Friendly Face, page 15
“Okay, class, let’s get started on today’s …” Mr. Thornton said. He gestured at the cartload of robotic characters he’d just dragged in and grinned sideways at the class. “What we have here is a vintage animatronic bonanza!” He uttered one of his rare laughs.
Jessica winced. She was glad his laughs were rare; he sounded like a tortured mouse when he laughed.
Mr. Thornton sobered. “None of these animatronics function at the moment, but every one of them is capable of … You’ll partner up, and each partnership will get one of these to work on, so it will be … You’ll have two jobs to do. First, do whatever is needed so your animatronic will function as it’s supposed to, and second, program it so it performs some specific task. You will then either have it perform for the class or videotape it if the function is done outside of class where we can’t … Each one of these has something to teach us, so let’s …”
He moved over to the cart and pulled out one of the small dog robots. It wore a yellow dog sweater.
“This dog is an example of an animatronic that uses servos, and we all know that servos are controlled by …” Mr. Thornton looked out over the top of the class and pushed his glasses up onto his nose. “Anyone?”
Mindy raised her hand. “Servos are controlled by sending an electrical pulse through the control wire.”
“Good,” Mr. Thornton said.
Jessica rolled her eyes.
“When a servo goes bad,” Mr. Thornton continued, “it’s usually because of one of seven problems we discussed yesterday. Does anyone want to give us a review of …”
He pointed at Cindy when her hand shot up. “Contamination, like from oil or coolant; bad bearings; electrical degradation; poor installation, like the belts are too tight or couplings are worn out; a bad power supply or drive; damaged cables; or overload.”
“Good,” Mr. Thornton said. “So, this dog”—he set the animatronic dog on his desk—“has a bad servo. Cindy, you and Mindy can take this.”
Cindy and Mindy clapped their hands like five-year-olds. Mr. Thornton grinned at a spot above their heads and set the dog on the table in front of them.
Mr. Thornton turned to the cart and grabbed the orangutan, a goat, and a cat. “More servo issues with these. Let’s see who …”
Mr. Thornton parceled out the robotic animals.
Brittany leaned close to Jessica and whispered, “Do we want to work on a servo problem?”
Jessica shrugged. “Whatever.”
Mr. Thornton returned to the front of the class after handing out several of the mechanical animals. “Although servos have a lot of pros in terms of their functionality,” Mr. Thornton said, stopping by the cart, “there can be noise issues with …” He reached out and grabbed the animatronic flamingo. He activated it, and when it moved its legs, the mechanism screeched. Mr. Thornton turned it off. “Pneumatic setups, by comparison, are fairly quiet and …” He got up and approached the cart.
Wrestling with the exoskeletons and human-shaped animatronics, Mr. Thornton unburied the pig at the bottom of what was left of the pile. Now that it was lying on its back on the cart, alone, Jessica could clearly see the pig’s pink potbelly, stubby legs, and sweetly smiling face. The mechanical pig was old; Jessica could see glinting silver showing through the pig’s pink felt layer here and there.
Mr. Thornton gestured at the prone pig. “Meet Rosie Porkchop. Rosie has a pneumatic system, which means she can lift a lot more weight than her fellow … She has a lot of pressure pumping through her lines, so she has quite a bit of potential, but her programming is … Obviously, she’s too heavy to move, except on this cart. Whoever gets her will have to come back in the evenings to work on her, so …”
Jessica nudged Brittany and hissed, “Don’t look at him.”
They’d already had to do one after-hours project this year, and she didn’t want to—
“Jessica and Brittany, you two get Rosie.”
Jessica and Brittany groaned in unison.
“Now let’s get the rest of these passed … ,” Mr. Thornton said.
Brittany whispered to Jessica. “Seriously? We have to come back here this evening and work on a pig?”
Jessica rolled her eyes. Maybe she didn’t like robotics class after all.
* * *
When Jessica and Brittany returned to the robotics classroom after cheerleading practice, freshly showered and once again wearing their school outfits, they found Mr. Thornton at his desk and Rosie, on the cart by herself, at the back of the room.
Mr. Thornton looked up and gazed just past Jessica’s shoulder. “There you are. I put Rosie at the back for you to work … Sorry she’s too big to remove from the school, but … I had to assign her to a team I could trust to stay after-hours so I could get administrative approval for you to be in here for …” He waved a hand toward Rosie. “She’s all yours.”
Jessica and Brittany exchanged a glance, sighed in unison, and went to the back of the class. Together, they set down their leather backpacks. Jessica reached into hers, grabbed her lip gloss, and touched up her lips. Brittany did the same.
They stood together and looked at the pig.
“Uh, girls?” Mr. Thornton called out.
They turned. He waved a thin stack of papers at them. “Here are some specs that came with Rosie when she … You’ll want to take a look at them. She’s not your typical animatronic, and she has a characteristic that it’s important for you …”
Jessica strode over and took the papers. “We’ll read everything, like, super carefully,” she said.
Mr. Thornton nodded. “I’ll be here for a little while longer if you have any questions for …”
“Thanks, Mr. Thornton.”
Jessica returned to Brittany and dropped the papers on the table next to Rosie. Neither girl looked at them. They returned to looking at the pig.
“It’s so, like, big,” Brittany said. She sighed.
Jessica nodded. She glared at the huge pig.
The sound of dual giggles suddenly burst into the room behind Jessica and Brittany. They turned and watched Cindy and Mindy skip over to Mr. Thornton. Mindy carried the dog animatronic they were working on.
“Why did they get, like, a small one?” Brittany asked.
Jessica shook her head. She watched the little brats chatter with Mr. Thornton. Then she turned and looked at Rosie. She looked back at the brats and then back to Rosie.
She grinned and nudged Brittany.
“Picture this,” Jessica whispered. She held her hands out in front of her like she was framing a screen. “Little Mindy and Cindy”—she jerked her head to indicate the two girls who were still talking with the teacher—“are walking into the homecoming dance, like they’re all that. They’re like, ‘We don’t care if anyone likes us. We like ourselves.’ ” In a continued whisper, she mimicked Mindy’s chipmunk voice.
Brittany made a face and nodded.
“And along comes our new BFF Rosie Porkchop, large and in charge.” Jessica held out her arms to indicate the animatronic pig’s size. “She’s been programmed, by us, of course, to walk right up to those two little twerps, knock them down, and … “—she grinned—” sit on them.”
Brittany laughed loudly, and Jessica shushed her. Brittany covered her mouth, then hugged Jessica. “That’s brilliant!” she whispered. “Is that the task we’ll give her, like, for our project?”
Jessica rolled her eyes. “We should probably have her do something that won’t get us in trouble, don’t you think?”
Brittany blushed and nodded.
“But this might be more fun than I thought it was going to be,” Jessica said.
“For sure,” Brittany agreed.
Jessica opened her backpack and pulled out her laptop. “I don’t think this should take very long. We just need to download her command software and go over it until we find her glitch, and then we can tweak it to do what we want her to do.”
Brittany nodded but frowned. “Um, you do know, like, we suck at programming, right?”
Jessica shrugged. “Yeah, but that’ll give us a nice alibi later. We can say we have no idea what went wrong with the programming, what made Rosie go crazy and knock them over or spill punch on them or whatever. And besides, it’s the complicated programming stuff we always get wrong. This is just basic programming of voice commands, right?”
She pulled up a seat and placed it next to Rosie’s front end. Sitting with her legs perfectly crossed, Jessica lifted the flap that hid Rosie’s controls. “First, we just need to create the uplink, and then …” She pressed a button.
A soft puff, followed by a series of metallic clicks and snaps that preceded a louder whoosh, and both girls jumped when Rosie’s lower belly popped open.
“What did you do?” Brittany asked. “Is she going to, like, have babies?”
Jessica laughed, but then she shrugged. What if there were animatronic piglets inside Rosie? Even with the mechanisms that she must have had inside her exoskeleton, Rosie certainly was big enough to store at least a dozen of them, if not more.
After exchanging a glance, Jessica and Brittany both bent over to peer into Rosie’s belly.
Expecting to see a full system of hydraulics—and possibly a few baby pigs, Jessica raised her eyebrow when she saw that Rosie’s belly was, for the most part, empty. A network of metal gears, prongs, and sharp-looking rods—presumably powered by hydraulics—lined the interior wall of the pig’s belly, but the vast majority of the cavernous space was totally open … and big enough to hold a person, maybe two at most.
Jessica stared into Rosie Porkchop’s depths. She grinned and leaned back.
Glancing up at Mr. Thornton, who was still focused on his laptop, Jessica tugged on Brittany’s hand. Brittany turned to look at Jessica.
“I have an even better idea than my original one,” Jessica whispered.
“What?” Brittany whispered back.
Jessica hummed as she picked up the papers Mr. Thornton had handed her and began to skim through them. Brittany looked over her shoulder.
Flipping pages, Jessica reached a section titled “General Operation.” Under that was a paragraph in bold:
ROSIE PORKCHOP IS A DUAL-PURPOSE ANIMATRONIC. THE SYSTEM CAN BE ENGAGED IN TRADITIONAL ANIMATRONIC MODE AND ALSO IN HUMAN INTERFACE OR “SUIT” MODE, I.E., ROSIE CAN BE “WORN” LIKE A SUIT.
There was more, but Jessica’s gaze flicked down the page to the word WARNING, which was followed by a paragraph of bold red writing. Jessica quickly read through it:
ROSIE PORKCHOP CONTAINS SPRINGLOCKS. SPRINGLOCKS ENGAGE TO ALLOW ROSIE PORKCHOP TO FUNCTION AUTONOMOUSLY, IN ANIMATRONIC MODE. WHEN ENGAGED, METAL COMPONENTS FILL THE ENTIRE INTERIOR OF THE ANIMATRONIC. ROSIE PORKCHOP CAN ALSO BE WORN AS A SUIT; THIS IS CALLED HUMAN INTERFACE MODE. WHEN ROSIE PORKCHOP IS IN HUMAN INTERFACE MODE, THE SPRINGLOCKS DISENGAGE AND RETRACT INTO ROSIE’S ENDOSKELETON. DO NOT SWITCH MODES WHILE ROSIE PORKCHOP IS OCCUPIED. SHARP COMPONENTS OF THE SPRINGLOCK SYSTEM CAN CAUSE SERIOUS BODILY HARM.
She grinned and looked at Brittany. “Guess what?”
“What?”
“Rosie can be occupied.”
“So?”
Jessica didn’t answer. She quickly glanced through Rosie’s upload instructions.
While she did that, Cindy and Mindy called out, “Bye, Mr. Thornton.”
Jessica and Brittany turned to watch the little redheads skip out of the classroom. Jessica glanced at Mr. Thornton; his gaze was on his laptop.
Jessica dropped the papers, grabbed Brittany’s hand, and pulled her close. She whispered, “So forget what I said before. I have a better idea.”
“What?”
Jessica glanced again at Mr. Thornton. He was still concentrating on his computer. Even so, she turned her back and kept her voice low. “Rosie’s pneumatic system powers that trapdoor, and it’s designed to be a hermetic seal.”
Brittany frowned a question.
“You know, those seals that keep in anything.”
“Oh, right.”
“The instructions said something about using Rosie as a container for something.” She waved a hand. “I don’t know. I didn’t read it closely. But here’s what I’m thinking.” She scooted her chair closer to Brittany’s. “Those two little snots think they can come to the homecoming dance. Well, they’re coming all right, but not in their ruffled little dresses. They’re coming in her.” She pointed at Rosie Porkchop, specifically at Rosie’s gaping belly.
Brittany looked at Rosie’s empty stomach and slowly started to grin. “We’re going to stick them in there?”
Jessica shook her head. “We aren’t. We’ll have Rosie do it. It will serve them right. They’ll be all like, ‘We do everything together,’ from inside Rosie Porkchop!”
“Oh, that’s, like, inspired!” Brittany said.
“I know, right?”
Brittany nodded, her eyes bright. “This is going to be so savage!”
Jessica grinned. “All we have to do is program Rosie to grab the little snots and put them into her belly. Once they’re in, this door will close.” She pointed to the pink door that hung open under Rosie’s belly. She tapped it. “See? It has the soft sealed fabric stuff on the outside, but it’s hard metal on the inside. Once it’s locked and sealed, they won’t be able to get out.” She grinned. “They’ll be trapped together.”
Brittany nodded again. “I love it.”
Jessica smiled. “Good. Me too.” She sighed. “There’s just one problem.”
“What?”
“It’s going to take us a while.” Jessica reached into Rosie’s control panel and pulled out a clump of wires. “How about I just get the uplink going and then we can go have burgers with the guys? After that, we’ll come back here and spend the evening programming Rosie.”
“Okay.”
Jessica opened her laptop and connected the upload wire. She handed another wire to Brittany. “Plug that into the wall. I guess she has to charge, too.”
Brittany nodded and dutifully plugged in the pig. Then she watched Jessica create an uplink with Rosie. Jessica noticed Brittany examining her nails again, then saw her friend stand to get her backpack.
Brittany snapped her fingers and sat back down.
“What?” Jessica asked.
“When I reached for my backpack, I had an idea. Instead of just”—she lowered her voice to a whisper—“trapping them, why don’t we program Rosie to serve us while they’re stuck inside? That will make Mindy and Cindy like our own ladies’ maid. They can be our servant, like, fetching things for us and waiting on us.”
“Like royalty,” Jessica said, beaming. “You’re so good!”
Brittany took a bow. She looked at Mr. Thornton, who had stood up at his desk. “Hurry up and get everything going. I can’t wait to do this!”
“Me neither!” Jessica grinned and returned to her task. This was why she loved Brittany so much. She and Jessica had, like, shared thoughts. They always agreed, and one of them nearly always could take the other’s idea and make it better. They made an unstoppable team.
Jessica tapped a couple keys and got the upload started. Then she grabbed her backpack and headed toward the door. Brittany followed her.
Because robotics was in the mostly deserted wing that could be locked off from the rest of the school, Mr. Thornton had gotten permission from the principal to let some of his students come in after-hours to work on projects. They used an exterior door that gave them access to this wing only.
Before they reached the door, Jessica called out, “Mr. Thornton.”
“Hmm?” He didn’t look up from his computer.
“We’ve got Rosie’s upload going. We’re going to come back later to work on her. Can we have the after-hours key?”
“Sounds good. Hmm? Oh, sure. Yes.” Mr. Thornton pulled a key from his desk drawer.
Jessica took the key from their teacher, and the girls headed to the classroom door. “Bye, Mr. Thornton,” they called in unison as they left.
“Oh, good-bye,” he called after them.
As they walked away, Brittany said, “He said ‘goodbye,’ not ‘bye.’ ”
Jessica glanced at her friend. “So?”
“Hmm? Oh, I don’t know. I guess it just sounds, like, kinda final, you know?”
Jessica grinned and hugged Brittany. “You slay me!”
* * *
Jessica and Brittany, on Derek’s and Roman’s arms, crossed the crowded parking lot in front of Burgerdom, a local fast-food hangout known for the best burgers in the county and even better milkshakes. If it wasn’t for the food, Jessica wouldn’t have been caught dead in the place—it was housed in a bright orange building shaped like a hamburger bun. How cliché could you get? But it was the in place to be after school.
The parking lot was filled with cars, bicycles, and big groups of students on foot. At least three different radios played, creating a musical war between rap, pop, and country. A few junior girls were dancing at the edge of the lot. Jessica recognized most of her classmates among the crowd, and many of them were watching the royal couples head toward the restaurant’s lobby. Because the pavement was uneven, Jessica shifted her gaze to her feet. She wasn’t about to trip and put a hitch in her perfect glide.
Her downcast attention, however, didn’t warn her of other potential hazards.
Suddenly, a bicycle swept past Jessica, its back wheels barely missing her left toes. She faltered, and if it hadn’t been for Derek’s arm, which she quickly clutched with all her strength, she would have lost her balance.
“Watch where you’re going!” Derek bellowed at the bicyclist.
Jessica looked up to see who had nearly run over her toes, and she sighed dramatically.
“Of course,” she muttered.
“What, babe?” Derek asked.
Jessica smiled up at him. She didn’t want to get into it, so she just said, “Eighth graders.”
“Yeah. Tell me about it. They’re everywhere.”
Jessica glanced at Brittany, who gave Jessica a quick smile. She’d also noticed that the kid on the bike had been Mindy. Jessica was sure Brittany was thinking the same thing: It wouldn’t be long before they got payback.
