The Civil Engineers Read online

  ~Dee

  Broussard reread the missive. He wrote back:

  Hi, Sweet Love! It's so good to hear from you! You caused the sun to shine in my heart today. Don't worry! I'm having a good day. Not depressed at all. Work is going well. I just wish that this project would grow some bigger wings and fly a little higher, but all in good time, I guess. I can't wait to see you (and my expensive gift!). XOXO Neal.

  He sent off his response and finished his coffee, now lukewarm. Then he glanced at his calendar. Wow, I have a hundred things to do today! Well, not quite a hundred, but far too many to accomplish in one week, let alone one afternoon. He prioritized the top five items and shifted the rest to the next day. After making a couple of phone calls, he got up and moseyed over to Bautista's cube. Bautista had been the lab's technician for five years and he was a darn good one. An electronics specialists, it was he who had configured the lab's first ethernet LAN, built the four still-functioning work bays, and loaded all of them with the latest audio/visual/HVAC equipment. He also served as the Engineering department's project associate and was therefore responsible for updating the master log. There was a large white board hanging on a nearby wall with the current week's schedule scribbled in. It was a five-day slice out of the electronic master log, which covered the entire breadth of the project from start to projected finish. Broussard read through the list of that day's activities and did a double take.

  "Mike?"

  "Yo."

  "You've scheduled Jessie for FS-sub-40 simulations today."

  "That's right. Fore and aft."

  "But we ran those sims two weeks ago and she checked out fine."

  "Allan wants them run again."

  Broussard felt exasperated, and his bruised knuckles began to pain him. "Did you ask him why?"

  "No."

  "We're just wasting time duplicating work here. And, with James' bum leg, we're already behind schedule. It didn't occur to you to question why?" Two weeks earlier, James, the male MIT, had suffered damage to his pivot leg by non-lab personnel.

  Bautista shrugged. "Sorry, dude. That's above my pay grade. Oh, and coincidentally, I also don't give a crap."

  "You are priceless," Broussard replied through clenched jaws.

  He turned to leave and bumped chest-first into Connie Como, who had positioned her tall frame directly in back of him. Connie was a Georgetown-educated psychologist and a marriage and family therapist. She had been hand-picked by Dina to work on the MIT project just over a year ago. While no one was quite convinced that these credentials entitled her to carte blanche involvement with a product like the MITs, she did have some interesting ideas. And with her squeaky-clean image and her chairpersonship of Nevada's best known homeless advocacy group, she brought a badly needed ethics component to the Lab. And what she lacked in technical know-how, she more than made up for in thoughtful zeal for the tiny robots and their success in the marketplace.

  She was clutching a quart-sized cup of coffee. "Good afternoon, Neal." Her intro, as always, was pleasant and vaguely sexy.

  He tipped an imaginary hat. "Lady Como."

  That always brought a tiny smile to her lips. She was proud of her Italian heritage and (according to the water cooler dope) desperate to hook up with the best of the breed and start making miniature Comos. Broussard doubted that. The MITs were Connie's babies. And he always suspected that Connie's tastes ran more toward Eleanor Roosevelt types.

  "Why didn't you guys tell me about the new simulation run on Jessie today?" she whined.

  "I just found out about it myself today," he replied.

  "Well, when were you going to tell me about it? I have to monitor those tests."

  "Um, well I believe that I sent you an email about this."

  "When?"

  "About fifteen minutes ago."

  "I just got here fifteen minutes ago. What the hell are you guys trying to do to me here?"

  "Connie, it was posted on the master log."

  "I don't have access to the ML, remember?"

  "What?" Then he remembered. The pass codes were reset every month. There had been a hiccup in the main server, and it wasn't recognizing her computer's attempts to get onto the network. Bautista was supposed to have fixed that two days ago.

  "Right. Mike's working on that."

  She rolled her eyes. "Right. I'd like a print out of the ML for this week and for next week in my inbox before I leave today."

  "That's okay with me."

  "Then you'll do it?"

  "Hardly. Connie, I'm not your assistant. Ask Mike or Eric."

  "Mike and Eric won't do it. Never mind. I'll do it myself."

  "Sounds like a plan."

  Her mouth scrunched with irritation. "Mr. Spellman died."

  "Really? I'm sorry to hear that." Part of Connie's master plan to socialize the MITs was to take them on what Chang had dubbed "The Enlightened Dead Tour." Two military hospices in Port Arthur had agreed to let her and the bots visit confidentially with their doomed clients. It was Connie's thinking that individuals close to dying usually experienced hyper-clarity of thought, emotion and creativity, and that the robots would greatly benefit from exposure to humans whose minds were not gunked up with frantic, egocentric brain activity.

  "We were having a nice conversation about his old job and all of the struggles that he went through to keep it, and I had to take a call so I left and when I came back he was gone." He saw her mentally swerve to avoid a puddle of tears. "He was a real fighter, you know? He never gave up."

  He nodded with what he hoped looked like sympathy. Another geezer had bitten the dust. What of it? He was not a fan of The Enlightened Dead Tours. It exposed the MITs to people not trained to handle them properly—hence James's newly mangled leg—and to the very same infectious bugs that management was so paranoid about.

  She sipped her drink. "You headed upstairs?" she asked.

  "Yep. They're working on a fix for that bad leg. Wanna come with?"

  "Sure. Just let me grab my bag."

  "Okay. I'll meet you at the elevator."

  Broussard and Connie engaged in light chitchat while the elevator slowly slid its way up to the third floor. Broussard liked Connie. As senior personnel, she would have had access to his records and all of the gory details. Yet, she never appeared to be nervous in his presence, or hesitant about taking him to task on issues that they disagreed upon. She had once told him that she had fifteen relatives locked up at Lincoln Hills. All Chicago Mafioso. That, of course, was her trump card in any potentially dangerous situation.

  The elevator finally landed on the third floor. They took out their e-badges and waved them in front of the security scanner. A second later the thick door popped its lock and they entered.

  The third floor contained the guts of the MIT program. To the immediate right was the control room which was manned by Dwight Brees, the Lab's other technician. From there he could manipulate every camera, every movable surface, every computer, every robotic arm, every vent, and if necessary, override the MITs' autonomy program and gain access to the bots themselves. On the other side of another security door was the Lincoln School, a twelve-by-eighteen meter cavern. The learning bays were there as well as all of the educational and training equipment. Beyond that, another security door and another room with the same dimensions as the first. This area was known as Home. Essentially it was a minutely detailed mock-up of a real two-bedroom apartment. The kitchen and the bathrooms were fully functioning. The television worked and came with cable. There was a master bedroom and a smaller bedroom that the MITs shared, decorated with furniture and bedding dragged out of Dina's attic. Even the front door's doorbell was equipped with a soft chime.

  The last area was reached through the back door of the apartment's kitchen. Riding the apartment's rear hem was a brief porch and then almost one hundred square meters of lush garden. It was called the Backyard and, aside from the two-meter high perimeter wall that surrounded it, that was its sole purpose.

&
nbsp; Connie and Broussard waved "hi" to Brees and cleared the first security door. In an instant, the high energy in the room was working its magic on them.

  Broussard grinned. "Time to get to work!"

  The woman made a sweeping gesture. "After you!"

  They cleared a curtain of thick cables dangling from the ceiling and then stopped, taking in the scene before them.

  Two clusters of men and women were seated around two large training tables, set about two meters apart. Resting on top of each was a miniature treadmill. And on top of these James and Jessie MIT were walking the EZ course quite comfortably. The MITs (Mechanical Insect Tools for short) were being put through their warmup exercises. They resembled sleek tarantulas, which was intentional. The original design had been more ant-like, but Gus Hamilton, the head of the design team, had always felt that spiders were the best looking bunch in the insect world, and that this real life feature would help them commercialize the mechanical models better. However, there had been some concessions to human aesthetics. They had been given five legs instead of the typical (and unsettling) eight found on real spiders—two on either side and one in the back. And so as not to induce other arachnophobic reactions from the squeamish, Gus's boys had given them sharp ears, a rather feline face plate, and short, fuzzy tails inserted snugly above the rear pivot leg. They had also exaggerated their size a bit; with their legs fully extended they were almost thirty centimeters across. At a distance of about two meters it worked. The MITs resembled an exotic cat-spider hybrid. However, up close you saw the raw machinery involved, and the overall effect morphed into something quite alien but appealing, nonetheless.

  Connie quietly made a remark to Broussard about James's pivot leg. It no longer hung impotently from his body as it had been doing since the injury. Now, it stuck straight out at a ninety-degree angle. Obviously, there was still a problem.

  Broussard glanced upwards at the electronic comm board. While the bots had WYHIWTS (what-you-hear-is-what-they-say) voice-recognition software, they were not equipped with voice boxes. That was deemed a luxury item for a prototype. So while they could hear and decipher human speech, they could not directly speak to a person. Hence the comm board. The MITs had Wi-Fi capability and, amongst other things, were able to send and receive messages to senior staff via the control room's router. All conversations were automatically posted on the comm board for all to read. It was a rudimentary system, but it worked fine, just as long as the humans paid attention to the board.

  A large circle of green light lit up next to the comm board. One of the MITs was talking. The board read:

  J1mit: "No."

  On the opposite side of the comm board a blue circle of light came on. That meant that one of the staff was speaking.

  Mr. Crane: "James, you have only completed two minutes on the course. I want you to keep walking for another three minutes."

  The bot turned his angular head to face Hal Crane, a volunteer electrical engineer from IBM's AI division.

  J1mit: "No, Mr. Crane. My leg is broken. I can go home now."

  Mr. Crane: "James, how do you know that your leg is broken?"

  J1mit: "I can touch that it is broken."

  Mr. Crane: "James, you can feel that your leg is broken."

  J1mit: "And I can touch it is broken."

  The MIT raised his front right leg and poked the treadmill's OFF button. As soon as the tread stopped moving, he hopped off of it and onto the table. With his rear pivot leg sticking straight out, he looked ridiculous. Someone sniggered. The green light came on again.

  J1mit: "I am going home."

  Mr. Crane: "No, James. We are not finished."

  The bot sprang off the table and onto the other exercise table. Jessie, the other MIT, turned to look at him but kept up her pace on her treadmill. When James approached her, she, having the use of all five of her limbs, took a swipe at his face with her left foreleg. James scampered away and tried to leap off the table but landed in the arms of another technician instead.

  Van Walters, a tall, thin man, was standing between the two tables. He carried a clipboard and a sour expression. He looked up, saw Connie and Broussard and excused himself from several other staffers gathered close by. He welcomed the newcomers and escorted them back to the control room area.

  Walters spoke first. "Well, as you can see, we've got some bad news. But we've also got some good news."

  "We see the bad news," Broussard said. "How about the good news?"

  "Fine." He stole a peek at his watch. "There's nothing physically wrong with James's leg. So I guess that lets Engineering off the hook."

  Broussard's eyes narrowed.

  "I ran some diagnostics and," the man continued, "it looks like it may be a neural problem."

  Connie sucked in her breath. "Van, is it serious?"

  "No, I don't think so. The bots use roughly fifty-five percent of their computing power just manipulating their legs properly. So we compensated for that brain drain by shifting more functions to the FRAP microprocessors that operate the legs. Unfortunately, these guys aren't strong enough to do their jobs on their own. If they become overloaded, they can leech some juice from the master chip. In theory that should work, but they're just sucking too much energy from it and it's causing overheating. We'll have to either re-jigger the FRAPs or create a sub mother board. One that's just dedicated to handling leg functions."

  "Which is cheaper?" Broussard asked.

  Walters stroked the sides of his moustache. "If we create a sub-master, then it's going to have to also be configured to be a governor between the microprocessors in the legs and the master chip. That'll be one helluva job. I'm thinking that it'll be cheaper to bump up the power of the microprocessors."

  "Maybe we can bring it up in today's meeting," Broussard said, already deep in thought.

  Walters smiled briskly. "Okay, then. I'll see you both later at the apartment?"

  Broussard and Connie nodded.

  Broussard took his leave of Connie and went looking for Chang. He found him lounging by the photocopier, sipping tea and staring at a piece of paper covered with equations and red ink.

  "Good morning," he said with as much cheer as he could muster.

  Chang looked up from his reading. Allan Chang wore a solemn, I-understand-all-and-I-am-at-peace-with-it expression on his face ninety-nine percent of the time. However, this morning he just looked downright miserable. "Neal."

  Broussard gestured towards the paper in his hand. "I hope that isn't making its way to the staff meeting."

  "Hardly. It's Allan Junior's midterm paper."

  "Oh. How'd he do?"

  "F ... minus. He didn't get one answer right. The teacher told me that he would have given him a G if he could have." He stared stony-faced at the accusing paper. "It would be easier to take if he was just goofing off, but he puts real sweat and tears into this ... so it's a little heartbreaking." Both Chang and his wife, Hillary, had both been scholar athletes during college. Their three children were anything but, so yeah, the situation was probably a little more than a tad depressing. Broussard felt bad for him. Although the man was fairly anal, he occasionally colored outside the lines, and that made him more interesting than most managers.

  "Maybe it's just the test that's spooking him," Broussard offered. "Some kids just aren't good under pressure."

  "He's no whiz at his homework either."

  Broussard felt that he should say something comforting. "Sometimes children disappoint." He nervously cleared his throat.

  Chang did not respond.

  Broussard quickly switched gears. "Um, a couple of things. Mike's scheduled to run the flat surface sims that we ran on Jessie two weeks ago."

  "Yes. No problems there. I'd like another run with a new module."

  "Oh? I didn't see anything posted on the master log."

  "I'm going to post it after the pre-meeting."

  "Okay. Do we have time for this? The run, I mean. Van's still working on James." Broussard
knew that he appeared to be questioning his judgment, but it could not be helped.

  "We're fine." He took a sip of his tea. "We've got a small break in the schedule coming up soon. I'll discuss it more at the pre-meeting."

  "Also," Broussard added quickly, "Eric's bugging me about using a new vendor for the rotor. I'm okay with taking a look at the part, but these guys want to supply the entire motor."

  "I know. I'll talk to Eric about that later." He gathered his things. "I'll see you in the conference room."

  Broussard snuck back to his desk and tidied up some paperwork.

  "Neal!" That was Bautista. "Let's go!"

  He glanced at the wall clock. It was already two-thirty! The meeting was happening now. He grabbed his laptop, refilled his coffee cup, and fell in behind Bautista and Powell. Walters and Connie met them at the door, and the four of them entered the conference room together and sat down.

  Chang whisked into the conference room and began to speak immediately.

  "Good afternoon. Thank you all for coming." He passed out copies of the pre-meeting agenda. "There are several items listed here. I don't want to keep you here too long, so I'll just run through this quick. Well, as most of you have probably heard, Dina and I are meeting with Warden Davidson tomorrow morning. It seems that one of our esteemed senators isn't thrilled with the idea of giving tax payers' dollars to fund prison rehab programs—like the MIT—at a time when the state's budget is swimming in red ink. The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is requiring all state prisons to now provide quarterly progress reports on their professional workshop programs."

  "Are they looking to shut down the program?" Powell asked.

  "No, nothing like that as far as I can tell. They want to incorporate this data into a formalized budget. They also want some kind of idea as to when MIT will be up and running. And the sooner the better."

  "Why?" Broussard asked. "This is just another rehab program. Why do they care?"

  Chang rocked back on his heels as he appeared to choose his next words carefully. "Yes, that's correct. But this particular program comes with a rather hefty price tag, and consequently the expectation of a rather healthy return on investment."

  They all looked around at each other with the same quizzical expressions on their faces.

  "We've been getting a few nibbles of interest from a couple of investors back east."

  "Really?" That was Van Walters.

  "Yeah," Chang responded. "Pretty neat, huh?"

  "Are they interested in MIT or us?"

  Chang's eyes skidded sharply to the right. "Um, they want to take a look at the MITs."

  Walters shrugged. "Well, let's set up a meeting."

  "Well, of course. But initially Davidson and I will be piloting the ship. There's a lot of sparring involved that I'm sure none of you is interested in. Besides, at this point it's just an inquiry on their part. When things look more definite, we'll be bringing some of the staff into the mix."

  Walters made a note on his pad. "Can you get us some names?"

  "Um, sure, I guess. But Davidson is the contact person here, and so I'd like to ask you all to let him handle this as this situation develops. If it develops." He granted the group a quick and reassuring smile which made everyone instantly suspicious.

  "What's Dina's take on all this?" Connie asked.

  "Dina's willing to go along with anything that will further PPP. She's excited."

  Walters held up his pencil. "One more question: Are these guys legit or are they just flirting with us?"

  Chang shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine, Van. We'll just have to wait and see."

  Van Walters was the Laboratory's very own Silicon Valley computer scientist. He, Broussard and Bautista had all been transferred from California due to overcrowding in that state's prison system. Walters had started out his legitimate career as a mechanical engineer like Broussard, but they were hardly in the same league. Walters was a true Renaissance Man. Graduating from MIT at the age of twenty as a dual major in mechanical and electrical engineering, he received his master's and then his doctorate in computer science. After a brief stint in a bluegrass band, he had then moved his parents to Silicon Valley after accepting an offer to work first as a test engineer for Bell Technologies in Cupertino, and then as a research scientist at the Advanced Research and Technologies division of IBM in San Jose, where it was rumored that he was pulling down nine hundred thousand dollars per year plus bonuses. By the age of thirty he was living the kind of life that most engineers could only hallucinate about. There were fast cars, even faster women, and insane amounts of money. The Van Walters Show stayed sizzling hot until he was arrested by the Feds for fraud and tax evasion. The latest and greatest techno Wunderkind was now calling the state penitentiary home and hoping, praying like every other common felon, to be able to pull off one last dazzling move: Escape!

  Walters leaned forward. "I hate to state the obvious here, but we are not 'employees' of Lincoln Hills. And in any case, any idea or invention that we create at the Lab is our intellectual property, and only we have the legal right to negotiate with outside parties about product sale and-or distribution."

  Irritation crept across Chang's face. "I don't believe that is correct, Van. Please refer to your Lab Agreement. Lincoln Hills is a privately held correctional facility, and its bylaws concerning the ownership of intellectual property, whether it originates from an employee or an inmate, are quite clear."

  Walters's tone became more crisp. "They cannot supersede the state's laws concerning intellectual property, and last year Nevada passed a law stating that any inmate in a state-sanctioned prison rehabilitation program has the same intellectual property rights as a college student who creates what's called a 'scholarly work.'"

  Walters had obviously been keeping up to date on current events, but if Allan was impressed he did not show it. "Yes, but based on your signed agreement with Lincoln, you forfeited those rights when you entered the PPP."

  Walters was on a roll now. He loved a good argument. "No way! Any facility operating in the Nevada penal system can only have a maximum of twenty-five percent ownership in an inmate's work. The rest is his. That's state law. Now any profits from that work are subject to garnishment if a crime victim or a close relative of a crime victim has a filed claim against his estate."

  Chang was starting to look peeved. "Look, I'm giving you Davidson's spin on this, not mine—" He gestured to the rest of them now. "—but feel free to consult with your attorneys about this. If indeed the law has changed in your favor, then you've got a legal leg to stand on and no worries."

  Walters flashed him a polite smirk and settled into his chair.

  "Anyway," Chang continued, "Neal and I will sit down in a couple of weeks and put together projected costs and timelines. Joe Hanson and I are actually going to be flying out to meet with these guys next week, so the shop will be closed until I get back on the twenty-third."

  Joe Hanson was Lincoln's new president of its Education Oversight Committee and a big name out of UC Berkeley. If he was going, then whatever Lincoln and these 'investors' were up to must be something a tad more serious than mere flirting.

  Connie raised her hand. "They do know that the MIT is a toy, right?"

  "I believe that they are aware of that," Chang replied. "Okay. Item two: I'm sure that most of you are familiar with FOVOC, Families of Victims of Crimes."

  Most of them nodded.

  "Well, they are also apparently not a little unhappy that not only are we quote-unquote providing jobs for criminals in a slack economy, but that they aren't seeing any payoff in it for them."

  "Whoa! Excuse me." That was Bautista. "I'm confused. PPP is just something to keep us busy so that we don't cut each other's throats, right?"

  Chang took a step backwards. "At the end of the day, that's the goal. But during the day we have to attend to business. Uh, Item Two is directly connected to Item One. Dina and I and Warden Davidson are pushing towards making
MIT profitable. Not just for you, but for the prison ... for society."

  Broussard presented a tight smile. "And for FOVOC."

  Chang's eyes met his. "All things considered, that's more than a reasonable expectation. Under state law, any monies earned by a convicted felon can be disbursed to their victims or to their victim's surviving family members. To date, MIT has cost Northern Nevada taxpayers four hundred thousand dollars and produced zero profit. And that's with Dina's foundation doing the heavy lifting. We're hoping to change that."

  Walters started to speak but Chang cut him off. "I know. You are not Lincoln Hills employees. But all of you are here by choice, and right now the taxpayers and FOVOC are footing all the bills. We would like to ease some of their burdens. I understand that there are some fuzzy edges here legally. Again, my advice is to get legal counsel."

  He let that bit of news hang in the air for a moment or two before continuing.

  "Anyhoo, while we investigate the validity of what we're hearing from ... these particular interested parties, Warden Davidson would like to extend an invitation to the local media to visit us here at the Lab and see what we're up to. Let them see how the money is being spent and how our work might benefit the community down the road. It will be our own little glasnost."

  Powell spoke up. "Are we letting them see the MITs?"

  "No, no," Chang replied. "We'll just give them some face time, maybe do a couple of human interest-type interviews with any of you who want to participate, and let them have some pics of the Lab. All very general stuff. Dina's got a PR guy coming out next month to brief us on what to say."

  Broussard glanced at the clock. It was now three o'clock.

  Chang looked around the room. "So. Any volunteers?"

  Silence.

  He swung his gaze in Broussard's direction. "Neal? You game?"

  Broussard put on his best eager-beaver face. "Sure. Why not?"

  "Anybody else?"

  Bautista coughed into his hand. "I'm in."

  Chang turned to Walters. "Van?"

  "Screw 'em."

  "Okay. Eric?"

  "Ditto."

  Connie raised her hand. "I'd be happy to do an interview. Just schedule me in the afternoon."

  "Great. Thanks, Connie. Okay, the third and last item. Let's see if we can get James and Jessie out for their first field test in ...." he fiddled with his watch's calendar. "Eight weeks. That would put us at October 10th."

  Bautista snorted. "You dreaming, man."

  Chang stood and gathered his papers. "My father always taught me to dream big."

  "Yeah, dream big, not crazy. The Outdoor runs are only seventy percent completed, we've got James laid up with that busted leg—"

  Chang gave a curt bow. "Thank you," he said, and exited the conference room.

  Bautista twisted in his chair to glare at his receding backside. "Hey, that was friggin' rude! He didn't even let me finish my—"

  Walters parachuted down right in front of him. "Neal, you got a minute?"

  Broussard thought about it. "Not really. I need to get a few balls rolling before I leave today."

  "I just need a minute."

  He scooped up his computer. "Okay. Let's talk on the way back to my cube."

  Walters spent ten precious minutes bending Broussard's ear about the idea of the two of them forming a corporation and producing MIT knock-offs in Taiwan. He had contacts. He knew a guy in Jersey who would be willing to put up half the seed money. Broussard would only have to come up with maybe thirty large to get the wheels turning. And maybe Broussard could run this by Dina ...

  Broussard managed to get away from him. He joined the gathering Home crew at the scrub room. The bots had Socialization scheduled on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from three-thirty to five pm. Socialization consisted of theater with the MITs. James and Jessie would be exposed to an ersatz suburban home, complete with human 'parents,' familial affections, chores, video games, family pets, play time, and indistinct instruction. With the bots immersed in a series of unstructured events, emotion-based and randomized, Connie reasoned that the Lab would be creating the best possible platform for future adaptive behaviors, with an eye towards making the next gen of MITs companion-and-service robots. In any case, early acclimation to the joys and vagaries of real home life would no doubt serve to increase the MITs' tenure as alpha toy in the household to which they were sold. With the exception of Allan Chang, all senior staff were required to play a role. Bautista was a next-door neighbor. Walters, Powell, and Broussard were fraternal uncles. Connie was an older sister, and husband-and-wife prison guards, Dana and Sharon Zyck, had been recruited to play the central characters of the parents. Although no one would go on record as saying it, Socialization had proven to be the most enjoyable part of the MIT program for the prisoners. For ninety minutes, the convicts could indulge in a make-believe world that mimicked aspects of real life that for them were quickly becoming misted memories.

  Once everyone had arrived at the scrub station, the staff began their second cleanse. They washed up in shifts of two. As before, that almost ethereal calm descended upon them, rendering all life mute and emotionally neutral. Lately Broussard had begun to wonder about that feeling—it was almost like a presence. No. A Presence. Earthy and mystical, like a third-world deity, musty with age. Enormous diaphanous wings flapped rhythmically in the mind's eye. Chulyen carrying his bag of magic.

  Connie was drying her hands. "Dana called. They're running ten minutes behind schedule."

  Bautista groaned. "Great."

  The Zycks, being the parents, would have to be settled into the apartment before the bots could be brought back home from school. It meant that the others would have to wait.

  Exactly ten minutes later the security door flew open and in popped the Zycks, flushed and breathless and still wearing their uniforms.

  "Sorry, guys!" Dana Zyck was puffing hard. His wife, Sharon, was sporting a bruised eye that was just beginning to swell. " We had to defuse a JK dust-up in Ward A."

  "Oh, my gosh!" Connie exclaimed. "Are you sure you guys want to do this today? We can reschedule."

  But the Zycks were already pulling off their uniforms. "No, no," Dana Zyck replied. "Just give us a minute to change and wash. But maybe you could get some ice for Sharon's eye?"

  "No problem," Broussard replied. "I'll call Mike and tell him to bring some in."

  Connie steered Mrs. Zyck towards the back of the room and began to chat her up. The men paid them no mind; to them it was the usual 'chick gab': "Hey, I was checking out your mascara when you came in. Oh-my-gosh, it really does sparkle!" "Where did you buy it?" "Oh, you like it? You know, we were in Chicago visiting my brother last month for his twentieth wedding anniversary, and we went down to Navy Pier and ..." "It makes your eyes look ten years younger!"

  Mr. Zyck feigned interest in their conversation for about fifteen seconds and then busied himself with his Papa MIT costume. Broussard was standing nearby.

  "Hey," he told Mr. Zyck, "thanks for coming out today. We really appreciate it."

  Zyck hoisted the denim pants up around his belly. "Anytime. We both enjoy working with the kids." The Zycks were childless, and were bringing some of their pent up parenting urges to the job, which suited the program just fine.

  Zyck suddenly let out a loud A-CHOO!

  Without thinking, Broussard grabbed a box of tissues and tossed it at the officer. A split second later, Zyck had both hands free and his baton out.

  Broussard instantly threw up his hands. "No trouble here, officer."

  Zyck patted him down with his eyes and then put the club away. "Okay."

  Broussard lowered his hands. "My mistake." He took a step backwards. "I want you to know that I would never do anything to jeopardize my work here." He had to force the next words to come out. "I would never hurt anyone."

  Zyck shrugged noncommittally. "Okay. Good to know."

  Broussard felt awkward and cleared his throat to give his words more tr
action. "I suppose you've heard that before."

  Zyck's brown eyes twinkled. "Nope. That's why we carry the Brunos." He lovingly patted his club. And then he gave Broussard a meaningful look. "Don't sweat it, chief," he said, and gave the engineer's left shoulder a friendly clutch.

  Mrs. Zyck and Connie rejoined them. Connie wore a kooky expression on her face. "What crazy law of shopping physics says that all the really cute stuff has already been purchased by somebody else two years ago and five hundred kilometers away?"

  Within fifteen minutes the Zycks were comfortably settled into the apartment while the others waited offstage in a large closet outside the front door for their stage cues. Mr. Zyck fell into his leather recliner like he meant it, switched on the television, and ordered Sharon to get him a beer from the fridge. A minute later the front doorbell rang and Dwight Brees, an MIT cradled in each arm, was welcomed in.

  "Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Mitt," Brees cheerily greeted the couple, handing over James to Sharon and Jessie to Dana. Brees's official role in the play was of School Employee; his job was simply to bring the robots home from school. Sharon asked him if he'd like some lemonade, Brees politely refused and told him that he had to return to the school. Kisses and coos followed as the bots settled into their parents' cushy laps. James and Jessie simultaneously rotated their heads up about thirty degrees and fastened their eyes on the huge faces floating above them. Normally James would tolerate about a minute of this before he started to squirm. When that happened, Sharon would set him down on the floor and the bot would take off to explore the apartment's nooks and crannies. Today was no different. He made a beeline for the kitchen and disappeared. Well, not quite. There were twenty cameras in the apartment, and there weren't many places that a bot could totally hide. The feed from each camera could be viewed by the main control room and the satellite control booth in the large closet where the team was now waiting. Camera nineteen caught James scuttling past. Camera twenty showed him stopped in front of the wall furnace, motionless.

  Dana stroked Jessie, who was now in the resting position, her pivot leg retracted.

  "You been a good girl?" he asked. "Huh? You been a good girl today, Jessie?"

  Sharon leaned over and smooched the top of Jessie's head. "Of course she has. She's always a good girl. Isn't that right?"

  Jessie turned her head to look at Sharon with unblinking eyes.

  "I think that maybe she's tired, Dana. Jessie, do you want to go to your room?"

  The apartment was not equipped with a comm board, but the MITs did have two small comm lights embedded in their foreheads. Green meant "Yes" and red meant "No."

  Jessie answered "no."

  The front doorbell rang.

  Sharon stood. "I'll get it. I wonder who it could be."

  She stood in front of the door and peered out through the peephole. "It's Connie!" she cried, overacting just a bit.

  Sharon swung open the door, and Connie, dressed in blue jeans and carrying a loaded book bag, was standing there grinning.

  "Hi, Mom!

  "Connie!" The two women embraced. "What a surprise! I didn't think that you would be coming home until next week!"

  Connie strolled in and set down her bag. "Well, I finished up all of my homework, and so I thought that I would come home early to see my family. Hi, Dad!"

  She walked over to Dana Zyck and gave him a big hug.

  "Hey! How's my big girl?"

  "Just fine, Dad." Connie turned her attention to Jessie. "And how's my favorite little sister?"

  Jessie stood up and extended her pivot leg. That was a programmed greeting.

  Connie gave the little robot a peck on the side of her face plate. "Did you miss me, Jessie?"

  Jessie answered "yes." Then the pivot tail was retracted and the resting position assumed again. This was not desired behavior. Ninety percent of the MITs' neural programming was identical to each other. The remaining ten percent contained what Walters had termed fractal subroutines. The fractals were in essence variable programming of likes, dislikes, desires, motivations, and preferences, but written by female programmers for the Jessie robot and male programmers for the James robot. It was expected that James would be more active than Jessie, but Jessie's consistent lack of physical motivation was well below the curve and was beginning to cause some consternation amongst the staff.

  The doorbell rang again. This time it was Uncle Neal (Broussard) and Uncle Eric (Powell) stopping by for a visit after Work. Mr. Zyck called out to James. "James, get in here, boy! Your Uncle Neal and your Uncle Eric are here!"

  Camera twenty showed the MIT still positioned in front of the wall furnace. He had not budged an inch.

  Zyck sighed. "Well, I guess he's busy."

  Jessie's comm light came on. "No." The MITs could also communicate with and track each other via their own GPS systems. They could even access each other's eye cameras. In effect, see what each other was seeing. And Jessie could see that James was definitely not busy.

  The female MIT was not capable of humor, but her response was amusing nonetheless.

  Dad and Mom MIT, Connie, Uncle Eric, and Uncle Neal began to make small talk. Usually these conversations were mostly factual, as the robots would not really be able to discern the difference between real or imagined events. Also, it freed the team from having to use precious time and energy making up story lines and characters and just focus on crafting the bonds between the humans and the robots.

  "We had some real nasty traffic on the way to work this morning," Mrs. Zyck said.

  "Accident?" Connie asked.

  "No," Dana responded. "They had a big Whistler rally last night in Reno, and I guess we ran into the stragglers."

  "A Whistler rally?" Broussard asked. "That sounds vaguely familiar. What is it?"

  "Haven't you heard?" Mrs. Zyck was openly astonished. "Ever since that riot in San Francisco a few months back, people have been flocking to these things. They're like town meetings. With a lot of cursing."

  "Oh. What's their beef?"

  "I guess they want the government to do something about all the crime and unemployment."

  "Hillbillies?" Powell asked.

  Connie crossed her legs. "One of my professors from graduate school attended a Whistler rally, and she hardly qualifies as a 'hillbilly.'"

  Sharon Zyck was nodding. "A lot of folks from our church back home are going. Dana and I were thinking about it, but we heard some things about what goes on at these meetings ... you know, kinda off-key stuff ... and we decided not to go."

  Mr. Zyck picked at a piece of lint on his creased pants. "The government should be paying attention to this. People have changed." He flicked something into the air. "The mood isn't good out there."

  It was now four-thirty. The time for irrelevant chatter was over. The MITs now claimed everyone's attention.

  Jessie, perhaps responding to an unsynchronized timer, suddenly stood up. Unexplainably, she perched herself on Dana's knees and prepared to leap off when her right leg was tripped by a rumple in his pants and she pitched forward onto the floor below. Everyone gasped in surprise. The robot somehow landed on her back and she began to frantically wave her legs in the vain attempt to flip right side up.

  The entire scene struck Dana Zyck's funny bone hard and he guffawed with laughter

  Sharon Zyck shushed her husband. "Honey, don't laugh! Help her up!"

  Mr. Zyck leaned over and picked up the struggling bot, careful not to touch the delicate solar plating on her back. He placed Jessie on his lap again and once again she dived off onto the floor. Only this time her forward momentum carried her beyond her target on the carpet and she went careening into a leg of the coffee table.

  This time Dana Zyck laughed so hard he had tears in his eyes.

  Jessie scrambled to her feet. James hurried in from the kitchen.

  Camera one caught the next scene.

  Both James and Jessie were standing next to each other, facing Dana Zyck. The MITs began to rhythmically ro
ck their flat bodies from side to side.

  Connie nudged Broussard. "Look." She was pointing at James.

  The male MIT's hyper-extended pivot leg was now back in the normal, default position, the tiny foot pad pressed firmly against the floor.

  Dana Zyck stopped laughing.

  It was now five o'clock.