Not Your Sidekick

by C. B. Lee

  He looks familiar somehow, but Jess doesn’t think she’s seen him at AHHS.

  “No problem,” Jess says. “Are you an intern too? I haven’t met any of the ones in the other departments.”

  “Yes! I’m an intern,” he says. “I’m Barry.” Oddly formal, he holds out his hand for Jess to shake.

  “Jess.” She shakes his hand. It’s going to be one of those things, she can tell, like figuring out who is that one extra in that one movie. “Sorry, you just look really familiar. Do you go to AHHS?”

  “Ah, no! I live in Devonport. I must have one of those faces, you know.”

  “Do you know what floor you’re going to?” Jess asks. They’ve already passed the fifth through eighth floors, where most of the research and development takes place. Jess was pretty sure all the other internships were for that area, but she could be wrong.

  “Oh, ah, fourteen.”

  They stand in silence for a bit until the boy blurts out, “So, how are you liking the job, Jess?”

  “It’s great. I mean, I don’t have any other internships to compare it to, but I like the people I work with, and the projects are interesting.”

  Barry keeps smiling and nodding as she talks. Jess goes on a bit about the tedium of filing, and finds his active interest in her pleasant. She’s not one to make friends quickly. It reminds her of the first time Bells sat down with her at lunch and just started talking to her.

  “How’s things in research and development? I would have applied there, but I don’t really know much about robotics.”

  Barry shrugs. “Ah, it’s great. I love it. Lots of explosions. Just kidding!” He leans in and lowers his voice, even though they’re the only two in the elevator. “Hey, have you seen anything weird around here lately?”

  “Weird? Like what?” Jess folds her arms.

  “Anything. You know… I heard that Master Mischief was seen a few times going in and out of this building. Maybe he’s hiding out here.” Barry lifts his eyebrows.

  “I have no idea,” Jess says, more fiercely than she intends. The Mischief’s lab is supposed to be a secret. “That sounds like something the conspiracy theorists on the Net would come up with.”

  Barry leans back against the elevator wall. He opens his mouth, but the elevator door opens and a few more employees join them. Two women are complaining to each other about project deadlines, but the conversation ends when they get in the elevator and they glare at the display. One man is flicking furiously at the messages on his DED. He’s wearing jeans and a polo shirt. All the employees look pretty casual, much to Jess’ relief. It must be a Saturday thing, and now Barry looks overdressed.

  The other intern keeps eyeing her as if he wants to talk more about his Mischief theories. The women get off on the tenth floor, and, on the eleventh, the man still on his DED walks right into a MonRobot hovering at the elevator doors. It spins about in confusion even as it’s scanning him, and the man just walks right past. “Bill Neighton, Thermodynamics Specialist,” the MonRobot mutters.

  “Hey, watch it,” Jess calls after the rude man, reaching out to steady the MonRobot.

  “Thank you,” it says in a steady monotone. It scans Jess’ face briefly and makes an affirmative noise. “Jessica Tran, Experimental Division Intern.” The MonRobot turns to Barry, scans him quickly, and then makes a series of panicked beeps. “No employee or registered guest facial match. Intruder! Intruder!”

  Lights flash from the MonRobot, and Jess flattens herself against the wall in a panic.

  Barry gives her a small salute. “Later, Jess. Have a great day at work!”

  He ducks out of reach of the MonRobot’s emerging arms and shrugs out of his suit jacket. Barry tosses the jacket over the robot. The MonRobot spins about in confusion, chirping “Apprehend the intruder!” over and over.

  People join the chase, and the MonRobot finally shakes off the jacket and flies after Barry. Jess sees the MonRobot chase him down the hallway and around the corner while startled employees leap aside.

  “Hey, where’d he go?” a woman calls out.

  The elevator door starts to close, and the eleventh floor hallway is empty despite the noisy chaos around the corner. On the floor, Barry’s jacket shimmers and… disappears.

  Jess rides to the fourteenth floor. Barry hadn’t seemed dangerous, just another kid. What was he doing here? He was asking questions about Master Mischief.

  Maybe Barry was looking for Master Mischief?

  And what was up with that jacket? Maybe it was some advanced tech from a rival company. Barry was probably a spy, Jess decides.

  Too bad. He seemed nice.

  The fourteenth floor is filled with row after row of shelved tech, working and not. A MonRobot takes the datachip from Jess’ DED and hums to itself as it whirrs about the shelves and fills a box.

  Jess thanks the robot and carries the box back down to the lab. No one joins her in the elevator this time; the ride is short and silent. She leaves the materials outside M’s office; strange noises are coming from behind the closed door, which is marked NO ENTRY WITHOUT PERMISSION.

  She goes back to her office and works until noon; M joins her after about an hour, and they make good progress, organizing all golf-course-related pranks into one folder. M excuses herself to lunch in private, and Jess goes to the small break room down the hall.

  She sits on a hard metal chair, pulls out the sandwich she brought, and nibbles on it. A few moments later, Abby appears and pulls a box of Orion’s Favorite™ chicken pot pie from the freezer and heats it up in the microwave. Jess has seen those in the grocery store, but they’re expensive and her mother thinks they’re a waste of money, putting real meat into frozen dinners.

  Abby grabs a chair and sits. “So do you take the bus here?”

  “Yeah.” Jess puts down her sandwich and wipes the crumbs off her face.

  “How long does it take?”

  “‘Bout an hour.”

  The microwave beeps, and Abby pulls out the steaming pot pie. She jabs a fork into it, breaking the flaky pie crust. The scent of herbed broth and chicken fills the air, and Jess’ plain peanut butter and jelly suddenly seems incredibly unappetizing.

  “Here, have some, I can’t finish this whole thing by myself.” Abby pulls out another fork and hands it to Jess. She pushes the pie toward Jess and smiles.

  “Thanks,” Jess says, and takes a bite. The pie is salty but delicious, in that wonderfully guilty way of frozen dinners. The meat is savory and tender, and Jess doesn’t think it’s a waste at all.

  They share the pie as Jess tries to think of conversation. It’s really difficult because Abby is sitting so close, eating with vigor; flakes of pie crust stick to her lips.

  Finally Abby breaks the silence. “You know, since we are both coming from school on the weekdays, I could drive you; it’s not a big deal.”

  “Really? That would be great,” Jess says. “Are you sure? Don’t you usually—” Jess falters. Should she admit she knows Abby quit the volleyball team? “—take your friends home?”

  “Not since I started working here. I’m not on the volleyball team anymore. And my friends have cars too; it’s not like I was the only one who has a car.”

  “Oh. That’s really nice of you, thank you.”

  They eat in silence, and then Jess surprises herself by asking when Abby got her driver’s license, and they actually make small talk about the terrible bureaucracy that is the Collective’s system for keeping track of the limited number of drivers in the country.

  Jess mentions the incident in the elevator, and Abby just laughs. “Yeah, probably a spy. We get a lot of those. Lots of patents and secrets here that our rivals would love to get ahold of. I’m surprised they got a teenager involved, though. That’s new.”

  Abby throws her whole head back when she laughs; the mirth travels through her entire
body, and she shakes with joy. “I have no idea why I thought you were shy. Guess it takes you a while to warm to people, huh?”

  “Maybe,” Jess says, with a smile. Or maybe it takes her a while to get over the awkwardness of interacting with someone she’s liked for a long time.

  Either way, she’s kind of proud of herself right now.

  On Monday Jess says goodbye to Bells and Emma and walks past the crowds of students and the line of cars waiting to pick people up. Abby’s car stands out among the dusty old vehicles in the parking lot; the shiny Mercedes gleams in the afternoon sunlight.

  Abby waves her DED at it, and the car beeps and turns on automatically.

  The dashboard has a unique electronic interface. Jess can’t see the touch display for commands. All cars have them, even the driver-operated ones.

  “Oh, um, it’s a custom model, I just use the steering wheel,” Abby says when she notices Jess’ confusion. “Did you want to listen to the radio?”

  Jess nods, and Abby waves a hand at the dash; Jess doesn’t see any buttons, but it must have some advanced motion-tech because soon a jaunty pop song is playing over the speakers.

  They pull out of the parking lot and are about to pull onto the road that heads downtown when Jess remembers. “Hey, do you mind if we stop by my house to get my MonRobot before heading to work?”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, it’s just super-old and I wanted to see if I could get an employee discount on an upgrade.”

  “I could fix your robot,” Abby says.

  “Really? Are you going to be doing it at work?”

  “Sure, no problem. I was testing this new A.I. software anyway and I could try it out at no cost to you.” Abby grins.

  Jess’ house is empty but she finds Chả still sleeping in the charging station. She picks it up and holds it out to Abby. “This is Chả.”

  Abby runs her hand along Chả’s silver case. “Hi there.” She peers into the little display of lights. “I named mine too,” Abby says. “What does Cha—um, am I saying it right? What’s it mean?”

  “You’re saying it almost right.” Jess chuckles. “It’s short for chả trứng hấp, a Vietnamese meatloaf. The first night we had the robot we were having dinner, and some fell the floor, and this little guy tried to vacuum it up and got stuck. Even after we fixed it, the next day it got stuck on some chả lụa and my mother got mad because it was a waste of good food, but I thought it was really silly. Thought it made a great name.”

  Abby laughs. “All right, let’s look at you.” She turns Chả over and examines it carefully.

  “Wow, this is one of the first models,” Abby says. “I’m surprised to see it’s still running.”

  The robot cheeps as Jess pats it.

  “See, it recognizes you. A.I. is still good, just needs a tune-up,” Abby says.

  On the way to the lab, Jess is just filled with questions. “So how long have you been interested in robots? What are you working on in the lab? I’m so glad for you that M is letting you do more things; that receptionist position was totally wasted on you.”

  Abby laughs. “Oh, yeah, um, I didn’t mind doing that. But there used to be tour groups or the board of directors would come to see what the Mischiefs were working on, so there was more of a need. But now it’s just me and you.”

  “And M.”

  “And M.” Abby nods. “She does all the high-tech research stuff. She’s like the second in command under the Mischiefs, so now she’s in charge of everything.”

  “Everything is great so far. I hope she liked my organization system. Those files were ridiculous and all over the place,” Jess says.

  “No, we really appreciate the help in organization.”

  Abby carries Chả into the building. In the elevator is a man, tall with oily gray hair and wearing an expensive suit.

  “Miss Jones.” He sniffs. “And you must be the new hire.”

  “This is Jessica Tran.”

  “I give you one hire and this is who you get? Another teenager,” the man says. “How are we going to get anything done at all?”

  Jess bites back a retort about how teenagers do so much, and the man gets off at the next floor.

  “Who was that?” Jess says.

  “That’s Gregory Stone,” Abby says and sighs. “He’s the chair of the board of directors. Pretty much runs everything, from the sales to the patents to the new designs.”

  “Is he always a jerk?”

  “Pretty much. He relies very heavily on my—bosses to make certain things and needs results right away, and right now that they’re gone, it’s all—it’s all on M, and it’s very stressful.” Abby shakes her head and then the elevators doors open on their floor.

  “Oh, here already!” Jess exclaims. She didn’t see Abby key in her code.

  Chả makes a happy-sounding beeping noise.

  They get to the lab and find an empty workspace in the back. Abby pats the MonRobot and flips a switch to put it to sleep while she works on it. Jess hovers, waiting.

  Abby blushes. “Um, it’s hard for me to concentrate with someone watching. Do you mind? And I think M left you a list of tasks in your office, too.”

  Jess blinks. “Sure. Okay. Good luck!”

  She goes to her office and gets to work. The tasks are routine by now. Jess creates a new electronic file for each of the different projects, entering them in the database she created the first week.

  Jess finally she looks up from her desktop to take a break. Usually M would have come in by now to say hello or to take away completed projects or to give her new ones, but she hasn’t even heard the familiar whirr of her suit.

  Jess wanders to Abby’s workspace. “Abby?”

  She hears a clatter.

  Jess rushes forward and sees Abby with Chả at the table and a bunch of various circuit boards and metal electronic pieces on the floor. Abby winces. “I, uh, I dropped a wrench on my foot.”

  “Oh no! I’ll get you some ice,” Jess says. “How’s my buddy?”

  “Doing well, I’m almost done, thanks.” Abby smiles.

  There’s no ice in the kitchen on this floor, so Jess runs to the elevator and goes up a floor to get ice from the kitchen in the lab upstairs. A few other employees are on their break; Jess ignores them as she roots around in the freezer for something frozen.

  “Ugh, I can’t wait until the day when they activate the thing, then it’ll be nothing but smooth sailing for all of us,” one of the other employees says.

  “Hear, hear,” someone else says, and coffee cups clink.

  Jess finds the ice pack and heads back downstairs.

  As she approaches Abby’s workspace, for a second Jess thinks she sees a circuit board float in the air with a wire moving in and out of it. But when she looks again, it’s on the table in Abby’s hand.

  “I’m done!” Abby says.

  Chả cheeps and Abby sets it on the floor, where it wheels in a proud circle, moving faster than Jess has ever seen it.

  “For your foot,” Jess says, offering her the ice pack.

  “Oh, thank you.” Abby sinks into her chair and toes out of her shoes. She props her foot on the table and puts the ice pack on her foot. “I get startled easily.”

  “Hey, do you know if Monroe Industries is launching some sort of thing that will result in lots of money for all the workers?”

  Abby scrunches her face. “No idea. Where’d you hear that?’

  “In the break room upstairs. Seems like a bunch of people are excited about something happening soon.”

  “Weird, I didn’t hear anything about it. And I hear everything.”

  The sound of the elevator startles them.

  Abby frowns. “That’s strange. I’m not expecting anyone else today.”

  “It could be M; I haven’t seen her come
in yet,” Jess says.

  “No, M is in the back.” She blinks. “Oh no, the code. It’s Stone’s code. He’s coming to inspect. He must have remembered he had an upcoming inspection and decided to do it today! I gotta—” She looks around. “I gotta go tell M.”

  “The lab looks fine,” Jess says, but she hurries to pick up the pieces of discarded circuitry around Abby’s workspace and makes a passably neat pile. She picks up Chả and stashes it in her office, and then goes to the main room.

  The elevator door opens and Stone walks out. He sneers at Jess’ T-shirt and jeans. “Monroe Industries has a dress code standard.”

  “M said I could wear whatever I wanted. It’s just a few of us down here, it doesn’t matter. It’s not like I’m presenting to your clients or anything.”

  “M?” Stone asks, raising his eyebrow. He glances behind her and nods in recognition. “Ah, there you are! Master Mischief, how are the plans for the new line of MonRobots coming along?”

  Jess turns around, curious to see the villain she’s been working for, but only sees M, walking forward in the suit.

  “Gregory,” M says, but it’s in a different voice, electronically pitched lower. “I thought inspection wasn’t until next week.”

  “Ah, well, I ran into two of your interns and was reminded of all your little projects here,” Gregory says, frowning. “I keep telling you that Abby Jones is a right smart girl; we should have her back up in Research. You shouldn’t be keeping her for yourself.”

  “She can be more creative here and she likes it here.”

  “Maybe you should ask Abby instead of just talking about her like she isn't here," Jess says. “I just saw her. I can get her for you.” Jess checks in all the offices, even the bathroom, but can’t find Abby.

  When Jess returns to the central workspace, Stone looks unsettled, but M hands him a few datachips and folders and he seems appeased. He takes the files and gets in the elevator.

  “M?” Jess asks.

  “Yeah, it’s me,” M says once Stone is gone.