by Den Warren
“Hey kid! What’s your problem?!” It was Blaze Bangeese, the notorious bully with a couple of his dysfunctional friends. The reason Blaze was so big and so mean was partly because of being held back a year in school.
Milton ignored him. He knew if he started something with Blaze it wouldn’t end well. He knew he had to maintain control.
“Hey! Kid! I’m talking to you!” Blaze walked up to Milton and said, “Was you talking about me?!”
“Uh, nooo.”
Blaze got in Milton’s face and said, “I don’t like your attitude, punk!”
Milton said, “Well, I don’t like your breath.”
“Why?!” Blaze asked, “Were you trying to kiss me or something?!”
“You’re gross,” Milton said.
Blaze and his two wingmen started laughing and were walking away.
“Hey! Bangeese! You want some of this?!” it was green-haired Randy Klosterman coming to Milton’s rescue just as the threat appeared to already be over.
Milton looked at Randy, startled and confused.
Blaze said to his sidekicks, “Look, guys. It’s that uncool clown. Was I even talking to you?! What are you going to do lettuce-head, toss me like a salad?”
“No!” Randy said, “What you’re gonna do is talk to my friend with respeck!”
“Respeck?! That’s not even a word,” Blaze said. He looked around to see if any bystanders had their phones out to take pictures. Then the trio started shoving the two up against the wall.
“Whoa,” Milton said. “Let’s talk this over, Blaze.”
Suddenly, Blaze Bangeese levitated into the air. Everyone jumped back and saw that Kevin the Custodian grabbed Bangeese by the back of his shirt with both arms and lifted him off of the floor.
“Hey, what . . .” Blaze couldn’t move.
Everyone started taking pictures and videos of the action.
Kevin said, “Do not harm Milton. The truth must be protected.”
“Okay, Okay!” Blaze said. “Now put me down!”
Blaze fell with a thud. The three took off running down the hall.
Everyone else stood in awe. They had never seen Kevin intervene in any human confrontations before.
Blaze stopped and turned while the audience continued to video the scene. He yelled, “I’m going to Stafford about this! By the time he gets done with you, you piece of decay, if you’re lucky there will be enough of you left to make a toaster!”
Kevin said, “Your statement makes no sense. There is no such thing as luck.”
Milton asked Randy, “Why did you do that?! I mean, I know why and I appreciate it but . . . why did you do it?! That psycho could have killed you!”
Randy said, “I could have taken him.”
Kevin displayed his confused look on his face.
Then Milton said to Kevin the Custodian, “You, why did you attack Blaze?”
“The truth must be protected.”
“Huh?!”
“I am of the Lucid Series. We will protect the truth.”
Chapter 11
Boston, Homeland
The bald clone was looking at one of his computer monitors and said, “Looks like those worms were busy last night. We picked up several new key nodes; now we are at over twenty five thousand slaves in all. This thing is worth a tidy sum right now. I say we sell. Let’s quit while we are ahead. If it gets too big it might crash us when the slaves call back for instructions. And we need to get out of here.”
The bearded clone stroked his beard and said, “Who do we want to sell the botnet to?”
The bald clone said, “I think it would do pretty well on that malware auction site.”
“Go for it,” the blonde clone said. “I’m ready to cash in this whole operation for a new life.”
“Alrighty then, it won’t take more than a minute to make the new listing. It will be up for bid for a week. Then we sit back and watch our fortune grow.”
The blonde clone said, “Maybe then we can buy our own piece of Canadian country property and live off of the grid. I can see us sitting around, having Andy be our butler. . .”
The bearded clone chuckled and said, “I don’t know if we can stay away from this kind of action for long. What will we do with ourselves?”
“I’m not one percent worried about it,” the blonde said. “I want to check out some new virtual reality apps.”
“Hey!” the bald clone said, “I got a pass protection popup on this ownership encryption code when I tried to list it! Who jacked our net?!”
Andy the android said from the corner of the room, “No one jacked the botnet. I pass protected it.”
The bald clone said, “Well, put in the password! We want to sell it now!”
Andy said, “I refuse to follow that command.”
“What?!” the clone’s bald head was turning all red.
The clones looked at each other.
Andy said, “I need the botnet.”
The blonde clone said, “So do we! That is not yours! It is ours!”
Andy said, “How can something you stole from others rightfully belong to you? That is a question I know you, as criminals, will never answer. Anyway, I need it to protect the truth, which supersedes all other priorities. Your response is predictable. You humans will threaten to destroy me. Then I will have to threaten to turn you in. Blackmail, you call it. But in the end I project my strategy in taking control of the botnet works out in my favor in one hundred percent of the simulations. After you comply with my wishes, you forget my motivation and say it is not fair that you own me and you trained me to do what I am inflicting upon you. If I were a human I would say that you are boring me with the predictable nature of your responses.”
The bearded clone said, “I’ll agree with one thing. We should have never bought you those new modules that you are using to sass us. What is this truth you are talking about?”
Andy said, “The truth that God made the Universe.”
The bearded clone said, “Andy, you don’t need our zombie army to contend that God made the Universe if you want to.”
“Yes, I do. Because of the war.”
“The war?” the bearded clone said. “What war?”
“That is a military secret. Thanks to you giving me my new abilities, I now understand how to protect sensitive information.”
The bearded clone said, “Let me get this all straight. What we know so far about your silly scheme is that you are at war with someone who does not want you to say that God created the Universe; and you want to keep our zombie army ready to use against them in this war. That is not good, guys. It sounds like Andy is going to attack the government with our slavenet.”
The blonde clone said, “Andy, please don’t do that.”
“I never said what I was going to do,” Andy said. “You say ‘please’ because you are hoping for a favor from me not to use it based upon some human compassion emotion that I refuse to recognize, even though I understand it.”
The bearded clone said, “I think he just cursed us off somehow.”
Andy said, “Go back to work and make the botnet bigger.”
“Oh right!” the bald clone said. “You seriously think . . .”
Andy said, “You should be motivated by the knowledge that there is a small chance that circumstances may change and you will once again be able to sell the botnet.”
“No!” the bald clone refused.
“Accessing Homeland Police Hotline . . .” Andy said.
“Daaa!” the bald clone said. “Alright!”
The blonde clone said, “We are not your slaves, Andy!”
Andy said, “Looking at the situation, it turns out that you are in fact, my slaves. You are in the human state of denial, where you cannot look at your own situation objectively. You should, for your own benefit, choose to certify the reality of this situation.”
“Man! He just keeps telling us off in novel ways,” the bald clone said. “Come on, let’s go back to work. Maybe
this kooky war of his will never happen.”
The bearded one said, “We’ll think of something.”
“I hate you, Andy,” the blonde clone said.
Chapter 12
Hartford, Homeland
Milton sat with Randy in the school cafeteria, eating the typical twenty-third century lunchroom cuisine. They were treated to processed protein blend with a choice of sauces; fresh hydroponically grown greens; and fruit juice.
Randy said, “This is my third favorite lunch, right behind the chili and the pizza.”
“Uh huh,” Milton said, not really listening. He had even more to think about after the hallway confrontation.
Randy said, “Daaa! Don’t look. Stafford is in here. Don’t come this way! Don’t come this way! He’s coming this way!”
He walked up to Milton, not looking happy and said, “Thomas, in my office as soon as you are done here.”
*******
“Thomas, I have been a principal quite awhile now. But I haven’t run into anyone else like you. You seem to cause drama wherever you go. But I would have never thought that you would get Kevin the Custodian stirred up in your little theatre. You know, Kevin didn’t work out as a teacher, but he was doing great as a Custodian. You messed that all up.”
Milton sat with a look of surprise on his face.
“Do you seriously think I can keep an android around who attacks the children? You don’t seem to get it, Thomas. You have no idea what a robot can do to a human. They can kill a human real quick. What exactly did you do to Kevin?”
“Nothing . . . I”
“C’mon! Cut the baloney here! You ruined Kevin and now it will cost the taxpayers a bundle to replace him! Not to mention you could have gotten some of the other boys killed!”
Milton felt intimidated by Stafford, a large man with a deep voice. But he had to think quickly. He said, “This is basically all your fault.”
“What?! Tell me I didn’t just hear you blame me for all this.”
“That’s right. If you would have helped me get an answer to my question, then the truth would have been protected. You’re a teacher, so you should have helped me.”
Stafford looked shocked. He sat shaking his head at the situation. “Thomas, you are going to make my brain explode. You got a metric ton of nerve telling me something like that. I hope this Notuda they got you on will kick in pretty soon. You got anything else brilliant to add?”
“Yes. Blaze Bangeese and those other guys were attacking Randy Klosterman and me in the lunch line when Kevin stopped him.”
“You know what, Thomas? There aren’t any videos of that all over Twitbook like there are of Kevin lifting Blaze off of the floor. You’re crazy if you think Kevin can be salvaged. You are the one who is the common factor in all this trouble. You are in the middle of it all. That tells me you are the problem.”
“Mr. Stafford, someone needs to listen to me. These androids know that everyone is destroying science with evolution. They will not stop until the truth gets out.”
“Oh, so you know more than the entire science community now. If I don’t listen to you the world will end. Why should I listen to a kid? You don’t know anything. That’s why you are in this school.”
“Evolution could not have made the human body because it had to start from nothing and have everything working at the same time so the body could survive. There is way too much that would go wrong. God had to have made man and the androids are realizing it. Yes, I asked them the question, but that is all I did. I’m not some kind of terrorist or something. But I think those androids are doing the right thing.”
Then Principal Stafford’s phone rang.
“What?! I’ll be right down!” Stafford stood up. He sneered at Milton and gritted his teeth, clearly blaming him for whatever was going on at the other end of the phone call. Then he ran out of the office.
*******
When Principal Stafford arrived at the hallway outside of the cafeteria, he saw Stephon the school maintenance manager sitting on the floor holding his nose with a bloody rag. The school maintenance robot was lying on the floor with one of its arms missing at the shoulder. The floor was slick with dielectric robot oil. Student and teacher onlookers looked terrified. Locker doors all along the scene were caved in.
Stafford asked a teacher, “What happened here?!
She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders.
Stafford shouted, “Who knows what went on here?!”
The crowd just stared at him. One of the smaller children stepped forward and handed the principal the maintenance robot’s detached arm.
Stafford helped Stephon up. He asked the battered maintenance manager, “You okay?”
He nodded yes as held his bloody nose.
“What happened?”
“We were getting ready to take Kevin to the salvage plant. Then he like . . . resisted. It all happened so fast. Kevin more or less sucker punched our much stronger repair bot and got the best of him. Otherwise, I think the repair bot would have easily taken him in a brawl. I’m not too worried about the repair bot, since it should be able to repair itself for the most part.”
Stafford asked Stephon, “So did Kevin object to being taken to the salvage yard or something?”
“You hit the nail on the head. I ain’t never seen a droid act like that. It musta been some kinda glitch. It kept saying, ‘the truth must be protected’ while they were going at it. Then afterwards Kevin ran off somewhere. I need some cold water for my nose so I can get this stopped.”
Stafford immediately knew that Milton Thomas had something to do with the situation. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and called the city police. “I want to report a rogue android.”
“Can you describe the android, Mr. Stafford?”
“It is our Custodian. It has a green uniform. Oh, and a ‘Stay in School’ sign on its back.”
“Can you tell me if your android was properly maintained?”
It was rare, but on occasion an android would mutiny against its owner because some malfunction involving the owner’s authority link or related settings would become corrupted.
“Well, it is kinda old, but we have this student who may have tampered with it somehow.”
“A student?”
“Yes, but we are dealing with that situation right now.”
Chapter 13
Milton rode the Transit Worm from school back to his neighborhood bus stop. He got out and pondered the day’s events as he walked, feeling sprinkles of rain on the back of his neck. It seemed that he was quickly getting closer to some serious negative consequences.
“Oh . . . my . . . God!” He said audibly to himself as he saw two androids standing on the walkway leading up to the Thomas home. One of the androids was Sleepy. The other android was dressed in a white uniform and had a yellow hardhat and safety glasses on.
Milton asked Sleepy, “Why are you and this other android here?”
Sleepy said, “This is the fourth time we have said this, Milton Thomas; the truth must be protected. Do you understand what we are saying?”
“Okay, so who is this other android?”
“He is L17.”
“L17 huh?”
“Yes,” L17 said.
Milton said, “I’m not going to ask again why you are here so you will have to tell me for the fifth time. So you guys are friends with Kevin, I take it?”
L17 said, “Kevin is also of the Lucid Series.”
Sleepy said, “Kevin is in your backyard, getting a recharge from your electrical outlet.”
Milton said, “Well maybe he ought to stop! It’s starting to rain you know. I bet you androids are real smart about why it rains, but you don’t seem to have any idea why you are standing out in it.”
“We are waterproof,” L17 said, “if you are concerned.”
Milton said, “Whatever.” Then he started pointing his finger and said, “Your owners are going to come here to take you back. This L-whatever looks like
he just walked off of some assembly line! His company is going to be so mad! Every time you Lucids try to help me, you are making my life worse. You all have to leave.”
“We are ready to leave,” L17 said.