The Mysterious Machine Arrives in Tidytown

Chapter 1 — The Mysterious Machine Arrives in Tidytown

The Glowing Crate at Dawn

One morning in Tidytown, before the sun had even finished yawning its way above the purple hills, Mira woke up to a sound she had never heard before. It wasn't the soft clatter of Mr. Pinecone's breakfast dishes next door. It wasn't the gentle hum of the bakery ovens warming up. It wasn't even Meowington, her fat orange cat, paddling across the bed in search of warm toes. It was a sound like someone dragging a giant teacup across the sky — a low, humming, *ssssshhhhhing* whisper that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

Mira sat up, rubbing her eyes. Her braid had tangled itself into a pretzel overnight, and her pajama sleeve was decorated with three polka dots of drool. She looked across the pillow. Meowington was not there. His warm spot had gone cold, which meant he had been awake for at least an hour — a very serious length of time for a cat.

"Meowington?" Mira whispered. "Where have you gone, you fluffy runaway?"

The answer came from the open window. Meowington was sitting on the windowsill, his orange tail wrapped primly around his paws, his pink nose pointing toward the village square. His ears, two fuzzy satellites, were tilted forward. He looked like a furry statue of *Surprise*.

"What's out there?" Mira asked, hopping out of bed.

Then she saw it herself.

In the middle of the cobblestone square, where the wishing fountain usually burbled and sparkled, there now sat a *crate*. But not an ordinary wooden crate, and not an ordinary cardboard box. This crate was as tall as a giraffe sitting down, and it shimmered the way the surface of a lake does at sunrise — silvery at the top, gold in the middle, and a deep, dreamy teal at the bottom. Its edges weren't sharp; they curved, like the corners of a soap bubble. And carved into its side, in letters that seemed to be made of moving light, were four words:

THE WISE HELPER MODEL ONE — GH-1

Mira's mouth fell open. She had heard of the Wise Helper, of course. Everyone in Tidytown had. Mayor Pang had been talking about it at every single town meeting for months and months. He said it was a brand-new kind of helper the Mayor of a faraway city had invented, and that Tidytown had been chosen — *chosen!* — to receive the very first one as a gift. It would help with everything, he said: homework questions, recipes for new cookies, names for baby goats, the lost-and-found box at the town hall, even the weather. "It is a *machine that thinks*," Mayor Pang had boomed at the last meeting, thumping his podium with such excitement that his spectacles had slid down his nose. "Soon we will all have a wise helper in our very own homes!"

Mira had imagined many possible helpers. She had imagined a robot with eight arms that could carry groceries and tie shoelaces. She had imagined a wise old owl in a tiny hat. She had imagined a talking book that knew every story ever told. She had *not* imagined a giant shimmering crate that hummed like a sleepy dragon.

"Stay here," she told Meowington, who ignored her entirely and was already halfway out the window.

The streets of Tidytown were already busier than a cookie jar at a children's party. Mira pushed past her neighbor Mrs. Tulip, who was carrying a watering can in one hand and a magnifying glass in the other. She squeezed between twins Pelle and Pollux, who were arguing about whether the crate was bigger than their bedroom (it was). She waved to Old Bo, who walked with a cane and a grin, and to little Fawn, who was clutching her stuffed rabbit so tightly that the rabbit's ears had bent into new shapes.

And there, at the very front of the crowd, standing on the rim of the wishing fountain, was Mayor Pang.

He was a small, round man with a circular belly and a perfectly bald head that shone like the moon over the lake. He wore his official sash, which was too long and always dragged on the ground. Around his neck hung his mayoral medal, which was actually a large, sparkly button from his grandmother's coat. He had been polishing it for twenty minutes.

"Citizens of Tidytown!" he boomed, raising his arms wide. "Welcome! Welcome, welcome, *welcome!*"

The crowd cheered. Someone threw a handful of confetti. Meowington, who had arrived by rooftop expressway, sat on a chimney nearby and stared down with great seriousness.

"Today," Mayor Pang went on, "our village takes a giant leap into the future! Today, the Wise Helper — Model One, GH-1 — arrives among us. With its help, we shall bake better pies, answer trickier questions, and find every missing mitten this side of the river!"

The crowd clapped and cheered again. A few villagers looked at each other and nodded. Mrs. Tulip whispered into Mira's ear, "I do hope it can tell me whether to plant the carrots before or after the rain."

But not everyone was cheering. Mira, who had very sharp eyes for noticing things (she had once found a four-leaf clover *and* a lost kitten in the same afternoon), noticed a smaller group of villagers standing at the back. Some of them had their arms crossed. Some of them had one eyebrow raised higher than the other, the way people do when they're a bit worried but trying very hard not to say so out loud.

Mr. Pinecone — who ran the bakery next door and had once trusted a "revolutionary new oven" that had cooked a cake into a brick — shook his head slowly. Old Bo tapped his cane against the cobblestones and muttered, "A machine that *thinks*, eh? Did anyone ask it to think first?"

A hand tugged Mira's sleeve. She looked down. It was Fawn, clutching her floppy-eared rabbit.

"Mira," Fawn whispered. "Do you think the machine is *nice*?"

That was, Mira realized, exactly the right question. And she had absolutely no idea what the answer was.

Mayor Pang and the Great Unveiling

Mayor Pang clapped his hands twice — a signal the villagers all knew meant *quiet please, something important is coming* — and a small team of helpers stepped forward. They were all wearing yellow gloves and matching yellow caps, and they rolled up their sleeves as if preparing for the most exciting unpacking in the history of Tidytown.

"Citizens!" the Mayor announced. "Before we open the crate, I must explain *why* we are receiving such a magnificent gift."

He climbed a tiny step-ladder that someone had placed beside the crate, cleared his throat, and began a speech that, by the fourth minute, was beginning to put Meowington to sleep on his chimney.

In short, what Mira learned was this:

A great city many hills away — a city with tall glass towers and bright bushy parks — had built a brand-new kind of helper. It wasn't a robot with arms, and it wasn't an ordinary calculator, and it wasn't a magical creature. It was something brand new, the very first of its kind in the world: a *machine that could read and write and answer questions the way a person could*. The Mayor of that faraway city had decided that Tidytown — small, careful, thoughtful Tidytown — should be the first village in the world to try it. "Because," Mayor Pang said, squinting up toward the sky as if the clouds held his script, "Tidytown is famous for being the *wisest* village in the valley. If any village can judge whether the Wise Helper is truly wise, it is ours!"

The crowd clapped. Some more.

But Mira was thinking. She was thinking that this was a *very* big deal. A brand-new helper, the first of its kind, was going to live in the village square. From now on, almost anyone could ask it almost anything. It would help with homework and recipes and recipes for homework and possibly for everything in between. And the only thing standing between them and the answers they would get was… *the answers*. Whatever the machine said, the village would believe. Or would it?

Mayor Pang must have been a tiny mind-reader, because just then he looked straight at Mira through the crowd, his round eyes twinkling behind his sliding specta