Synopsis

Olympia and Otis go to Negative Town to track down a villain.

Olympia's Random Slide

This...is how green the grass is on the other side.

Learning Goal

• How to use and understand negative numbers

Plot

Olympia and Otis enter Ms. O's office where (a hologram of) Ms. O has a piece of paper on her desk telling them where to go.

At five Oxley Street, nothing odd is happening. The man who lives there says that she wants them to go to negative five Oxley Street. When the agents don't know what a negative number is, the man shows them a video explaining that a negative number is a number below zero.

When they get past zero Oxley Street, it becomes night. A man named Mayor Glumley explains that they're in Negative Town, where it's always night unless there's an eclipse and they get five minutes of sun. When Otis says it sounds horrible, Olympia points out that different things aren't always horrible, but the mayor says it is indeed horrible. When Olympia points out an ice cream cart, the mayor corrects her: it's a sour cream cart.

At negative five Oxley Street, they see a happy woman dancing, and nobody's happy in Negative Town. The woman explains that while she was staring at a wall, watching the paint dry, she heard footsteps and saw a bright flash, and then she was dancing. When Otis was informed the person who did this was wearing a very sparkly outfit, he knew it was Tiny Dancer. The mayor immediately says that it's hopeless, but Otis corrects him: she might be striking places in a pattern, so they need to find more data. Olympia then asks for a good place to have lunch, but the mayor says there's a place.

At the "Glumbers Cafe", they are served a half-empty glass of water each, which Olympia loves, causing the waitress to ask if she's messing with her, but the mayor explains they are from somewhere else. They each order a bowl of soup... rock soup (which they have to eat with a fork because they're out of spoons). Behind them, they see another guy dancing. He explains he lives at negative ten Oxley Street. Otis realizes the pattern is Tiny Dancer is adding by fives, but Olympia corrects him: when you move to the left on the number line, you're subtracting, so while negative ten looks like a bigger number because ten is more than five, it's actually smaller. Regardless, they realize the next place Tiny Dancer will strike is negative fifteen Oxley Street, so they head there immediately.

At the Discomfort Inn (home of Negative Town's itchiest sheets), they begin to tell the receptionist to secure the back area while they keep an eye out front, when the mayor reveals the dancing villain isn't coming because he got a telegram that she struck somewhere else (because phones never caught on). The mayor reveals she struck negative twenty Oxley Street and decides to go home and practice moaning.

On the street, Olympia and Otis eat sour cream cones and decide they're never gonna solve the case. They review the places she's struck. They realizing taking the number and subtracting the positive version of it from it! They immediately head to negative forty Oxley Street.

Tiny Dancer is just about to strike the mayor when Olympia and Otis arrive. She zaps other things as she aims for Olympia and Otis until Otis disarms her. He then threatens to destroy the wand unless she fixes everything. She agrees to fix everyone (while dancing). The mayor then begins to smile. Olympia then vows to come visit while saying how to get the word out about it.

Olympia, Otis, and Ms. O watch a musical commercial about Negative Town, which brought five more people there, giving it more visitors than ever before.

Trivia

• There is apparently a negative side of the town where it's always night time whenever the normal side of the town is day time.
• The eclipse is a reference to the Great American Solar Eclipse which had happened earlier in the same year it was aired.