Fuzzy (10 page)

“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 could 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.”

“
What?
” barked Ryder. “Don't tell me you're using code from the last robot! That worthless piece of—”

“Ahem,” interrupted Nina. “What's amazing about
this
robot is that, if you change the trials, he will change, too. Instantly and intelligently. And he will do it even more intelligently if you leave him here and let us finish.”

“Thank you, Nina,” said Fuzzy, causing Ryder, who had forgotten that Fuzzy was even there, to jump.

He stood up. “Fine, you can keep him. But no more field trips! He stays here where security can keep a close eye on things.”

“But his two trips off campus have—”

“Doesn't matter. He stays on-site. Period,” ordered Ryder. “Besides, he'll only be here another week.”

“What? Just a week?”

“That's what I said, Jones. I told you the launch date's been moved up. Hey, don't whine to me, this comes from high up. There are
reasons
. Very classified reasons. I've been scrambling to get the transport ready. That's why I did
not
have time to come here today and deal with you guys almost losing my robot. Now, do what
you need to do so he's ready as soon as humanly possible, if not sooner!”

He turned and stomped toward the door, then whirled around again.

“And no more screwups or I'll bust you down to private,” he shouted, pointing at Nina. Then he swung his finger over to Jones. “And you, I will fire, sue, and possibly arrest for treason.”

8.4
ROBOT INTEGRATION PROGRAM HQ

When the door closed behind Ryder, Jones sank down in his chair. “My head . . . ,” he muttered. “Oh, my head . . .”

“Excuse me, Dr. Jones,” said Fuzzy. “I did not understand the colonel. Where am I going in a week?”

Jones looked at Nina.

Nina looked at Jones.

“We're not supposed to talk about that,” said Nina.

“You'll get all the necessary mission data when the time comes,” said Jones.

“This does not make me glad.”

“Me, either,” said Jones. “But sending you on the mission is Ryder's job, and my job is to make Ryder a robot
that is ready to handle almost any mission. You heard what's going to happen if I fail.”

Fuzzy didn't say anything. He was thinking about his plans to HelpMax() and analyzing them to see if he could execute them in one week.

“And,”
continued Jones, “in order to get this done, we need you to follow the rules so that you can stay in school.”

Fuzzy considered this. Staying in school was essential to his HelpMax() plan.

“OK,” he said. “I will follow the rules.”

“Are you going to reprogram yourself with the rules or do we need to?”

“I will do it. In fact, I have downloaded the school's policy handbook and have already started translating them into code.”

“Well, that was easy!” said Jones.

“I still don't like it,” said Nina. “Fuzzy, make sure you write the code so that the rules can be turned off once you're done here. The last thing we need is you trying to follow school rules while you're on . . . er, on your mission.”

“Do not worry,” said Fuzzy. “I will make them very easy to turn off.”

Nina noticed the odd, almost human emphasis Fuzzy put on the word “very.”

Fuzzy has certainly gotten the hang of fuzzy logic
, she thought with a smile.

9.1
DORGAS
'
S OFFICE

The next morning, Max had barely walked through the school door when a qScreen lit up and there was Principal Dorgas asking her to come to his office.

“Smoke!” Max whispered to herself in exasperation. “
Now
what?”

Lots of people turned to look at her, including Biggs. She was ready to snap at him if he so much as started to make a smart remark. To her surprise, he said nothing and looked almost sympathetic.

This time, she made it all the way down the hall to Mr. Dorgas's office without running afoul of any of Vice Principal Barbara's rules. A good thing, since she was
determined to not get a single dTag all day. She did not want another yelling session with her parents.

The automated receptionist, with metal appendages tapping on keyboards, shuffling papers, and opening drawers, used yet another to wave Max into Dorgas's office.
I wonder
, thought Max,
if that faceless receptionist is an independent robot or just a part of Barbara?
She had never considered it before, but Barbara was probably controlling all sorts of things, including the door to Dorgas's office, which opened for her and then automatically closed behind her.

Max found Dorgas seated behind his desk.

“Mr. Dorgas, I
just
walked in the door, there is no way I could have gotten any dTags already!”

“Ms. Zelaster, sit down for a minute,” he said, and she did. “This isn't about dTags at all . . .”

“It's not?”

“No, this is about the Robot Integration Program. I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but Vanguard is receiving a very generous grant from the government in exchange for hosting the robot.”

“Really?”

“Yes,
very
large,” said Dorgas. “But recently there have been one or two problems . . . and there's been talk of cutting the program short . . . which might mean cutting the grant short, if you see what I'm saying.”

“I do.”

“Now, I'm told,” Dorgas said, “that one of the problems is that Simeon hasn't worked out well as the student escort for this robot. But I recall assigning
you
to be the student escort.”

“Yes, but Ms. Brockmeyer said I had to give it up.”

“Yessss,” said Dorgas slowly. “Brockmeyer does things like that. The point is . . . Jones wants you back.”

“Really?” said Max. After getting thrown out of the room the night before, she hadn't been sure where things stood with Jones and Nina
and
Fuzzy.

“Really,” said Dorgas. “And with all respect to Brockmeyer, Jones is the one with the grant money. So . . .”

“Yes?”

“So it looks like you're back on robot escort duty.”

Max had a momentary thrill, but then reality butted back in.

“I—I—I'm not sure I want to be back on robot escort duty,” she said hesitantly.

“
What?
” Dorgas was genuinely surprised.

“It's the dTags, sir. They piled up while I was trying to help Fuzzy around.”

“Fuzzy?”

“That's the robot's name, sir.”

“So, you're telling me that while you were trying to help with RIP, Barbara was giving you dTags.”

“Lots of them.”

“Why didn't you tell me?” said Dorgas. “Barbara doesn't automatically understand changes in routine like that. I can clear it up right now . . . Barbara! Override mode. Delete all dTags assigned to M. Zelaster in the last week. And boost her citizenship score, too. Got that?”

A qScreen on his desk briefly lit up.

“Message received,” said a smiling Barbara face, and then it quickly faded away.

Max couldn't believe it. She felt like she had won the lottery.

Might as well push my luck
, she thought.

“Uh, sir, Brockmeyer's other concern was my test scores, they—”

“Sorry,” said Dorgas. “You're on your own there. You'll have to study like all the rest!”

Max pretended to laugh at this, and then said good-bye and headed out the door.

But then she turned around.

“I'm just curious, Mr. Dorgas. This grant from the government . . . Isn't it from the Federal School Board?”

“Ha! Those tightwads? No, this is DoD money. Big bucks!”