“Fasten your seat belts, please,” said the car. After they’d done so, it set off smoothly down the road.
“My name’s Anne,” said the girl.
“I’m George,” he replied. “And this is . . . was . . . Jackbot.” George’s voice trembled as he said his friend’s name.
He saw a flash of confusion on the girl’s face. “Hey, if we can’t fix him, we’ll get you a new one. I mean, he does look a little . . . um . . . old.”
That’s not the point! George wanted to say. A new bot wouldn’t be the same.
Silence fell over the car, until George decided to break it. “So—how come I’ve never seen you before? Don’t you go to school around here?”
“Nah, I’m homeschooled,” Anne said. “I kind of got into a few scrapes at my old schools, so my dad decided it was better if I was educated at home.”
“So you don’t have to go to school?” George asked, envious. “That must be amazing!”
“It’s boring, mostly,” said Anne. She was quiet for a moment. “Don’t you like your school?”
George thought of all the kids who looked down on him for not having the latest cool gadgets and all the other kids who were just too scared of the bullies to be his friend. He shook his head. “Not really, no.”
George watched the town pass by for a while, and hoped Anne’s house wasn’t much farther. Jackbot’s head was faintly warm. There was still a chance—a slim chance—that the robot’s brain circuitry and memory could be saved, if the capacitors weren’t completely burned up.
“So—is your father some kind of mechanic?” George asked. “Since he has this amazing workshop.”
“Well, yeah, you could say that,” said Anne. “What about you? What do your parents do?”
“I live with my uncle,” said George. “He owns Otto’s Grotto—the parts yard across town. My parents died when I was little.”
Anne bit her lip. “I’m really sorry to hear that,” she said softly.
“It’s no big deal—I mean, it was a big deal, but you know, it’s not your fault,” George said, and he could have kicked himself for sounding so dumb. He pressed his mouth shut and vowed not to talk for the rest of the trip.
Nervously, George let his hand drift into his right pocket. His fingers closed around his lucky marble and rolled it around. It was an old habit—sometimes it was the only thing that could calm him down when he was upset. He carried the marble everywhere. His dad had given it to him when he was three years old, a few days before the crash. Besides Jackbot, it was the most precious thing he owned.
George stared out the window at the town robots going about their business. A huge automated garbage collector emptied trash cans into its metal jaws and crunched the contents. Long-armed window-cleaning robots telescoped their wipers to reach the highest windows. Other robots were picking up litter from the sidewalk and mowing lawns. At the corner of each block were tall steel towers with glowing balls at the top: the power hubs. The robots stayed fully charged just by working near the hubs. No plugs or wires were needed. It was another one of TinkerTech’s brilliant inventions.
These robots were all working just fine, George thought sadly. And if one of them broke down, nobody would shed any tears. They were just machines, doing jobs. They weren’t anyone’s friends.
The car stopped as a traffic robot stepped into the road and held out a metal hand, eyes flashing red.
The delay was torture. “Can we please hurry?” George said.
Anne nodded. “Did you hear that, car?” she said. “Step on it!”
The traffic robot’s eyes turned green and it stepped aside. The car gave a burst of speed. Houses and streets whizzed by.
Soon they were traveling uphill to the most exclusive part of town, Binary Bluffs. Huge mansions with sculpted trees and wide lawns lined the roadside. The car stopped outside the biggest mansion of all, right at the top of Terabyte Heights, overlooking the whole town.
“Nice house,” George said as he got out of the car, carrying Jackbot.
“Thank you,” said a loud voice.
George jumped in surprise. “Did the house just talk to me?”
“Yup,” said Anne. “Don’t flatter it, though—it’s already got an ego problem.”
The garage doors slid noiselessly apart and the silver car parked itself. Then the front door swung open to reveal a huge entrance hall with a black-and-white tiled floor. The translucent walls glowed with light, and within them George could see streams of data cascading down in multicolored patterns, like living wallpaper. A maid-bot in a white apron was cleaning a shelf of knickknacks with a feather-duster arm attachment.
“Come in! Come in!” said the house in a voice that sounded like a short-tempered kindergarten teacher. “Shut the door! You’re letting the flies in.”
George stepped inside and looked unsuccessfully for the speakers. The voice just seemed to be coming from the air all around him.
“Identify this unauthorized person!” commanded the house.
“House, meet George,” said Anne. “George, this is my annoying house.”
“Wipe your feet!” said the house.
George did as he was told.
Somewhere, a dog barked. A second later, a pet-bot came bounding down the stairs, its antenna tail wagging and yellow eyes flashing. It jumped up at Anne to welcome her, its silicon tongue lolling out of its mouth.
“Hi, Sparky!” Anne said. “This is my dog,” she said to George. “Isn’t he sweet?”
The dog ran around in circles and farted. It smelled like exhaust.
“Yeah, very sweet,” George said.
“Sorry, he does that when he gets excited.”
“It’s okay, really,” said George anxiously. “But we need to get to the workshop as fast as possible. Jackbot’s getting cold—”
“Sure!” said Anne. “Right away. House, we’re going to the workshop.”
“Unacceptable!” the house said. “Math lessons will commence in precisely two minutes and fifteen seconds. Make your way to the classroom for quadratic equations!”
George looked at Anne. “So . . . when you said you were homeschooled, you were—”
“Dead serious,” said Anne. “The house is literally my teacher. Lame, right? Come on.”
“I shall inform your father of this insubordination!” said the house.
“You do that. Come on, George.”
“Won’t you get into trouble?” George asked as he scrambled after her down the long hallway.
Anne shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not a problem.”
George gazed at the huge framed photographs that lined the walls. In all of them the same distinguished, silver-haired man could be seen shaking hands with politicians, smiling next to movie stars, sharing a joke with famous millionaires.
“Wait a minute,” George said, staring at a picture of a man in a pizza restaurant with the entire Terabyte Heights baseball team. “That’s—that’s Professor Droid, isn’t it? The head of TinkerTech?”
“Yep,” said Anne. She blushed slightly. “That’s my dad.”
George’s jaw dropped. He could only think of only one word to say. “Wow!” Then he chuckled. “So your name is Anne Droid.”
“What’s so funny?” she said.
George tried not to smile. “Y’know. Anne Droid? Android.”
Anne rolled her eyes.
“I guess you’ve heard that before, right?”
“Just once or twice,” said Anne. “C’mon, let’s go!” She led him through a maze of passages until they came to a massive steel door with a sign that said AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
Tiny silver light bulbs set into the door’s surface lit up at their approach. “Identify,” the door said.
Anne took a palm-size device from her pocket. It was a Series 7 Personal SmartTablet—George knew from his tech magazines that it wasn’t coming out for another couple of months.
Anne touched the tablet, and a voice spoke up—a ma
n’s voice, precise and authoritative. “Open up, door, or I’ll replace you with a bead curtain!”
“That’s your dad’s voice!” whispered George.
“Yep. I recorded it when he wasn’t looking. Not very high-tech, but hey, it works!”
“Welcome, Professor,” said the door, sliding open without a sound. Behind it was a square room, which turned out to be the chamber of an elevator. It had mirrored glass sides.
“After you,” said Anne.
The door slid shut behind them. George felt a slight jolt, then a sensation of very fast movement. Only the elevator wasn’t going up—it was traveling sideways.
“What is this?” George asked.
“Oh, it’s just part of my dad’s personal transport system,” Anne said as casually as if she were discussing her father’s choice of carpet. “It connects our house with the TinkerTech workshop. Saves time.”
“Do you hear that, Jackbot?” said George. “We’re going to the TinkerTech workshop! Hang in there, buddy.”
In the mirror, he caught Anne looking at him strangely again. Most people didn’t speak to their robots the way he did.
Seconds later the transport chamber came to a halt. The doors opened, and George gazed out in wonder. The workshop stretched as far as the eye could see. Robots worked at benches, making more robots. Banks of computer screens displayed constantly changing charts and graphics and calculations. Spare robot parts hung on the walls: legs and arms of all sizes, blinking circuit boards, electronic brains bristling with fiber-optic cables.
“Well, what are you waiting for? Help yourself!” said Anne.
George was speechless. He placed Jackbot on a table and grabbed a robotic spinal column from one of the shelves. “This’ll get his head and body reconnected,” he said, getting his mind focused on the task. “I’ll need a screwdriver—and a soldering iron.”
Anne handed George a soldering iron from one of the benches and watched as he removed Jackbot’s old twisted spinal column and fitted the new one into place. “Now I’m going to need a new circuit board for the body, some self-charging batteries—that way, he won’t need the power-hubs when we’re off on fishing trips.”
Soon, George was in the zone. Everything other than the work in his hands faded away, and his thoughts became a flurry of designs and calculations. He ran around the workshop snatching up the necessary equipment. In just a few minutes, he had the circuits replaced and the new power source up and running. George’s heart leaped as Jackbot’s eyes came to life with a feeble glow.
“Jackbot! Can you hear me? Can you speak?”
Jackbot gave no sign that he had heard.
“Just a second,” George said. “I need to look inside your head, okay?”
He pried off the back of Jackbot’s head plate and peered inside. His heart sank as he saw the rat’s nest of cards, chips, boards, and wiring that Jackbot’s brain had become.
“I don’t know how I’m going to fix this,” George said, breathing hard. “Do you?”
Anne shook her head. “Robotics isn’t exactly my thing. I have, um, other skills.”
“But—you’re Professor Droid’s daughter. You must have some idea!”
“It’s all just nuts and bolts to me,” Anne said. “But hey—I saw the way that old lady looked at you. Like you were some kind of genius. So c’mon, Robot Boy, let’s see what you’ve got!”
“Yeah,” George said, nodding. Jackbot’s brain was beyond repair, but with all the parts in the workshop, he could build a new one. “I can do this,” he muttered. Anne gave him a thumbs-up.
George started walking up and down the workshop, grabbing things that caught his eye. He felt giddy, like a kid in a candy shop. As he added one piece after another to the pile on the table, a plan began to form in his mind. A completely crazy plan—but one that he thought just might work.
He came back and stared at Jackbot and his towering pile of parts. “Look at this,” he said to Anne. “I’ve got a positronic memory drive and a cognition simulator drive. If I link those together and rewrite their programming using human response simulation commands, and then replace the standard processors with these new microchips . . .”
George rattled on as he worked, doing things that he’d dreamed of doing but had never had the equipment or the parts to create. The state-of-the-art chips were so tiny that he could fit a lot more into Jackbot’s central processing unit. The latest tech was all virtually connected—linking electromagnetically—so he didn’t need to sort through a tangle of wiring. He added everything he could think of: a voice intonation program, an impulse generator, a vocabulary extension unit—all custom-built using designs George had been working on for years but never had the parts to try out until now. For good measure, he threw in a dancing expertise program. Jackbot would be great at parties.
“Done!” said George.
“Did it work?” asked Anne.
“Only one way to find out,” said George. “Let’s boot him up.”
He reached for the reset switch under Jackbot’s chin, but paused.
“What is it?” said Anne.
George narrowed his eyes. He’d just had an idea. Possibly a stupid one, but it was worth a try.
“I don’t want to rush you, but I’ll be given extra math homework by my house if we don’t get back soon,” said Anne.
“Can you get a light in here?” said George, opening Jackbot’s head again.
Anne took a micro-flashlight and shone it into the cavity. “Did you miss something?” she said.
George put on a pair of magnifying spectacles. “No,” he said. “See, normally a robot’s brain function filters incoming signals—sounds, sights, smells—through the circuits, and produces an output.”
“Okay . . .”
“It’s been that way since before Terabyte Heights was on the map,” said George. “But what if we loop the signal, sending the outputs back into the processor, refining the robot’s response?”
Anne raised an eyebrow at George. “Honestly? I have no idea what you’re talking about. But it sounds like you do.” She saw George’s doubtful expression and slapped him on the back. “Come on! You’ll never know until you try!”
George worked delicately on the looping circuit, then scanned the desk for a high-grade capacitor to handle the added processing power. “If this works,” he said, “Jackbot will be thousands of times more advanced than before.”
“And if it doesn’t?” said Anne.
George closed the cavity. “Then I’ve just wasted a lot of your dad’s stuff.”
Anne didn’t understand very much of what George was saying, but then only a few people would. George was pretty sure no one had ever tried this before. His fingers found the reset switch.
“Here goes nothing,” George said, his stomach bubbling with nervous energy. He flicked the switch.
For one tense moment, nothing happened.
Then nothing happened for another tense moment.
But at the end of the third tense moment, Jackbot’s eyes lit up brightly. He turned his head toward George. “Hello, George,” he said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost! What’s going on?”
George’s whole body filled with relief and happiness. He felt ready to float off the floor like a balloon. “Jackbot! You’re alive!”
“Nice job, Robot Boy,” said Anne, and gave George a high-five.
“Oh, yes, I’m alive,” Jackbot said. “Living. Animated. Full of life, exuberance, and vitality.”
George stared at Jackbot. “That vocabulary extension unit certainly seems to have worked!”
“Why, thank you!” Jackbot said. “Squid! Handbag! Ooze! Dinosaur! Mountain! Puddle! Negotiate! Nevertheless! Ice cream! Cathedral! Glory! Elephant! Pyramid! Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!”
“And just what is going on here?” said a deep voice.
George spun around to see Dr. Charles Micron standing in the doorway, his arms folded. George had always wanted to meet his hero. But h
is hero did not look very happy to see him.
“It’s all right!” said Anne. “I brought him here. My car hit this robot—and I thought it was only fair to get it fixed. I’m sure my dad won’t mind.” Anne gave Dr. Micron her best winning smile. She almost looked innocent. Almost.
Micron fixed his eyes on George, then Jackbot, as he walked slowly toward them. “I see you’ve used TinkerTech materials and tools to patch up this . . . this . . . What is it, exactly?”
“I’m Jackbot, Dr. Micron, sir,” said Jackbot, holding out his right claw. “Very pleased to meet you.”
“This is Jackbot,” George said. “My personal robot and . . . friend.”
“Friend?” said Dr. Micron.
“That’s right,” Jackbot piped up. “Ally. Companion. Bosom buddy.”
Dr. Micron stared at Jackbot as if he were a puzzle he couldn’t figure out. “He speaks very well, considering he’s such a primitive design.”
“Primitive?” said Jackbot. He backed away and placed an open pincer on his chest, as if he were insulted. “I can dance the Argentine tango and recite pi to twenty billion decimal places. I bet I could make a pretty mean soufflé as well. Can you do any of these things, Mr. Micron?”
“Jackbot . . .” George said under his breath to the robot. “Can it, would you please?”
“It’s Doctor Micron, actually,” said Dr. Micron, his face darkening.
“I know that,” said Jackbot. “I was being deliberately rude.”
Dr. Micron was silent for several long seconds. George watched him anxiously.
Suddenly Dr. Micron burst out laughing. He reached out and shook George’s hand. “I have to hand it to you, young man. That’s really something, what you’ve done there! The emotional simulations are . . . quite stupendous. And your name is?”
George exhaled in relief. “George Gearing, sir,” he said, grinning.
Dr. Micron took in the name with a slight frown. “Gearing? Hmm. Are you related to the gentleman who runs the junkyard at the bottom of town?”
“That’s my uncle Otto,” said George.
“I see. Well, as you probably know, I’m Charles Micron. But call me Chip—all my friends do!” He winked.
The Junkyard Bot Page 2