Cats vs. Robots #2

by Margaret Stohl

  Then the show began.

  The front door slammed open as Max Wengrod followed his twin sister, Min, into the front hall. As always, the twins’ return was followed by two familiar sounds:

  DUHM-DUHM.

  The first sound, right on schedule, came from kitten paws as they gently hit the floor. That’s Scout, Max thought happily.

  THUMP-THUMP.

  Next came the sound of a less graceful landing. And Stu. Max grinned. Stu seemed to be enjoying domestic life and had put on quite a belly since moving into a home with regular mealtimes.

  Max dropped his backpack to the floor and flopped down, exhausted. “These days are just too long.”

  BADUMP BADUMP BADUMP!

  The two kittens scampered around the corner. They were always happy to see the Wengrod twins, especially Max, who had saved them weeks ago from being washed away down the LA River.

  The smaller kitten—a long, spotted pink-nosed cat, roughly the shape of a string bean—crept closer, greeting Max by affectionately chewing on his hair.

  “Scout, not now,” Max said, gently pushing her away. “And what did we say about eating hair? It’s gross.”

  “Especially if you knew the last time he showered,” Min said, making a face. She bent to hold out her hand, wiggling her fingers until Scout trotted over.

  Though Min had only recently discovered her love for any pets, other than the robots she built with her father, she had been making up for lost time, and had come to love the kittens as much as Max did.

  “Stu, where are ya, bud?” Max hollered from the floor, waving his hand above his head and waiting for kitten teeth to find it. Instead, he felt the familiar and friendly headbutt in his side.

  Max sat up to see Scout’s sturdier brother, Stu, hunting for affection. He scratched Stu behind the ears. “Ah, you missed me, didn’t you, buddy?”

  PURRRRRRRR.

  The growling coming from Stu’s chest was all the answer Max needed.

  “Of course they did. We’ve been gone almost as long as a regular school day.” Min sighed. “And I’m starving. We need snacks.”

  Max and the kittens followed Min into the kitchen. There, as usual, a small army of domestic robot prototypes—built by Min and her father and known as the Protos—were getting Max and Min’s after-school snack ready.

  The sight of battered old Joan Drone, with one broken propeller, hovering by the cupboard with a bag of chips—or of Drags the treaded tank, trailing laundry behind him as he rolled from the laundry room into the kitchen, waving two clean cloth napkins straight from the dryer—or of Cy, the cyclone spinner, waving packs of fruit snacks excitedly over his head—or of Tipsy, the semi-successful self-balancing robot, who was facedown on the floor trying to see what she could see when she could see nothing at all—well, all those things might have looked odd to another brother and sister, but in the Wengrod house, they just looked like home.

  “Thanks, Joan,” Min said, taking a bag of her favorite dill-pickle-flavored chips from Joan’s grasper, and sliding into a seat at the kitchen table.

  Joan bobbled and whirred away, heading over to Max.

  Max took his chips and sank into the chair next to Min. “A summer camp about games sounded awesome, but I just want to play games now, not learn how to make them.”

  “I mean,” Min said, accepting her fruit snacks from Tipsy, “obviously I want to be an astronaut, and yes, I really wanted to work at NASA during the summer, but why didn’t someone warn me that it would be so much, you know, work?”

  “Tell me about it.” Max ripped open his pack, sending fruit snacks flying. “Meanwhile, it’s not like Obi and the whole fate of the universe isn’t depending on us.”

  Max and Min were the only two kids on Earth—the Furless planet, as the Felines called it—who knew about the intergalactic war between the Felines of the Great Feline Empire and the Binars of the Robot Federation.

  Cats vs. Robots.

  Making things worse, while Max and Min were home eating chips and tickling kittens, someone they loved was far away and in trouble, and it was up them to bring him home.

  Obi.

  A few weeks had passed since the tense standoff between House from GloboTech, Pounce from the Great Feline Empire, and Beeps from the Robot Federation. The conflict was over the Wengrod parents’ invention, the Singularity Chip, and an old cat named Obi from next door.

  That was the night Max and Min’s parents miraculously saved Obi, in more ways than one—first by making a copy of his mind and memories, then by transferring them into the Singularity Chip and a brand-new cat-like robot body, just as Obi reached the end of his ninth and final life.

  It had seemed like a happy ending, until Beeps showed up and cat-napped Robo-Obi, stealing him away to Binar.

  Nobody had heard a word from either Beeps or Obi since.

  Pounce left to get help from the Felines, promising to contact Max and Min as soon as he got back to Felinus.

  Nobody had heard from Pounce since that night either.

  “You’re back!” Cousin Javi came in and sat down across from Max and Min, placing an environmental law textbook and a precariously balanced stack of folders and papers on the table in front of them. (“Them,” not “him” or “her,” because Javi was nonbinary and used “they”/“them” as pronouns.)

  Javi was working for an environmental law nonprofit during summer break from studying law. The project, as it just so happened, was suing the richest man on earth, Gifford M.E. Huggs, who wanted to keep people from using a dirt path that cut through the side yard of his massive oceanfront Malibu mansion to get to a public beach.

  “Hey, Javi,” Min said.

  “Mumph-mumph,” Max said, swallowing the last of the fruit snacks.

  “Why the long faces?” Javi poked Max in the shoulder.

  “It’s Obi. We still don’t have a plan to rescue him. We don’t even know if he’s okay,” Max said glumly.

  Stu sat on Max’s foot, offering what comfort he could.

  Scout, always on the prowl, jumped up on the table to investigate the new smells. A new person in the room, a new stack of papers, a new book. Scout even caught a glorious whiff of backpack, the mother of all smell buffets, though it wasn’t in sight.

  But the first, the teetering stack of papers. Something that knock-down-able was just too tempting to pass up, by kitten logic.

  Scout paused to sniff the stack, then stretched up for a better look, reaching out with her paw to give it just the smallest . . .

  little . . .

  nudge. . . .

  BOOP!

  “No!” Javi said, too late, as the pile toppled over.

  “Scout!” Min yelled. Scout scrabbled off the table and streaked out of the room as the papers flew into the air.

  “It’s okay,” Javi said with a sigh. “Sounds like we all got more than we bargained for this summer. I feel guilty too. I’ve been so busy with my internship I haven’t had much time to focus on how to get Obi back from those robots myself.”

  WHRRRRRRR.

  Joan Drone hovered behind Javi, with a waiting Capri Sun. Javi took it. “Thanks, Joan. You always know what to . . . say.”

  Max pulled a golden medallion shaped like a pyramid out of his pocket. It dangled from a small braided collar, just like the one Obi wore. He placed it on the table in front of them.

  “Is that Obi’s communicator? The one he wore on his collar?” Javi asked.

  Max shook his head. “Pounce gave me this one. It’s the same as Obi’s—it’s how the two of them communicated, for all those years.”

  Min looked at her brother. “And? Have you heard anything from Pounce?”

  Max shook his head sadly, tapping on it for the millionth time. He even tried holding it up to his mouth, like it was a microphone. “Hello? Pounce? Can anybody hear me?”

  Min pulled it away. “Come on, Max. You know that thing only works if Pounce calls first.”

  “It does?” Javi looked surprised.


  “The medallion was designed for Great Feline Empire explorers who operated in secret. Only someone on the home planet can start communication,” Min explained.

  “Tricky,” Javi said.

  “Or annoying.” Max snorted. “Like a broken space phone with no buttons.”

  Min looked at him. “Pounce said he would contact us when he could. We just have to be patient.” She was losing patience herself.

  Min couldn’t help but worry about the old cat. “And not just because he’s an awesome robo-cat now,” she always felt compelled to say, though she knew everyone still thought of Max as the cat lover and Min as the cat hater—Max as the flaky artist and Min as the sensible roboticist—Max as the slacker gamer and Min as the straight-A programmer.

  Well, at least that part is true.

  It was also true that Min was highly allergic to cats, but she had learned to wash her hands after petting Stu and Scout, to not touch her eyes, and to keep the door to her bedroom shut. She adapted to the kittens because they made Max so happy, and they were part of her family now. And, okay, they’re kinda cute too.

  Min had also learned that even when a person changed how they felt about something, the world didn’t necessarily change with them. Everyone still thought of her as the cat hater, even though it wasn’t true and made her feel sort of bad.

  She heard the sound of a snore and looked down to where Stu was napping under the table, Max’s shoelace in his mouth. Scout had snuck back in and was curled up next to him, thumping her tail nervously as she kept her eyes on, well, anything that moved.

  Min smiled, suddenly feeling hopeful.

  If someone like me can like both cats and robots once I really know them, maybe anyone can? And maybe that means a cat-like robot stuck on a robot planet will be okay. Or a robot-cat war will . . . end . . . okay?

  She wasn’t sure, but she was determined not to give up. “We’ll hear from Pounce soon,” she said. “He seemed very . . . responsible.”

  “Especially for a cat,” Javi agreed. “I mean, he did organize the pen drawer, and he doesn’t even have fingers.”

  “I just wish I knew what Obi was doing.” Max sighed. “He must be so scared.”

  And so the three Wengrods waited, staring at the alien collar communicator, worrying over the fate of a mechanical cat on a faraway planet, and wishing he would just call home.

  3

  A Raging Robot

  THWACKKK!

  Across the galaxy, on the faraway planet Binar, the heavy doors to the Royal Elevator slammed shut. The gleaming chrome rectangle jolted and launched upward with a shake and a groan.

  KLANG!

  The rough launch sent Sir Beeps-a-Lot backward, and he crashed into a reflective wall. “Gah! This elevator needs maintenance!”

  The other passenger said nothing.

  Beeps straightened his bent antennae and began compulsively rolling back and forth on his solitary wheel, the Binar version of anxious pacing.

  The other passenger was the robotic feline creature formerly known as Obi, or as the Protos called him, OB_1_Catno_B. He sat calmly on the reflective elevator floor staring at Beeps, wondering if now his name should be OB_2_Catno_B. . . .

  “What are you looking at?” Beeps grouched.

  Obi opened and closed his mouth, saying nothing. His mind, however, was whirling.

  << This place is Binar, home of the Robot Federation. >>

  << That entity is Beeps, a Federation Robot. >>

  << I am Obi, a Cat from the Furless planet. >>

  << But I am also Obi, a Robot from the Wengrod lab. >>

  << Thus, at present, I cannot be said to be wholly Cat or wholly Robot . . . or wholly Obi . . . >>

  << And while I know I am not Home, not with my Boy . . . >>

  << . . . I am uncertain if a not-Cat-not-Robot-not-Obi can reasonably expect to have a Home or a Boy at all. >>

  The thought filled Obi with sadness. He found himself automatically activating the neural sensors that raised one paw to his face, as if to brush a tear from the place where they used to flow and catch upon his whiskers.

  That was not the case now.

  BWOOOOONG!

  Beeps rammed into the side of the elevator again but couldn’t blame the elevator this time.

  Obi lowered his metal paw. “You are nervous.”

  “Why would I be nervous? Because I’m going to have to introduce a . . . you . . . to the Supreme Leader of All, Yes All, Robots? And because he’s not terribly fond of . . . units . . . who look like . . . what you look like now? I’m not nervous.”

  Obi’s robot face shifted into the equivalent of a smile as he shot out his paw, catching Beeps just as he was about to dent his third wall of the ride. “Definitely nervous.”

  “Zip it,” Beeps barked.

  With a sudden jerk, the elevator stopped and the door slid open—

  WHOOSSSSSSH.

  They were greeted with silence, except for the peaceful buzzing of the royal generators. The two robots moved through the elevator portal and into the hall, approaching the nearest guard.

  Beeps rolled forward. “We’re here to—”

  KWAKKKKRRRRRRGHHHHHHH!

  The rest of the sentence was obliterated by a strange and horrible noise that echoed from down the hallway. Obi and Beeps looked at each other, confused.

  The guard ignored the noise. “Follow me,” the guard shouted, pivoting to lead them into the hall, where the noise only grew louder.

  By the time they arrived at the Throne Room door, the obnoxious, distorted screeching was unbearable.

  “Strange welcoming rituals you have here on Binar,” Obi shouted, his voice barely audible over the dissonant, almost-violent sounds. “Is that music? Or some kind of torture?”

  Beeps shot Obi a look—at first angry, then almost embarrassed. “It looks like . . . er, sounds like, the supreme leader has taken up electric guitar again.” Beeps sighed. “The supreme leader is a fan of what the humans call rock and roll.”

  Obi stared. “I am very sorry to hear that. . . .”

  Beeps nodded.

  “Literally.”

  The door to the Throne Room slid open. Beeps winced. Obi took a step backward. “Definitely torture,” he said to himself, as the sound grew louder still.

  Inside, an elaborate elevated stage was surrounded by billowing fog in the center of the Throne Room. Dominating the stage was Robot AA-001, the one and only Supreme Leader of All, Yes All, Robots, SLAYAR himself. Color-changing spotlights lit SLAYAR from every direction, and his reflection was everywhere in the chrome-plated chamber—just as he liked it—like a real rock star.

  “DOMO ARIGATO, MR. ROBOTO, DOMO, DOMO!”

  He bellowed as he rotated through his favorite rock star poses and pointed to a nearby Royal Guard, who sang the chorus back to him, right on cue.

  “DOMO!”

  Then another.

  “DOMO!”

  And another.

  “DOMOOOOO!”

  But when the SLAYAR pointed again—this time to a guard standing directly in front of Beeps himself—Beeps responded by panicking and shoving Obi back out the door.

  “Just w-wait here,” Beeps said. “I’ll h-handle it. You d-don’t know what he can be like . . . when he’s like . . . how he can b-be.”

  “Are you stuttering, Beeps?” Obi studied his captor-slash-host.

  “N-no.” Beeps banged his head with one grasper, then paused to adjust his audio sensitivity downward.

  “I don’t know why you let him behave like this,” Obi said. “For a society of AI-based units, it’s not entirely logical.”

  “Can it, you,” Beeps said. With that, he rolled bravely into the room to face the music, literally and figuratively.

  Obi watched from the portal.

  It was . . . a spectacle.

  The smoke machines were going full blast, the rainbow spotlights, even the pyrotechnic displays. It seemed like some kind of grand finale, because now the hi
gh-platform stage was rising even higher and higher.

  Obi saw Beeps pause before he rolled toward center stage.

  SLAYAR’s graspers ran up and down the neck of his electric guitar, and he frantically picked, plucked, and twanged the guitar’s strings. Sparks flew in every direction.

  On SLAYAR’s main screen, where his face was usually displayed, Obi could only see a high-definition digital representation of hair—of long, flowing rock-and-roll locks—curls that swished and swayed as the supreme leader spun and maniacally bobbed his head up and down.

  When SLAYAR noticed his number two in the room, the “music” came to a screeching halt.

  Obi stepped back out of visual range, while he listened and waited.

  He couldn’t make out what the voices were saying specifically—but what seemed to start out as a quiet conversation quickly escalated into shouting, and then—CRASH!—Obi winced at what sounded like a shiny guitar smashing, followed by an awkward moment of regret and silent mourning of the smashed guitar.

  “You!” A Royal Guard emerged from the door and barked at Obi. “This way.”

  The robo-cat followed the guard into the awkward silence.

  Clink clink clink clink.

  The foreign, tinny sound of his metal claws echoing off the chrome walls caught Obi off guard.

  << Nothing is as it was. This should not surprise me. >>

  But the old cat-bot glimpsed his reflection in the polished-chrome walls as he headed into the room, and it did surprise him.

  No matter.

  Obi had something even bigger than getting used to his robotic body to worry about. Like, for example, offending the leader of a decidedly anti-cat nation, which could result in not having any sort of body at all.

  Clink clink clink clink. Clink.

  Obi slowly stepped through the dissipating fog, picking his way around the sparkly shattered bits of SLAYAR’s shiny guitar.

  Obi used every ounce of robotic willpower to avoid his cat urge to sniff each glittering piece, and then a few ounces more to keep from pouncing on the many tantalizing bouncing, bobbing guitar strings.

  << Some things never change. >>

  SLAYAR was frantically searching for his favorite guitar pick in the wreckage, when he looked up and saw Obi walking through the portal door.