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Professor Pip was a genius, but a very disorganized one. His lab was a marvelous mess of bubbling beakers and tangled wires, and his hair looked like a bird’s nest after a particularly windy day. His newest invention, the "Everything-Finder," was supposed to find anything you'd lost. He was about to test it when he realized he couldn't find the main power button.

He scrambled through a pile of blueprints. He looked under a stack of very sticky jam jars. He even checked inside a half-eaten sandwich. "Where is it?" he mumbled.

The Everything-Finder, a clunky machine with a blinking red light, suddenly whirred to life on its own. It seemed to have found its power button itself. A little screen lit up. It was asking a question in a wobbly font: "WHAT IS MISSING?"

Professor Pip, frustrated and without his spectacles, which he had also misplaced, squinted at the screen. He typed in his most recent, most pressing problem: "MY GLASSES."

The Everything-Finder whirred and beeped. A little robotic arm popped out and pointed straight at the professor. He looked at the arm, then at his messy hair. He was wearing his glasses on top of his head the whole time. The machine hummed with what sounded suspiciously like a laugh.

"Well, that's not quite right," Professor Pip said, taking his glasses off his head and putting them on his face. "Let's try again. What else is missing?" He thought for a moment. He had been looking for a very specific, very important gear for his Perpetual Motion Machine. He typed: "THE LITTLE WHIRLY-GEAR."

The Everything-Finder whirred, and the little arm popped out again, this time pointing to the pocket of his lab coat. He reached in, and there it was, the little whirly-gear, just where he'd put it for safekeeping.

The professor was amazed. "It works!" he said, doing a little dance. He decided to find the most impossible thing to find. He typed: "MY SENSE OF DIRECTION."

The Everything-Finder whirred and beeped one last time. The screen flashed a final message: "CHECK YOUR SHOES."

Professor Pip looked down at his shoes. His right shoe was on his left foot, and his left shoe was on his right foot. He burst out laughing. It turned out the most important things weren't missing at all. They had just been there all along, in the silliest places. He gave the Everything-Finder a big hug and decided to take a break. He had a lot of things to put back in their proper places, after all.