Even though Professor Reese was missing, it had been a good day for me as her lab assistant because I had figured out the answer to one of her questions.
But I still needed to figure out how Baxter found the hat so far away from the house. Because it wasn’t like at the dog park, when he could see the ball the whole time. We teleported the hat so far, we had to practically run for five minutes to get there. So how did he follow such a long bounce?
I pulled all my dog books off my bookcase, but none of them had a section on bouncing.
I wondered about it all night long until I fell asleep.
In the morning (Saturday = Baxterday), I woke TJ up early. We ate breakfast superfast and then left a note on the kitchen counter (because Mom was still asleep) saying we were going to go feed Baxter and take him on a walk. Then we headed over.
“But this time, when we walk,” I told TJ and Baxter, “I want a plan.” I nodded.
They both nodded back.
I fed Baxter and put in his ear ointment, and then we all went downstairs to the lab. TJ said good morning to Spike (who was still gnawing on his big carrot) and plopped down in the spinny chair. Baxter plopped down on the floor beside him.
“OK.” I began to pace. “We need to figure out where Professor Reese is.”
“Right,” TJ said.
“We just need to think through the whole thing logically.”
“Right,” TJ said.
“Where do you think we should start?”
“I have no idea,” TJ said.
I didn’t, either. But since teleportation was science, I tried to think about what a scientist might do if they were in a situation like this. “Professor Reese says that when you get new information, it’s good to see how it fits in with what you already know.”
“Yeah,” TJ said, “but we don’t have any new information.”
“Sure we do.” I stopped pacing so I could pat Baxter’s head, but carefully so I wouldn’t touch his sore ears. “We know about the bounce now.”
“So?”
“So, let’s look at the map again.” I hurried over to it.
TJ spun in the chair. “What good will that do?”
“I don’t know yet.” I shrugged. “Come here anyway.”
So he got up and stood by the map with me, and we looked at all the pins and the little slips of paper. I pointed to the green pin for the last time we had teleported the hat. “OK. Those are the last coordinates that we saw her type into the computer: 45.530313, –122.696471.”
“Yeah, but if that’s where she went, she would have just walked home,” TJ said. “It’s only a few blocks away.”
“I know.” I sighed.
We studied the map some more. And suddenly something started flitting around in the back of my mind, but I couldn’t quite catch it . . .
“Wait a minute! 45.530313,” TJ read again. “Where did we see that number?”
“Um . . .” I thought back. “You read it out so Professor Reese could set up the teleporter the last time we teleported the hat. And then you read it to me again later so I could write the slip.”
“Yeah . . .” TJ scrunched his face up. “But didn’t we see it somewhere else? I remember it because of all the threes: five three oh three one three.”
And then suddenly, the idea flitting in the back of my mind stopped—and I caught hold. “That’s it!”
I ran upstairs—TJ and Baxter following—through the living room through the dining room into the kitchen, straight to the Baxter Station.
I grabbed the vet report, which was lying next to the ear ointment.
Then I turned to TJ and smiled. “I think we just figured it out.”
23TJ, the Genius
“TJ! You’re a genius!” I said.
“I am?”
I handed him the vet report. “Take a look at Baxter’s microchip number.”
TJ read, “45530313! I knew I saw that number before!” Then he scrunched up his face. “So what does that mean?”
“Hang on. Let me think—this is new information.”
TJ rummaged around in his hoodie pocket. He pulled out two sticks of gum and handed one to me. I chewed and paced (and TJ just chewed).
Baxter watched me pace back and forth, first his left eyebrow going up and then his right. Pretty soon, all the little bits and pieces started fitting together, which I tried to explain to TJ as I thought it through as logically as I could (in a situation like this):
The computer sent reconfiguration instructions to the hat molecules via radio waves.
Baxter’s microchip number was also transmitted to the vet’s scanner via radio waves.
Baxter’s microchip was the programmable kind.
So maybe when Professor Reese’s computer beep-beep-booped, Baxter booped back because his microchip was being activated and reprogrammed with a new number—the latitude for where the hat was—and the computer was telling the microchip where it needed to go.
“Wait. What?” TJ interrupted.
I stopped pacing. “I think every time she teleported the hat and the computer sent out radio waves, Baxter’s microchip number changed to match where the hat was sent.”
“Oh,” TJ said. “So 45530313 matches 45.530313—the latitude number of the hat’s coordinates from the last time we helped her teleport.”
“Exactly.” I nodded.
“How come the microchip doesn’t show the longitude, too?”
“There’s not room for all that on the LCD screen,” which I just sort of made up that second, but it made sense so maybe it was right.
“Oh,” TJ said.
“OK.” I started pacing again. “Now, here’s where it gets even crazier—”
“Good,” TJ said, “because it wasn’t crazy enough yet.”
“So maybe,” I said, “when the chip is activated, that’s what makes it start humming.”
“The microchip hums?” TJ asked.
“Oh! I forgot to tell you that!” I said. “Put your ear there.” I pointed to Baxter’s shoulder blades.
TJ did. “OK. I can hear it.”
I nodded and got back to figuring things out:
And if the humming grew louder the closer it got to the hat (and I’d need to test that part of my theory out), then maybe Baxter used the hum getting louder and louder to help him follow the bounce
