Numbed! by David Lubar Read Free Book Online Page A

missing from my mind.
    I read the next problem.
    Maria has five shirts, two pairs of pants, and three pairs of shoes. How many possible outfits can she put together?
    I let out a small moan. I should have been able to figure this out. But like with the first problem, I couldn’t even think about any way to come up with a solution.
    The next problem was no better:
    Oliver has 50 feet of fence. He wants to make a rectangular garden. One side will be 12 feet long. How many square feet will the garden have?
    It might as well have asked me to guess Oliver’s middle name or his favorite kind of pie. I was totally clueless. I read the rest of the problems. I had no idea how to do any of them. I risked a glance back at Benedict. He was staring at his test like the paper had turned into a kidney.
    The bell rang. We handed in our tests. “Did you get stuck?” I asked Benedict as we walked away from Ms. Fractalli’s desk.
    â€œIt was way worse than being stuck. I was totally numbed.”
    What was going on? I glanced at the board, with the 85 on it. I tried to guess whether my total failure and Benedict’s with the word problems would bring the class average below that number. It made me feel worse when I realized I didn’t even know how to figure that out.
    Ms. Fractalli was walking toward her locker. “If we ever needed to get on her good side, this is the time,” I whispered to Benedict.
    I waited until Ms. Fractalli realized she didn’t have her key. Then I hunted around and found it where she’d left it, between two pages in the big dictionary.
    â€œWhat’s going on?” Benedict asked me as we left the school. “I thought we weren’t numbed anymore.”
    â€œI don’t know. But I hope Dr. Thagoras does. We’d better get to the museum right now.”

CHAPTER
(2 × 3) + (3 × 2)
    A s soon as we reached his lab, I told Dr. Thagoras about the test.
    â€œOh, dear,” he said. “I was afraid of that.”
    â€œAfraid of what?” I asked.
    â€œThere’s a lot more to mathematics than just arithmetic,” he said. “I was hoping you hadn’t lost anything except your ability to perform basic calculations, but it appears you were very deeply and thoroughly numbed.”
    â€œI told you,” Cypher said. “You don’t know everything.”
    â€œBe nice,” Dr. Thagoras warned the robot.
    â€œWhat else is there?” Benedict asked.
    â€œMy word, that’s an excellent question.” Dr. Thagoras scrunched his forehead for a moment. His eyes darted back and forth as if he were watching a grandfather clock. Then he started listing things. “There are dozens of concepts and skills. Reasoning, estimation, rounding, exponents, logarithms, and lots more. Then there are the fields of math. Algebra, calculus, set theory, geometry, trigonometry, game theory, statistics, topology. It’s almost endless.” He chuckled and then added, “I was about to say it is infinite. But that is such a misused concept.”
    I stared at him for a moment before I spoke. “I’ll never get all of that back, will I? Part of me will be numbed forever?”
    â€œThere might be one chance,” Dr. Thagoras said. “You need to do something that allows you to grasp all of math, inside and out …”
    â€œWhat are you talking about?” I asked.
    He pointed to the wall behind him. “The ring on the outside was built before I started working here, so I don’t know a whole lot about it. It’s hollow. It was intended as an exhibit, but people found it far too confusing. I think you have to travel the Mobius loop, all the way around the inside of the ring.” He got up from his stool and rushed down the hall. “This way.”
    We followed him back to the matheteria. He pointed at the far end, to the door marked Maintenance.
    â€œWhat’s this about a loop?” Benedict