House of Robots

by James Patterson

  Of course, I’m not totally alone.

  Yep. That black SUV is back. Parked at the end of our driveway.

  I decide to go find out what the heck they want and how come they’re always parking in front of our house.

  But two seconds after I start down the porch steps, the SUV drives away.

  Okay. Phew. I can start breathing again.

  Maddie came home from St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center a couple hours after they rushed her away in that ambulance.

  When Mom and Dad helped her up the front steps, she grinned at me—and, like I said, Maddie has the best smile of all time.

  “It was nothing,” she says when she’s tucked in her bed again. “False alarm. Total waste of gas and sirens. Try not to worry so much, Sammy.”

  Yep. That’s how she deals.

  Nothing’s ever a “big deal” or a crisis.

  I wish I could be more like my little sister and not worry about stuff so much.

  I’d give just about anything—including both my autographed Notre Dame football cards (I have Joe Montana and Joe Theismann)—to be more like Maddie.

  Seriously.

  I would.

  Later, when Maddie is sound asleep, I go outside to check out the stars and think about Maddie’s advice.

  I hear crying.

  At first I think it might be Brittney 13. You know—the rolling emoticon. I figure the hysterical, hyperventilating, teenage-mood-swinging robot just picked up some bad news about her favorite boy band—like maybe one of the guys has a new girlfriend.

  Then I realize the sobbing sounds are coming from inside Mom’s workshop. And the sobs sound like they might be coming from my mom, who hardly ever cries (except when one of the heavier robots rolls over her toes).

  For once, her workshop isn’t closed up tighter than spandex on a sumo wrestler. In fact, the door isn’t even locked.

  I push it open and step inside.

  It’s kind of dark and shadowy, but my eyes adjust. At a stainless-steel table, sparks sizzle around a shiny mechanical hand attached to an arm that bends like a gooseneck lamp. It’s zizzing a jumble of colored wires, connectors, and capacitors on a green control board with its fingertips, which are actually soldering irons.

  I notice that E isn’t hanging on the wall anymore. He’s sitting on the edge of the steel table, looking all shiny and spiffy.

  If you ever saw my mom’s robot workshop, you’d probably think it’s amazingly awesome. It reminds me of Santa’s workshop at the North Pole, which—spoiler alert—doesn’t actually exist.

  Santa has more of a factory. In Finland. Where elf-operated robots make all the toys.

  So, yeah—the first time you see it, Mom’s workshop will knock your socks off.

  Personally, I don’t like it all that much anymore. To me, it’s just a junk-filled place where my mom spends way too much time.

  Working.

  With the door locked.

  Tonight, Mom isn’t working.

  She’s too busy crying.

  Mom and I have a pretty nice talk. A real heart-to-heart. And—shocker—it’s not about me for a change. We talk about Maddie and how much we love her and how hard it is sometimes to deal with her getting sick—and our getting sick with worry over it.

  “But,” Mom says with a sigh, “what we go through is nothing compared to what Maddie has to deal with, day in and day out.”

  I nod even though, as you’ve seen, Maddie always acts like her situation is no big whoop.

  My mom dries her eyes with some kind of screen-cleaning cloth she finds on her workbench.

  “Mom? Do you think it’ll ever get any easier?”

  “I don’t know, Sammy. I hope so.”

  “Maybe one day you and some graduate students at Notre Dame will invent a super-smart, artificially intelligent robot that uses its computer brain to figure out a cure for Maddie and all the other kids with SCID.”

  “Maybe,” she says with a smile.

  “Seriously, Mom. It’d be awesome.”

  She looks at me in a way I don’t think she’s ever looked at me before. “You’re pretty awesome yourself, Sammy Hayes-Rodriguez.”

  And then neither of us says anything for a while.

  We just sit and listen to the robots buzzing and humming all around us.

  All right, time to lighten the mood! We need a break—for you and for me. Even for Trip.

  So over the weekend, we go to a Notre Dame college football game.

  “Trip can have my ticket,” Mom says, even though she’s probably the biggest ND fan in the whole family. “I should stick close to home today.”

  I figure she wants to be with Maddie—just in case there’s a Saturday-afternoon emergency. It’s only been a couple days since Maddie’s fever sent everybody (except me) racing off to the hospital.

  So Dad, Trip, and I head over to the campus. A Notre Dame football game at Notre Dame Stadium is the most amazing live sporting event in the entire universe. Seriously. It’s better than soccer on Saturn.

  A lot of Fighting Irish fans stake out their favorite tailgating spots in the parking lots around dawn.

  I text Maddie:

  We didn’t pack a barbecue grill or anything, so we’re heading over to the Huddle Mart in LaFortune for Quarter Dogs.

  She texts back:

  Smart move.

  Yep. When we go to an ND football game, I keep in constant contact with Maddie back home. Even if she can listen on the radio or watch it on TV, I still like to give her the play-by-play and the color commentary. I’m like her eyes and ears on the ground. And that way, it’s more like we’re there together.

  My dad, like my mom, is a Domer. That’s what they call anyone who is—or ever was—a student at Notre Dame, on account of the university’s most famous landmark: a golden dome at the center of the campus.

  On our way to our seats, I text Maddie to let her know Touchdown Jesus is happy to see us. That’s what everybody calls this huge mosaic mural on the side of Hesburgh Library that kind of looms over the football stadium.

  Normally, my fear of heights would mean that stadium seating is a big, scary deal for me. But because we go so often, and the crowd is so exciting, I barely even notice how high up we are. It really helps that Dad always makes sure we never actually go that high.

  Since Maddie is also a huge football fan, I text her every time Notre Dame does something good (or even halfway decent) during the game.

  The Fighting Irish beat Navy, which is great. Well, for us, not so much for the Midshipmen, which is what the Navy players are called.

  What a day. I wish every Saturday in the fall could be a Notre Dame football Saturday.

  And more than anything, I wish Maddie could’ve come to the game with us.

  That would’ve made it the best day ever!

  Too bad that when we come home, my great day is totally ruined.

  Because I find out the real reason Mom skipped the ND game.

  Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no!

  While we were at the game, Mom finished fixing Error!

  “Hello, Samuel. I trust you enjoyed today’s gridiron clash?”

  Yep. He’s baaaaaack!

  “It was a football game,” I tell E. “Not a ‘gridiron clash’! A football game!”

  “I stand corrected.”

  “Well, at least you’re standing,” cracks Trip lamely, who, I guess, plans on hanging around and eating dinner with us, too.

  “You are correct, Harry Hunter Hudson. I am fully vertical, plumb, and perpendicular.”

  “Please. Call me Trip.”

  “Very well, Trip. And might I state for the record that gridiron clash, as well as a pigskin match, is considered an acceptable synonym for football game?”

  “That’s it,” I say, practically exploding. “Where’s Mom?”

  “Inside,” reports E. “Checking up on Maddie.”

  “Why did she do this to me?” I mumble.

  “Actually, Samuel, f
rom my preliminary scans of your internal organs, it does not appear that our mother has done anything to you. Were you in need of repair as well? If so, I am certain she will—”

  “No! I don’t need any kind of repairs. And she’s not our mother! She’s just my mother, okay?”

  E raises an eyebrow. Yep. Mom gave him fake eyebrows while he was in her shop.

  “What about Maddie?” the robot chirps.

  “What?”

  “Isn’t your mother also Maddie’s mother? Isn’t that how Maddie became your sister?”

  “He has a point,” says Trip.

  “Fine,” I say. “She’s Maddie’s mom, too. But not yours.”

  “I didn’t say she was,” says Trip.

  “I’m not talking to you, Trip. I’m talking to Rust Bucket here.”

  E’s knee and hip hydraulics make ZHURR-CLICK-ZHURR sounds as he takes one step forward. “Of course she is my mother. Perhaps not in the limited way you look at the world, Samuel. But most certainly Professor Elizabeth Hayes, PhD, is my creator and, therefore, my mother.”

  Here we go again.

  I think E has that particular bit of blabber on some kind of digital loop in his voice box. Either that or Mom gave him a one-track mind.

  “I need to talk to Mom,” I say to Trip. “She has to tell me where she hid E’s off switch. And no way is she making me take this….this…THING to school again!”

  I hear a ZHURR-ZHURR-WHIRR.

  E’s staring at me with big, blue, LED eyes.

  “Yo, Samuel,” he says. “I believe you need to chill, dude.”

  “Whoa,” says Trip. “Did E just say ‘yo,’ ‘chill,’ and ‘dude’? All in the same sentence?”

  “Indeed I did, Trip. I can be very colloquial. It’s no biggie. E out.”

  Yep.

  I definitely need to talk to Mom.

  Remember that thing I said about three being the absolute limit on questions you can ask your parents?

  Well, once again, I’m shut down after only ONE!

  “How come you fixed Error?” I ask my mom.

  She and my dad are in the kitchen, where Mr. Moppenshine is making dinner.

  “Samuel?” Mom says in her firm but calm voice—the one that lets everybody, including a lecture hall filled with rowdy freshmen, know who’s in charge. “E’s proper name is Egghead, not Error.”

  “Or his name could be Einstein Jr.,” says Dad. “But I like Egghead.”

  I ask my question again. Yep. The same one—but with different words: “How come you fixed the stupid thing?”

  Oops. Mom does not like those words.

  “E is not stupid,” she says. “In fact, E has one of the most highly advanced artificial intelligences I’ve ever engineered.”

  “I know,” I mumble. “I heard him spell Kyrgyzstan. Over and over and—”

  Now Mom is glaring at me. Mr. Moppenshine, too.

  “Samuel?” she says again.

  Mr. Moppenshine just makes tsk, tsk, tsk noises and shakes his head.

  “Yes?” I kind of gulp it.

  “I’ve already told you how important this experiment is.”

  “But you won’t tell me why!”

  “Because it may fail. Besides, you don’t really need to know why I made E. Not yet, anyway. You just need to take him to school with you on Monday.”

  “I agree with your mother,” says Dad. “One hundred percent. This is a very important experiment. We all need to do everything we can to make sure it’s super successful.”

  “But I don’t want to!”

  Yes. I sort of sound like a kindergartner who doesn’t want to take a nap on his blankie because he’s having too much fun playing with blocks.

  “Frankly, Samuel,” says my mom, “I really don’t care what you do or do not want to do.”

  “But, Mom,” I whine, “what about all that junk you said about parents doing what is best for their children?”

  “This is what’s best, Sammy.”

  “Um, no, it is not. Not for me. If I go to school with E again, Cooper Elliot and that bunch will murder me. E will cause another disaster.”

  “No. He will not. I have addressed all of E’s safety issues.”

  “Really? What about the bit where he calls me his brother and all the other kids laugh and call me Robobro and the Dweebatronic? What about my safety?”

  Mom sighs again. “Fine. Have it your way, Samuel. You don’t have to help. E can go to school by himself.”

  “Fine back at you,” I say. “By the way, I’m not taking the bus to school on Monday morning. I’m riding my bike.”

  “Fine,” says Mom. “So will E.”

  Really? I think. The robot can ride a bike?

  Impossible.

  Monday morning comes and nothing seems impossible anymore.

  E can ride a bike! And to make things worse, his bike is way cooler than mine.

  I’m so angry I scoop up the basketball I left lying in the driveway last night and, using both hands, fling it at the garage door. Hard.

  Very hard.

  The garage door rattles. The ball ricochets and sails into the lawn behind Mom’s workshop, where it bonks Blitzen, who’s mowing the grass, in his boxy butt.

  “Way to handle the ball, bro,” says E, perfectly balanced on his high-tech BMX bike even though it’s not moving.

  Yep. He can balance like a unicyclist but without pumping the pedals back and forth. The robot has very good gyroscopes.

  “Perhaps,” E continues, “in a few years’ time, you will hurl a Hail Mary pass in the final seconds of a game to secure victory for the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame in what will become celebrated as a gridiron classic.”

  “It’s called football, Egghead. Foot. Ball.”

  “True. But because of the parallel lines marking yardage, the football field resembles a griddle, or gridiron, on which to broil meat or—”

  I’ve heard enough. Like, hours ago. So I tell E to stick a sock in it.

  “I do not wear socks,” he replies. “Besides, I don’t know where you would have me stick this stocking.”

  “In your piehole.”

  “As I also do not ingest pie, I do not believe I am equipped with such an opening.”

  “Never mind.”

  I hop on my bike.

  E pumps his pedals.

  We’re off.

  I can’t lose the stupid biker-bot. So I pedal harder, hoping E is only programmed for one speed—slow.

  But I hear a ZHURR-CLICK-ZHURR or two and E is right beside me, matching my pace.

  Will the horrors upon horrors ever cease? Probably not.

  I take a sharp left on Bertrand Street.

  E mirrors my move.

  “Samuel? Might I suggest we take the next legal right turn and proceed north to Roger Street? According to my internal GPS, that route would be much more efficient.”

  “No!” I holler. “My bus takes Roger Street. I don’t want anybody to see me riding to school with you.”

  “But we are not riding with each other. For that to be possible, Mother would need to construct a bicycle built for two, also known as a dual-drive tandem.”

  “She’s not your mother!” I yell, and take a hard left.

  Yep. I’m heading away from the school, hoping E’s internal compass will force him to keep heading north and west to Creekside.

  But it doesn’t.

  He’s still following me.

  And, of course, we practically run into a bright yellow school bus picking up a whole bunch of kids.

  Mr. Hessler, the bus driver, sees me and E.

  “Dude!” he cries out. “A bot on a bike! Totally amazing, man!”

  Now everybody on the whole entire bus can see us.

  Heads bounce up and down in the windows. Fingers point. Girls gasp. Guys applaud.

  E responds to his adoring audience by popping off a bunny hop and doing an off-the-chain BMX bike stunt: He totally nails a double tail whip!

  The whol
e bus is cheering.

  Me? The only stunt I pull is not falling off my bike when I see how amazing the new and improved E can be.

  We go ahead and follow the bus to school.

  Everyone is crammed in the back so they can gawk at us through the rear windows and emergency exit.

  I glance over my shoulder, and guess what I see?

  Yep. That black SUV. It kind of looks like it’s following E and me while we follow the school bus.

  Fortunately, when we pull in to the Creekside driveway, the SUV keeps on heading up the road.

  Unfortunately, a whole mob of kids streams off the school bus and swamps us at the bike rack.

  “That was so cool!” says this cute girl Jenny Myers. She’s a redhead in Mrs. Kunkel’s class—the one I’m in, too (even though Jenny Myers probably doesn’t know it).

  “How’d you learn to ride a bike like that?” she asks E.

  “Easy. By studying video footage of the BMX World Championships.”

  “You are, like, so totally epic!”

  Of course, Jenny Myers is saying all of this to E, not me, the way she would be if this were one of my dreams.

  “Big deal,” sneers Cooper Elliot as he struts out to see what all the fuss is about. “So the stupid hunk of junk can ride a bike. I’ve been doing that for years.” I think Cooper isn’t used to somebody (or something) else being the center of attention. “What else can you do, Tin Can Man?”

  “All sorts of stuff,” says Trip, who was on the bus with everybody else. “Right, Sammy? Because Sammy taught his bro-bot all sorts of incredible tricks while Egghead was in the shop. Remember, Sammy? Remember all those tricks you taught E?”

  Trip. My second-best friend forever. Still saying exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time.