No Other Story by Dr. Cuthbert Soup Read Free Book Online Page B

prices are pretty good. Either way, I wouldn’t recommend taking him back into the cold right away.”
    â€œDo you expect it to clear up soon?” asked Chip.
    â€œYes,” said Penny. “What does the weather report say?”
    This made Jones laugh. “Weather report? So my assumption was right. You’re outsiders.” No sooner had he said the words than Jones appeared to second-guess the wisdom of having done so.
    â€œOutsiders?” Chip repeated. “What makes you think that?”
    For a moment, Jones said nothing, apparently deciding whether to answer or ignore the question. Finally, he said, “I can tell you’re outsiders because when I found you, you were, like, totally lost and confused. To the locals, everything here in Some Times makes perfect sense. But to the outsider, it’s an absolute mess.”
    Things were getting stranger by the minute, Chipthought. If he and his family were the first to discover Some Times, how did Jones know its proper name? It would be like Columbus showing up in the New World and having the natives greet him with a hearty, “Hey, Chris, welcome to the West Indies.”
    â€œYou’re an outsider too. Aren’t you?” said Chip. Jones bit the inside of his lip and narrowed his eyes, but said nothing. Tired of waiting for a response, Chip persisted. “Where are you from?”
    â€œWell,” said Jones, “you certainly are a curious bunch, LOL.”
    Penny looked at Chip and Chip looked at Penny. No question, this Jones fellow was a bit of a strange bird, but did he really just say what they thought he said?
    â€œExcuse me,” said Penny. “But did you say LOL?”
    â€œYeah, you know, LOL,” said Jones. “As in,
ha ha ha.
”
    â€œOr
laugh out loud
,” said Chip.
    â€œOh yeah,” said Jones. “I suppose it could mean that too. It’s just a way of, like, saving time where I come from.”
    â€œHow much time are you really saving by saying LOL instead of laugh out loud?” asked Penny. “Or, if something really is funny, why don’t you just laugh out loud and not say anything?”
    Jones shrugged and said, “IDK.”
    â€œYou mean
I don’t know
?” asked Chip.
    â€œExactly. Just another time saver.”
    â€œWe have them where we come from too,” said Penny. “But we only use them when typing or texting, not when speaking.”
    Jones crinkled his forehead and looked thoughtful once again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But what’s typing again?”
    Chip wasn’t quite sure whether a man with a mechanical dog could seriously not know what typing was. He pantomimed the act for Jones’s benefit. “You know, it’s what you do on a laptop computer.”
    â€œOh,” said Jones, as if suddenly remembering some obscure fact from a history exam taken long ago. “We don’t have laptop computers where I come from. We have eye-tops.”
    â€œYou replaced computers with basketball shoes?” said Teddy.
    â€œHe said
eyetop
, I believe,” said Penny. “Not
high-top
.”
    â€œWhat the heck is an eyetop?” asked Gravy-Face Roy.
    As Jones went on to explain to Professor Boxley, the three Cheeseman children, and a sock, an eyetop was a computer about the size of a contact lens that fit right over the cornea of the eye and was operated not by typing, but simply by thinking. If his story was true, it meant one thing for certain: wherever Jones came from, it was a world far more advanced than their own.
    â€œAre you from the future or something?” Teddy asked.
    â€œI guess you could say that,” said Jones.
    â€œI knew it,” said Teddy, who was over the moon at having been right twice in one day.
    â€œBut I’m also from the past,” Jones continued, taking a little wind out of Teddy’s sails. “With time, everything is relative. We’re all