“Zark!!!” yelled Valentina. “Abort!!! Zeff, hit the button!!!”
Instantly the truck rocketed away, with Valentina just barely able to hold on.
Karl whirled around and watched the truck leave him behind.
Seconds later, two black SUVs came flying up the street. Because, naturally, Fuzzy had called them in as soon as he had analyzed Valentina and Karl’s conversation and identified a threat.
One SUV squealed to a stop and disgorged four heavily armed soldiers, who threw Karl to the ground before he could even start running.
The other SUV never stopped. It was in hot pursuit of the cargo truck.
But Valentina had planned out an emergency escape route, and even though it only took a few minutes for the soldiers to catch up to the truck, she and Zeff were no longer inside it.
They were each in separate getaway cars headed in opposite directions.
7.5
SOY BURGER ONE
When they met up later that night in a SoyBurgerOne two hundred miles away, Valentina had only one thing on her mind.
“Did you get it?”
“Got it,” said Zeff, holding up his qScreen. “The robot messaged Jones and the security detail. Pretty sure Jones’s frequency is the one we want. Like I thought, it’s a military frequency. Heavily encrypted. But it will let us monitor the transmissions.”
“What about downloading the code from their system?”
“No problem . . . once we get past the encryption.”
“You better get busy, then,” said Valentina.
“Can I get a SoyBurger first?”
“Sure! My treat, kid. You earned it.”
Valentina was in a good mood for once. She was one huge step closer to $6 million—with one less helper to pay off with part of it.
The risk had been totally worth it.
8.1
ROBOT INTEGRATION PROGRAM HQ
As soon as school was over, Max headed to the HQ to see if Fuzzy was OK. She still felt guilty about leaving him in the hallway with only Simeon to help. And when she found out that Simeon had left him, too, she felt extra-guilty.
Just as she arrived at the door, it whooshed open and four of Fuzzy’s technicians rushed out.
“There is no running in the school halls!” Barbara fussed at them all the way down Hallway B. “Your employer will be notified . . .” Max thought about following them, but knew she’d get a load of dTags just trying to keep up. So she slipped through the door just before it whooshed shut.
“Hello? Excuse me,” said Max. “Nina? Dr. Jones?”
She was surprised to see Jones holding his head and groaning while Nina was yelling at someone on the phone.
“Oh . . . Not a good time, Max,” said Jones.
“I just want to find out what’s going on with Fuzzy. Where were all his techs going?”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to leave,” said Jones.
“What the zark, Jones?” said Nina, tossing her phone on her desk. “Max deserves to know what’s going on! She cares about Fuzzy, too!”
“Oh smoke, is he all right?” asked Max, now genuinely alarmed.
“Yes, yes, he’s fine,” said Nina. “For some reason, he left the school property and was almost stolen.”
“Stolen?” Max shrieked.
“Almost stolen,” said Jones.
“Why would someone try to steal him?” asked Max.
“He’s a very expensive robot . . . very expensive . . . which I’m sure Colonel Ryder will be calling soon to remind me.”
“Where is he now?”
“The security team has him. They’re not supposed to come onto school property when there are students present, so the techs just went out front to get him.”
“Why did he leave?” asked Max.
“Have you ever felt like running away from school?” asked Nina.
“Sure,” said Max, “about every day lately.”
“Well, I guess Fuzzy felt the same way.”
“Which is a good thing, because it means he’s thinking on his own,” chimed in Jones. “But it’s a bad thing, because it just got us in a load of trouble.”
“And here’s the troublemaker now,” said Nina, pointing to the door, which had just swung open.
They all watched as Fuzzy walked in, followed by the techs.
“What?” said Fuzzy defensively. Nina and Dr. Jones glanced at each other.
“Now, that’s an uncommon cybergreeting,” Jones said.
“But a very human-sounding one,” Nina observed.
Max ran over to Fuzzy. Her first instinct was to hug him, but that seemed weird, especially since she didn’t know if he even had a subroutine for hugging. So she stopped short and said, “Fuzzy! I’m so glad to see you again.”
“I am glad to see you again, too, Max. I have been thinking about your test scores and—”
“Ahem!” interrupted Jones. “Test scores can wait! We’ve got major problems here!”
“Please tell me so I can help,” said Fuzzy as calmly as if there had been no wandering off or thwarted kidnapping.
“Well, uh, first of all, Fuzzy,” said Jones, “we are very upset that you left the school grounds, and you must never do that again without approval from myself or Nina.”
“And . . . ,” said Nina meaningfully.
“And . . . we’re glad you’re OK,” added Jones.
“Thank you,” said Fuzzy. “I am glad, too.”
“Hold up a second,” said Nina. “You said you’re ‘glad’? You just said that to Max, too. Gladness is a human emotion.”
“I translated my thoughts into a human term,” said Fuzzy. “But, yes, I think that is the right word. Had I been stolen, I would have had to turn on several energy-draining survival, defense, and weapon modes, which would have taken processor time away from the modes that are of higher priority to me.”
“Which are those?” asked Nina excitedly.
“May I translate my thoughts into human terms again?”
“Sure!”
“OK, then,” said Fuzzy. “None of your business.”
“Oh my Gates!” said Jones. “This is a first! A robot hiding information from its own operators!”
“It’s like I said,” Nina replied. “Artificial teenager!”
“This is incredible,” said Jones. “We are almost done here. Another week and we could have full-scale adult-level human intelligence. Maybe just a few days!”
“Ahem,” said Nina. “First of all, calm down. This is big, but we’ve still got a long way to go. Second, do I need to remind you that you are about to wipe out all of that progress?”
“Huh?” said Jones.
“You promised the Federal School Board that you would reprogram him, take away all of his independence, and make him a robotic puppet of the school’s central computer.”
“You did what?” gasped Max.
“Oh . . . zark . . . ,” muttered Jones, clutching his head again.
“I would not be glad about that,” said Fuzzy. “Vice Principal Barbara has gone crazy.”
“Another good sign,” said Nina. “Every teenager thinks their principal is nuts!”
“Whatever word you choose, my analysis shows that Barbara is intentionally misgrading tests to give students passing or failing grades for her own reasons.”
“What???” shrieked Max.
Jones waved a hand at her to settle down.
“Fuzzy, if that were true, then the school’s software system would be an even more advanced form of artificial intelligence than you . . . and that’s impossible,” said Jones.
“It is a valid concern, though,” said Nina. “Maybe there’s some sort of glitch in—”
“Fine, it’s a valid concern!” ranted Jones. “I have some valid concerns, too. We almost lost Fuzzy today. Colonel Ryder is about to call and yell at me for an hour. And . . . And! . . . We are all about to get kicked out of school by these bureaucrats because Fuzzy keeps breaking rules.”
“I have not been breaking rules.”
“Argh!” said Jones clutching his head yet again. “What do you call wandering out of the building in the middle of the day? What do you call the whole list of discipline tags you’ve generated? I just spent the afternoon getting yelled at by the national school superintendent because you’ve racked up so many! And then on top of the discipline tags, the superintendent is upset because you fell again. Says it’s a liability issue. They can’t take the risk of your falling on a student.”
“I did not fall.”
“Wha— But you— Of course you did!” Jones sputtered.
“I did not fall.”
“Fuzzy, you did!” said Nina, starting to worry that it was Fuzzy who had gone crazy. “We missed seeing it when you actually fell, so we played back your own recording of it.”
“Perhaps if you play it back again, you will see that I did not fall,” said Fuzzy. “I was pushed. Vice Principal Barbara knocked me over.”
“OK, this is getting ridiculous,” Jones said. “The school’s software is just that: software. It’s a computer program, Fuzzy. Even if it’s gone ‘crazy,’ as you say, it couldn’t knock you down.”
“But it could!” said Max. “Barbara has these padded arms that come out of the walls to . . . uh . . . ‘help’ students. Plus, she has all sorts of other stuff we never see, like cleaning attachments and stuff. All over the school!”
“So, basically,” said Nina, “the entire school is a giant robot controlled by a crazy computer and we are currently all standing inside of that insane robo-monster?”
Everybody, even the techs, stood still and looked around at the walls like they were about to close in on them, trash compactor–style.
Nothing happened.
“OK . . . ,” said Jones slowly. “I think we’ve all gone a little crazy here. The building is not a killer robot, it’s just a school. And Barbara is not a crazy test score manipulator, she’s the vice principal. And Fuzzy, whether you like it or not, you’re going to have to start listening to her . . . at least for a few more days.”
“That is not acceptable.”
“Yes, Fuzzy, I’m afraid it is. I don’t like it, either, but this school experience is working even better than we thought, and we don’t want to cut it short. In order for you to stay in school, you’ve got to start following every rule, which includes obeying Barbara.”
“That is not acceptable,” repeated Fuzzy. “Or, to put it into human terms, ‘No zarking way!’”
“Yes, zarking way!” fumed Jones, which made Nina giggle.
“It’s not funny, Nina—er, Lieutenant Colonel Garland! If he can’t program himself to accept it, we’ll have to try to dive into the code and do it ourselves. Now, that will really set things back!”
“It’ll do worse than that! It’ll wipe out this breakthrough! If you reprogram him to follow every rule, you’ll turn him into a . . .”
“Into what?” snapped Jones. “A robot?”
“Exactly,” argued Nina. “You’ll stop him from thinking for himself, from making decisions. You’ll ruin the progress he’s made picking up human traits from the other students. Remember the goal here. It’s not to make a Goody Two-shoes, but to create a—”
“Soldier!” boomed a voice.
Nina and Jones whirled around and Fuzzy turned his head a disturbing 180 degrees to see who it was.
It was Colonel Adolphus Ryder thundering into the room.
Nina straightened up and saluted.
“Colonel Ryder!” said Jones, trying to sound enthusiastic and not completely terrified. But of course he was terrified. Ryder was a terrifying person. He was a big guy. He had been a tough soldier back in the day and never turned soft, even after his combat tours ended.
But Ryder wasn’t ready to rip into Jones . . . yet.
“Lieutenant Colonel Garland! Whatever you were about to say was almost certainly classified.”
“Sir, I only meant—”
“Whatever you meant is probably classified, too. What’s this kid doing here?”
“This is Maxine Zelaster, sir, she has been helping us—”
“Out!” roared the colonel. “See her out, Corporal!”
A woman, dressed in what looked to Max like full combat gear, stepped forward.
“Bye, guys,” said Max, and she headed for the door. Fuzzy started to follow her; he had a lot of HelpMax() points he was planning to discuss.
“Robot! Stay!” Ryder bellowed.
And then Max was on the other side of the door. The last thing she heard, as the door was closing, was Ryder: “All right, Jones! Perhaps you’d like to tell me what the smoking zark is going on.”
“What the smoking zark is going on?” Max muttered to herself.
“Discipline tag assigned to M. Zelaster for inappropriate language.”
“ARRRRGHHH!!” shouted Max, and she didn’t care if that got her another tag or not.
(It did. In fact, Barbara had been busy lately, assigning tags to Fuzzy, Jones, Nina, all of the technicians, and even Ryder.)
8.2
ON THE AUTO-BUS
Max wanted to go back into HQ and see if Nina could actually tell her what was going on.
But if she missed her auto-bus, she’d have to get one of her parents to pick her up—and that would just create a whole new mess.
So she lined up with everyone else, got on her bus, and plopped down in her seat.
Simeon slid in a second later. “Max, what happened to Fuzzy?”
“He made it back to HQ after you left him,” she said. “Other than that, I can’t even begin to tell you what’s going on.”
“But what about the army guy who—” started Simeon, but Max cut him off.
“I have no idea,” she snapped. “Listen, I just need a minute to think.”
“All right, chill out. I was just asking.”
There was a lot to think about: Fuzzy’s near-kidnapping, the argument with Jones, the threats to reprogram Fuzzy. But mostly, Max was wondering what Nina had been about to say.
“Remember the goal here. It’s not to make a Goody Two-shoes, but to create a—”
Create a what? Wasn’t the goal supposed to be to integrate a student into the school?
But that clearly wasn’t what Nina was about to say, otherwise why would the very scary army guy have been shouting about it being classified?
And then Max ended up asking herself the very same question she had snapped at Simeon for starting to ask: What was an army guy doing there anyway? And why had there apparently been some kind of military security detail lurking just off school property? Were they really trying to integrate a robot into a school? Or were they trying to use the school to improve their robot?
And what were they going to use that robot for? The military? Was Fuzzy supposed to become a robot soldier?
That just didn’t seem possible. The robot they had created was more like a nerd than a soldier. Maybe they needed an army of robo-nerds?
That was too dumb to even laugh about.
“Student Zelaster! We have arrived at your stop.”
How embarrassing! She always made a point of getting up and heading for the door early so that the auto-bus wouldn’t say her name.
Simeon twisted his legs into the aisle so she could get out.
“I’m sorry, Sim,” she said. “I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow—if I can figure any of it out.”
It was almost time to face her parents, she thought, remembering that Barbara had probably been texting them all day long with dTag updates. They—and that woman from the school system—had told her to stay away from Fuzzy . . . and yet here she was, tangled up with him again.
That reminded her of something else.
Jones had said, “We’re almost done here.”
Almost done? At Vanguard?
Did that mean Fuzzy was almost done there, too? Was he leaving?
No, he couldn’t!
But he could. Or they cou
ld take him away. Same difference.
When he had first shown up, she had thought it would be cool to get to see a state-of-the-art robot up close and maybe even interact with it. And when she first got to start walking around with him, it had felt like getting a new toy.
But now . . . just a week later . . . if he left . . . it wouldn’t be like losing a toy, she realized, it would be more like losing her best friend.
8.3
ROBOT INTEGRATION PROGRAM HQ
Max did have a rough evening. But Jones and Nina had an even worse one.
Colonel Ryder was enraged about practically everything Jones had done, but mostly for letting Fuzzy leave the school building.
“Do you mean to tell me that you let billions—not millions but billions—of dollars—of taxpayers’ dollars—just go walking down the street?”
“Sir, the security detail was with him,” said Nina.
“The smoke they were! You told them to hang back. Way back . . . If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect you two were in on it!”
“‘In on it’?” gulped Jones.
“In on the attempted theft of a robot worth billions—not millions but billions . . .”
He went on like that for a long time.
When he stopped yelling, he started making threats.
“I think I’ll go ahead and take it.”
“‘Take it’?”
“Jones, why don’t you ever know what I’m talking about? It! The robot! I think I’ll take it now.”
“What? Why?”
“First of all, so that you guys don’t lose it again.”
“We never lost it.”
“Sir, could you two stop calling him an ‘it’? He’s standing right here listening,” said Nina. “The whole idea is to make ‘it’ into a ‘him.’” Under her breath, she added: “Although a ‘her’ might work a lot better.”
“Fine, so you idiots don’t lose him again! And second, because the launch window has been moved up again. And third, I’d like to run him through some of the trials again. Just to be sure . . .”
“Sir, there’s no need to run those same trials again. He has been programmed for those tasks for two years. Those subroutines are part of his core code, left over from the last version.”
Fuzzy Page 7