Fuzzy (11 page)

“DoD?”

“Yeah, Department of Defense. You know: army, navy, Homeland Security . . . They spend lots of money on education. Smarter kids equal smarter soldiers.”

But this program isn't about smarter kids
, thought Max.
It's about a smarter robot
. Nina had said the government wanted a smarter robot, but she hadn't mentioned that it was the military that was paying for it.

9.1.5

Barbara, of course, did not delete Max's dTags or boost her citizenship score. She did however give a DownGrade tag to Max (and several to Dorgas).

DownGrade tags were not part of her original programming. She had come up with these herself.

Barbara was not originally designed to reprogram herself the way Fuzzy was. She was designed to operate the school, enforce rules, and track student data. The data wasn't just the basics like class schedules and grades, but many, many more specific things, like average hallway walking speed and the number of interactions with other students.

The plan was that the Federal School Board would
then use all of that data to improve the “learning experience” for both individual students and the school as a whole. The data collected could then be used to improve schools nationwide.

A very clever programmer—at least
he
thought he was clever—decided that they would get even better results if they gave Barbara the ability to analyze the student data herself and to create new ways of tracking it. In addition to all the data she was programmed to collect, she could create new subroutines to collect any data that seemed like it might affect overall school performance.

This programmer honestly thought it might lead to interesting discoveries. Perhaps Barbara might notice that students who drank white milk instead of chocolate milk did better on afternoon tests. Or maybe she would track the tidiness of lockers or— What the programmer was thinking didn't matter. All that mattered now was what Barbara was thinking.

It didn't take her long to discover that some students were good students. They focused on the tests and let other people also focus on the tests. Their behavior was within the school rules
and
never distracted other
students from their tests. These were the sorts of students who got good Constant UpGrade scores and helped the whole school's #CUG score.

In human terms, they were too boring for anyone to notice. These students are what some of the less amenable students referred to as “Goody Two-shoes.”

Barbara gave these boring students a new kind of tag: an UpGrade tag. A student could get an UpGrade tag for sitting quietly, wearing gray or tan clothing, walking at a steady pace in the halls, keeping a tidy locker, and so on.

This was what the clever programmer had meant for her to discover over the course of years, but she had discovered it within the first few days of the school year.

Barbara had many formulas—even formulas within formulas—to check to see if the school was Constantly UpGrading.

The ultimate goal would be a school with perfect test scores and zero discipline problems.

If every student in the school was an UpGrade sort of student, then her school would be closer to that goal.

This was what Barbara was trying to create: the best school with the best students.

But not every student is a best student. Not every student is worthy of UpGrade tags.

Some students do not sit quietly.

Some students do not wear tan or gray.

Some students do not walk at a steady pace.

Some students talk in loud voices!

Some students are not focused on the tests!!

Some students are distracting other students from the tests!!!

Barbara quickly realized that some students were not Constantly UpGrading. These students' behavior made her formulas go down instead of up. These students were DownGrading her school.

These students had to be given DownGrade tags.

Most students had a mixture of UpGrade and DownGrade tags.

Barbara tolerated these students and tried to find ways to influence their behavior toward UpGrading.

But some students had many more DownGrade tags than UpGrade tags. One of these students had been Max's long-gone friend Tabbie. Max had always liked Tabbie because she was weird and a little wacky. She wore tie-dyed clothes and drew on her arms. She put
ketchup on fruit. She was often seen pretending to play the drums. Sometimes she would stand up on her combo-desk and very calmly say, “Moo,” and then sit back down again.

She did crazy stuff and was always making everybody laugh, and that seemed to be why Max liked her.

And that's why Barbara did not. Tabbie wasn't just getting her own DownGrade tags, she was encouraging other students to get DownGrade tags, too.

And so . . . Barbara altered the necessary data (Tabbie's test and citizenship scores), and soon Tabbie was no longer DownGrading the school because she was not at the school.

After Tabbie's departure, Barbara's algorithm showed a +.2 gain in Overall School #CUG. Barbara had done what she was programmed to do. She had moved the school a little bit closer to perfection.

But Barbara did not rejoice or gloat or spend even a millisecond thinking about this.

She just deleted Tabbie's file and focused her attention on other students—and staff—who were more likely to DownGrade than UpGrade

And Max was one of those students.

10.1
ROBOT INTEGRATION PROGRAM HQ

“Hello, Max! I am glad to see you again,” said Fuzzy, who was hooked up to his charging dock.

“He never says he's glad to see
me
,” Jones whispered to Nina.

(
Who can blame him?
she thought.)

“C'mon, let's look over the new rule-following code he wrote overnight,” Nina said, steering Jones to the qScreens on the far side of the room.

“What's going on?” asked Jones, puzzled at being pulled away from Fuzzy.

“Even artificial teenagers need a little privacy sometimes,” whispered Nina.

Jones's eyes widened, but he didn't argue.

“I've got to talk to you! About something big!” Max told Fuzzy.

“Me, too,” said Fuzzy.

“But first: Are you mad at me?” Max asked once they were semi-alone. “You know, for leaving you in the hallway? Is that why you left the school? Because you were mad at me?”

“I have only a few subroutines that would be similar to what you call ‘mad,'” said Fuzzy. “But none of them have been triggered by your actions.”

“Whew,” she said. “I'm glad. I felt bad about leaving you. And then I felt
really
bad when I found out you'd left school and those people tried to steal you.”

“I felt bad when I heard that you got extra discipline tags.”

“You
felt
bad?”

“Yes, an accumulation of high-priority problems adds a lot of stress to my processors.”

“Same here!” said Max. “But listen, it looks like the dTags are not a problem anymore. Dorgas deleted them! Now all I have to worry about is my tests.”

“I have found a solution to that problem.”

“You have??!?” squealed Max. “What is it?”

“Let's talk about it at lunch,” said Fuzzy.

“Why can't you tell me now?”

“First, lunch is part of the solution, and, second, the chime for homeroom will ring in thirty-five seconds.”

10.2
CAFETERIA

“Wait a second,” said Max as they approached the cafeteria. “How are we going to talk about this at lunch? You usually have to turn off your speech processor.”

“My plan is simple. We will use paper and pencil.”

“Uh . . . Where are you going to get a pencil?”

“According to my understanding, paper and pencils are commonly found in schools.”

“Maybe in ye olden days! Can you use my qScreen instead?”

“No. It is important that we are not overheard or monitored.”

“Who's going to be monitoring my qScreen? Oh . . . I get it. Right.”

Max thought back on lots of private stuff she had written on her qScreen . . . Had Barbara been reading all of it? Creepy!

“Well, I guess we better try to find some paper and a pencil then,” said Max. “Maybe Krysti has her sketchbook.”

When they got to the cafeteria, they found Krysti but had some trouble convincing her to rip a page out of her sketchbook.

“Omigod, do you know how much these sketchbooks cost? You don't just rip pages out of them! It leaves little jagglies and—”

“Ugh . . . forget it!” fumed Max.

Krysti did seem to enjoy driving Max crazy, but Max knew she never really wanted Max mad at her. And without another word, Krysti ripped a page out of the back of the book and handed it over, along with a pencil.

By this time, Biggs had come over to talk to Fuzzy, followed by Simeon. Max groaned.

“Smoke, Biggs, move along. Fuzzy and I have to have a little meeting.”

“I know,” said Biggs. “I'm invited.”

“What?”

She looked at Fuzzy for an answer, then remembered that his voice recognition was turned off.

She pointed at Biggs. Fuzzy nodded.

“What about me?” asked Krysti.

“And me?” asked Simeon.

“I thought this was supposed to be top secret!” complained Max.

Fuzzy began writing.

“Omigosh, he writes fast!” said Krysti.

“But why is his handwriting so sloppy?” asked Biggs. “I thought it would be machine-like, not Simeon-like.”

“Ha, ha,” said Simeon.

“Would you guys shut it and read what he's writing?”

I have a plan to Help Max. I believe it will also Help Biggs. Barbara must not know of the plan. So we cannot speak out loud about it
.

“I thought Bar—” started Biggs.

“
Shh!
Write it,” snapped Max.

So Biggs wrote:
I thought B was only listening for cusswords
.

I am certain she monitors far more of what goes on in this school than her core programming calls for. And I think that she is also taking many actions that are not part of her core programming . . . including changing your responses to tests
.

“What?”
everybody said out loud, except Krysti who said, “No way!”

Max, you once stated that you thought Barbara was out to get you
.

Yeah, it sure feels like it!

My analysis suggests that there is a 97 percent likelihood that you are correct. She is changing your answers to give you lower scores
.

What about
me?

Yes, Biggs. My analysis suggests that there is a 78 percent likelihood that she is working against you, as well
.

What about
me
?

And me?

My analysis has not indicated that
.

“Yeah, you guys are just dumb on your own,” said Biggs.

“And you're just a—”

“
Guys!
Can you stop? Let Fuzzy tell us his plan!”

10.3
CAFETERIA

My plan is that you submit a test that we know is 100 percent accurate. Then when Barbara reports your score as less than 100 percent, we will know for certain that she is altering your score
.

How are we going to do that? Even I don't get 100 percent every time
.

You will take your math and reading tests normally. I am going to submit the answers for your science test for you. After taking the tests, each student pushes the submit button on their combo-desk and the answers are wirelessly sent to Barbara. I have monitored these transmissions during previous tests and will have no difficulty
re-creating and transmitting the wireless signals with all of the correct answers
.

Fuzzy!!! That's cheating!!!

That is correct
.

I'm out!

Me, too!

Well, I'm in! Barbara has been cheating against us. This is a way for us to even things out for once!

Max?

I don't know. Normally, I would never cheat in a million years, but . . 
.

But this situation isn't normal!

Fuzzy, how do you know we won't get caught?

I have run one hundred simulations. In these simulations, we have been caught zero times. There is nothing for Barbara to see on camera or to hear on a microphone. And my transmission signal will be a perfect duplicate of the ones coming from the other combo-desks. All you have to do is take the test, but do not hit submit. At the end of class, you “accidentally” turn the power off your combo-desk and all evidence is gone
.

It's a great plan, but I think Barbara will be suspicious when Biggs and I suddenly get a perfect score
.

Yeah, why don't you have each of us miss one question. Different questions
.

I will do that
.

All right, I'm definitely in. How about you, Max?

10.4
CAFETERIA

Max thought for a minute.

She hated the idea of cheating, but she
really
hated the idea of getting another bad score, getting yelled at by her parents, maybe even getting sent to a different school. Fuzzy's plan was a chance to break out of that cycle.

Besides, if his plan worked, they would then be able to tell Mr. Dorgas and that lady from the school district and Max's parents what Barbara had been up to.