, but Ms. Minerva had never seemed this mad. And Doc had never seemed this nervous before. Harper had looked up to Doc for a long time—she was Harper's favorite teacher, after all, and a brilliant scientist. If Doc had kept that stuff, then Theo was right. None of it was junk. But next to all the fancy, clean computers arranged in neat rows in the Ironsword computer lab, it did look like junk.

"Every object here is part of various ongoing research projects and is highly important to Woodsword school business. We can't keep everything at Woodsword because my lab was damaged." Doc tugged at the goggles on her head in a nervous way. "And my house is already so full it could burst!" "Well, it all needs to be thrown out. This is not a storage unit, Dr. Culpepper. It's not a locker or a very large box. It's not the cloud, or a warehouse, or some kind of depot. This is a school computer lab." Theo frowned. "This guy really likes listing things." "We have to do something!" Harper didn't like to stand by if she could help someone with a problem. That was why she liked science: one of its core ideas was that there was always room for improvement—and always a way to help. Harper had an idea. She pushed the door open and led Theo inside with a big smile on her face.

"Doc! You saved my project!" She rushed past the arguing adults to the piles of inventions and picked up the goggles, holding them above her head proudly. "I thought it was destroyed in the storm!" Both Doc and the principal looked surprised to see her. Before anyone could say anything, Theo grabbed a random who-knows-what from the pile and held it up. "And mine!" he declared. Whatever it was started glowing.