On Monday, I did my best to keep my head down and ignore the snickers from other kids, still laughing about the video.
I was relieved when I finally got to study hall, where I could get some peace and quiet. I had never been so excited to study in my whole life! (Don’t tell anyone I said that.)
Luckily, Georgie and Penny had already gotten a good table in the back. I plopped my books down between them with a thud.
“There’s our hometown hero,” Georgie said with a good-natured smile.
“Very funny,” I replied, rolling my eyes.
“Don’t worry, Babymouse,” Penny said. “Many artists are misunderstood during their lifetimes.”
“Oh, speaking of art, did either of you write down the language arts assignment from class today? I forgot.”
“Sure,” Georgie said. “Let me check my SoLazy.”
“What’s SoLazy?” I asked.
“It’s an app featuring voice-to-text software. You just talk into the phone and it writes everything down for you. You never have to lift a pen!”
“So it’s like having a personal assistant taking notes for me?”
“Exactly,” Georgie said.
I liked that idea A LOT. Imagine never having to decipher your own crazy handwriting! This was the app of my dreams! Or at least my midsummer night’s dreams. Ha!
(I mean LOL!)
I downloaded SoLazy immediately, knowing my life would never be the same. Once it was on my screen, I decided to give it a try.
“SoLazy, text Wilson, ‘Bonjour!’ ”
“SoLazy, text Wilson, ‘Just trying out my new SoLazy app.’ ”
Just like that, I was OBSESSED!
On the bus home from school, I had a brilliant idea: instead of typing out my homework, I could just dictate it to SoLazy!
The first thing on my to-do list was the language arts paper on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s actually a pretty cool play by William Shakespeare about fairies and people and a love spell. And with SoLazy by my side, I got the paper “written” really quickly, which left me with plenty of time to watch the movie version. My mom found me on the couch halfway through my second cupcake.
“Don’t you have any homework, Babymouse?” she asked.
“Already finished!” I replied proudly. “Just have to print it out.”
Mom was impressed. “That’s great!” she said. “So you can get to bed early tonight.”
Argh.
The next morning, I woke up early to print my paper. I connected to my wireless printer and opened my saved voice memo. I pressed the TRANSLATE TO TEXT button and waited for the app to update. Once that happened, I pressed PRINT and went to the bathroom to wash up. When I came back, I couldn’t believe my eyes!
I thought my problems would end there, but I was wrong. When I was at my locker between classes later that day, I got—you guessed it!—another text from “unidentified.” I tried to use SoLazy to translate my messages. It couldn’t be as bad as my paper (or so I thought…).
Man, was I frustrated. At first, it seemed like SoLazy was choosing the wrong words based on the app’s algorithms, but then things started to get really weird….
WHAT???