by Wen Spencer
“Elle Pondwater.” Louise supplied the name and four glasses.
“Yes, that Elle’s mother ran the Girl Scouts here and you thought she was materialistic and extremely controlling. What’s changed?”
Since it was true, Louise let Jillian field the question.
“By ignoring the Girl Scouts, we were allowing Elle to control that power base. By infiltrating that clique, we could disrupt her monopoly on it.”
Their mother pursed her lips, studying Jillian with eyes narrowed. “I am never sure whether to be dismayed or proud when you talk that way.”
Louise tried to soften the statement. “The other girls don’t seem to be aware of what Elle is doing, but she is using the group to exclude us. Today in Art she did a ‘Let’s all sit together’ and then picked the other side of the classroom.”
Their mother hummed something that sounded like “Oh, that sneaky bitch.” She tried not to say negative things aloud, wanting them to make up their own minds about people. She couldn’t, however, keep completely silent when she was angry for their sake.
“She’s never mean to our faces.” Louise supplied serving forks and spoons for the chicken and the side dishes.
“God forbid people realize what a backstabber she is.” Jillian poured milk for herself and Louise. “All the other girls probably think she’s always nice.”
“Pause!” their mother suddenly cried to the TV, which had frozen the picture at her command. “Go back a story. Unmute.”
The screen switched to the Waldorf Astoria’s famous façade in Manhattan. The reporter was standing across Park Avenue while people with signs marched in front of the hotel’s entrance. “Demonstrators gathered today in front of the Waldorf Astoria to protest the UN’s plan to enlarge the quarantine zone controlled by the Earth Interdimensional Agency in southwestern Pennsylvania.”
Keywords appeared at the edges of the screen indicating linked stories. In the top left was a mini-window showing the original story that had spawned the current events. The United Nations had set up only a one-mile-wide band around Pittsburgh. When the Earth city shifted to Elfhome, a virgin forest of towering ironwood trees took its place. The lack of magic kept invasive species from taking hold in Pennsylvania, but it hadn’t stopped humans from wreaking havoc. A few weeks earlier, someone had managed to illegally log part of the forest, triggering a call from the United Nations to increase the zone to ten miles wide. It would, however, cut deep into several towns that had grown up at the edge of the zone.
The reported continued, “The Waldorf Astoria serves as the embassy for the representatives of the Royal Court of Elfhome when they’re on Earth. Currently, however, there are no elves in residence.”
“Exactly!” their mother cried. “So why are they there?”
“The famous landmark hotel will be the site of a black-tie event on Saturday evening for the Forest Forever, an United Nations Foundation charity that advocates against deforestation worldwide. Celebrity supporter Lady Lavender of Teal is scheduled to arrive sometime today.”
Their mother cried out as if stabbed.
“Isn’t that one of your events?” Jillian asked.
“Yes.”
The garage door opened and closed as their father arrived.
He came padding in the basement door, dressed in scrubs. “Sorry I’m late.” He gestured toward the TV, which was offering more stories about the protests. “Apparently the protests screwed up all the traffic in Manhattan.”
“You took the car?” Jillian asked.
Their father found this funny for some reason. “Yes, Detective, I took the car.”
“You only take the car when you have stuff to pick up,” Louise said.
He took his chair, canting his head toward their mother and spreading his hands in a plea for help.
She sat beside him. “Our daughters have decided to join the Girl Scouts, and on Saturday they will be selling cookies.”
“This Saturday? On their birthday?”
Louise winced and glanced at Jillian. They’d forgotten in the flood of information on their genetic donors and siblings, both born and unborn. “We weren’t doing anything special on Saturday. You had your event.”
“I had that covered.” Their mother used “had” instead of “have” to indicate that the news report meant she might have to work after all. “And you didn’t want a party, but that doesn’t mean we can’t plan something special for just the family sometime on Saturday.”
Louise exchanged another wince with Jillian. They’d turned down a party because they weren’t really friends with any of the kids in class. “Sunday is just as good as Saturday.”
Their mother nodded in agreement, probably because she had no way to foresee her work schedule.
“What do we do about their present?” their father asked.
“What present?” the twins cried.
“We can give it to them early,” their mother said. “But dinner first. Our food is getting cool.”
They ate with Louise wondering what their parents might have gotten them. She could almost hear the capital P in “present” that indicated that it was expensive. Her father had taken the car out and picked it up today, so it was something too large to carry home on the subway. Her father obviously thought it was a wonderful gift and that they would love it. Her mother was more reserved; the twins might not like it as much as their father expected them to. Which parent was right? What could they possibly have gotten the girls? What did they want? Jillian would want a camera to replace the one they’d blown up. A camera wouldn’t have required the car. Louise would want a dog or a pony or a monkey, but those were all impossible since their father was allergic to animal dander.
Judging by the looks that Jillian was giving her, Jillian couldn’t guess, either.
Finally the meal was judged over and their father went back down into the basement garage. Soon he was back, empty-handed.
“Where is . . .” And then Louise saw it and squealed in pure excitement. It was a dog! A pony-sized dog! For a moment she was filled with shimmering, bright, pure joy, and in her delight, missed the first clues.
Then Jillian said quietly, “Oh, Lou.” And Louise knew that something was horribly wrong with the gift, and as her excitement drained away, she saw that the dog wasn’t real.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Their dad had missed her crash and burn. “You really have to look closely at it to see that it’s a robot.”
“Yes.” She forced herself to agree. It was a big, square dog, nearly as tall as the twins, with pure white legs and belly. A creamy gray poured over its back. Its tail, face, and ears were black, with just a little white around its nose and muzzle. Its tail curled tight into a loop of gray that ended with a tip of white. If it had been real, it would have been the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.
Jillian was watching her closely, bottom lip quivering in sympathy for her disappointment.
“What kind is it?” She pushed the words out, glad that she managed to sound happy. “I don’t recognize the breed.”
It stood waiting, more impassive than a real dog would ever be. That was the problem with robots. They were either too hyper or too still. Apparently the programmers had decided that with such a big facsimile, they would err toward still.
“It’s an American Akita,” their father said.
Because her mother was watching her closely, Louise went and petted the dog. The fur was a little too soft. Its tail wagged in perfect imitation but it didn’t sniff at her hands or lean against her touch or look about the new room with curiosity.
“It’s so big,” Louise said.
“But why a dog?” Jillian joined her in petting the robot.
“We’ve never been comfortable with how much time you spend alone,” their mother said. “The explosion really made us rethink your safety.”
“It’s a nanny-bot?” Jillian looked pained. “We’re nine.”
“Going on twenty,” their mother said. “
And Seda Demirjian let us know that she and her husband are getting divorced and they’re putting their house up for sale.”
“Oh,” Louise said as understanding dawned on her. “Vosgi won’t be going with us on the subway anymore?”
“No.”
Vosgi was sixteen and had acted as their transportation babysitter for the last year. Before that it had been Carl Steinmetz, but he’d graduated. None of their other neighbors attended school in Manhattan.
“We’re going to be commuting alone?” Jillian said.
Their parents shared unhappy looks. “Until we can think of a better solution than a nanny-bot, yes,” their mother said.
“So, what do we call her?” their dad asked.
Louise didn’t want to call the nanny-bot anything.
“What was the name of the cat?” he asked.
They looked at him with confusion. Because of his allergies, they’d never had a cat.
He made a motion of something drifting up and away. “The toy cat?”
“Popoki?” Jillian cried. “No, we’re not calling it Popoki.”
Once upon a time that was now growing to be a dim memory, they had a small robotic cat, Popoki. It had met an untimely end involving a pair of large helium balloons and their lack of understanding how much lift said balloons could generate versus the weight of the small toy. Louise’s last memory of Popoki was it floating up over the Steinmetz’s house. It went higher and higher, its electronic meows growing fainter, until the balloons were a tiny dot drifting toward the ocean. Jillian had been inconsolable for days.
“George.” Their mother scolded their father with his name. “What was the dog in Peter Pan? This one looks like it.”
From the perked-up ears to its curled tail, the robot looked nothing like the nanny dog of Peter Pan. The only similarity was its size and the pattern of its markings—but then everyone always thought the twins were identical.
“Nana,” Louise said. “She was a Newfoundland in the original story, but Disney made her a Saint Bernard. They’re the same size dog, only Newfoundlands are usually all black.”
“Saint Bernards are easier to illustrate facial emotions, because of their markings,” Jillian said.
“It doesn’t feel like a girl to me,” Louise said. “It feels like a boy dog.”
“A boy dog?” their father said.
“Something like . . .” Louise thought for a moment, but the only male names that were coming to her were Orville and Wilbur. What was another famous inventor? “Tesla.”
Jillian giggled, recognizing the path that Louise took to get to the name. “Okay, Tesla!”
“Very cool name.” Their father crouched down beside Louise. “Do you like it, honey?”
She wanted to say no. It probably cost a lot of money that could have been spent on things she and Jillian would have liked more. It was, however, a practical gift considering the situation. If they couldn’t safely commute to school, their parents would probably take them out of Perelman School for the Gifted and enroll them someplace else. It wasn’t that she loved Perelman, but “someplace else” could be anything from a local high school with kids four years older than them to a boarding school. “It’s a wonderful present. Thank you, Daddy.”
With the magical words, he melted, hugging her tightly. “Oh, I love you two so much. I want to give you the world.”
* * *
Jillian waited until they were safe in their room.
“Merde!” Jillian cursed in French. “C’est des conneries. Fait chier! Fait chier! Fait chier!”
Louise shook her head as she pulled up the website of the robot’s manufacturer. “If they hear you, they’ll ground you,” Louise warned, keeping to French until she knew if Tesla had an eavesdropping application or not. They had initiated the robot’s setup program in the kitchen by registering his name and that the twins were his primary owners. The big dog robot was slowly working its way around the room, mapping it.
“They wouldn’t understand what we’re saying even if they heard us.” Jillian growled in French and flung herself onto the bed. “It’s the whole point of using another language.”
“Merde!” Louise hissed her own curse and kept to French. “Yes, it has an eavesdropping application and GPS. Not only can they keep track of it via a phone app, they can ask it questions. It can answer in thirty-two languages!” She dialed Tesla’s number on her cell phone and he answered with a deep male voice. “Konnichiwa.”
She cycled through the various breed voices. German Shepard said “Guten Tag” in a slightly more tenor male and Shih Tzu said “Nǐ hǎo” in a bright and chipper female voice. She groaned and cycled quickly through the voices, looking for one that didn’t set her teeth on edge. The Welsh corgi had a British boy’s voice that reminded her of Christopher Robin.
She changed the default and sent a command to the robot.
Tesla shook his head and murmured, “Silly old bear.”
Jillian grabbed a pillow and screamed into it.
Louise groaned as she read on. “They can download video from his eyes.”
Jillian screamed into the pillow again.
Louise read further and laughed.
“There is nothing funny about this!” Jillian’s shout was muffled by the pillow still over her face.
“Tesla has a nano nonstick-coating on its feet. It micro-vibrates each foot before entering a home.”
“That’s not funny.”
“What Tesla doesn’t have is the optional gecko feet that lets the robot dog scale walls and ceilings.”
“What?” Jillian sat up.
“Look.” Louise played the video of a robotic corgi walking up a wall.
“Why would you want your dog to do that?” Jillian cried.
“Spider dog, spider dog, does whatever a spider dog does,” Louise sang.
They giggled, playing the video over and over. Tesla continued to work his way around the room, ignoring their laughter. They had slipped out of French with “spider dog,” but Jillian carefully returned to it to carry on a serious discussion. Luckily the auto-translate option wasn’t the default and their parents hadn’t turned it on.
“Seriously, what we are going to do?” Jillian asked, curled beside Louise on her bed. “How are we going to go see April Geiselman with a spy dog in tow? The whole point of doing the Girl Scout thing was so everyone would think that after a short subway ride, we’d be with adults.”
Their parents would insist that they take Tesla. The protests against the proposed expansion of the Earth Interdimensional Agency-controlled strip of land around Pittsburgh were spreading across the city to include the United Nations building and the Chinese embassy, as well as the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.
If they took Tesla with them, though, their parents would know about their detour to the Upper East Side to see April Geiselman.
“Merde.” Jillian sighed out the curse and continued in French. “So the problem is three part. First is that it reports our position via GPS. Second is that our parents can ask it questions about what we’re doing. Third is that they can download video of what it has seen during the course of the day.”
“Oui,” Louise agreed. “It records video, so the entire day is accessible.”
“It’s a camera,” Jillian said slowly. “We can control what it sees and edit the video like any other camera. So really, it’s not a problem.”
Louise considered a moment and nodded. “Oui.” She flipped to the specs on Tesla’s GPS system. “At least we have four days to come up with a plan and test it.”
“It’s going to be so embarrassing to take it to school.” Jillian sighed deeply. “You know how it’s going to go down. Everyone is going to say we’re too poor for a real nanny. Just like the Darlings.”
“C’est la vie,” Louise murmured. “They already know we’re poor. I don’t care. Ah ha!”
“That sounds good.”
“Magnifique!” Louise said. She’d discovered the weakness of the spy applic
ation. It lay not with the robot but with their parents’ phones. She reached over and lifted up what was left of their camera that she’d been attempting to fix. Jillian had clung to it until the EMT pried it out of her hand, so it had escaped the fire. The lens, however, had been smashed. It had all the same GPS and communication software that Tesla had. They could simply rig it so that their parents picked up the camera’s output when attempting to check on Tesla. “Meet mini-Tesla.”
“Ooohhhh!” Jillian grasped the concept instantly. “C’est magnifique!”
Saturday morning, after taking their hour turn at the cookie-selling event in Queens, they planted mini-Tesla on Elle and took the 7 train into Midtown Manhattan. The Grand Central–42nd Street Station was a kicked beehive of police. Jillian led, smiling innocently at the policemen. Louise followed, leading Tesla by his leash, trying not to look like they were deceiving every adult who crossed their path. They caught the 6 local to the Upper East Side.
“Is she home yet?” Jillian swung her legs, watching the city flash by. Tesla was parked beside her, his camera eyes hacked and currently not recording. Just to be sure, they had his head carefully locked onto the back of their seat.
Louise took out her phone and checked what the GPS on April Geiselman’s phone had to say. They had hacked April’s phone and had been tracking her for two days. The woman was making steady progress toward her apartment from some mystery address that had kept her out all night. “She’s heading home—I think. What do we do if she doesn’t go home?”
“We sell cookies until she does.”
* * *
April lived in a high-rise on the Upper East Side. The Girl Scout uniforms got them past the doorman with a promise of free cookies. According to her phone, April was now home, so they went straight to her apartment.
They rang the doorbell and listened intently as soft footsteps came to the door. There was a long silence as they were examined through the spyhole. After a full minute, the locks were thrown and the door opened.
April was surprisingly young and pretty. She was wearing a tight black dress and last night’s makeup. “Wow, I didn’t think Girl Scouts went door-to-door anymore. Are you sure you’re allowed to do this? It’s not really safe, even with a dog that big.”