My mother had made significant progress with the DustBots, if causing them all to clump up in the corner of the living room could be called progress. When I walked in, she was stabbing commands into the handheld control module while yelling at the bots to disperse. My mother is not a woman who is accustomed to being ignored. But the DustBots didn’t seem to know that.
Just in case you have been marooned on a tropical island for the past two decades, I should explain about DustBots.
Imagine a gerbil. Bigger than a mouse, smaller than a rat, and cuter than either. Now imagine that instead of fur it has a shiny plastic case in your choice of eight colors, and instead of being alive it is a robot. Now imagine your home, only very, very clean. When activated, an ACPOD DustBot will seek out dirt, dust, and other undesirable substances and transport them to the kitchen trash can.
The DustBot was invented by Gilbert Bates seventeen years ago. It is the single most successful tech product in history—the average home in the United States has three DustBots. The average home in Flinkwater has nine. We have seventeen, and all of them were huddled in one corner of the living room, humming and buzzing.
This was not normal DustBot behavior.
Barney was crouched a few feet away, keeping an eye on them.
“Mom, what did you do to the bots?”
“I have no idea.” She thrust the control mod at me. “See if you can fix it.”
I checked the display on the mod and saw right away that she had accidentally activated the herding function. I turned it off. The pile of bots began to disperse, their randomizers sending them off in every direction, searching for dirt.
Barney sprang into action. Before I could stop him, he flipped three of them onto their backs. I scooped him up and turned the bots right side up.
“I was hoping to program them to avoid the cat,” Mom said.
“Barney does not choose to be avoided,” I said. “By the way, I went to the library. I looked through everything they had on Flinkwater”—a slight exaggeration—“and found nothing. So I’ll probably fail history.”
“That is unfortunate,” she said, and from the set of her jaw, I saw that she would be no help, despite that fact that I had just helped her with the DustBots.
I went to tell Dad that Mom was going to let me flunk Mr. Westerburg’s class. I found him standing in the hallway staring down at Barney.
“What is this creature doing in our house?” he asked.
“That’s Barney,” I said. “He’s a cat,” I added sarcastically.
“Who is Barney?” he asked.
“That is Barney,” I said. “Our cat?”
“We have a cat?”
“Dad!” I hated when he teased me.
“When did we get a cat?”
“Eight years ago!”
The look he gave me was one of utter confusion. He really didn’t remember. Like most older people, Dad can be absentminded at times. I mean, he’s in his forties. But not remembering Barney?
“Dad, are you okay?”
“Certainly,” he said, but he still had that puzzled look on his face. “How could I forget old Blarney?”
“Not Blarney! Barney!” I was getting more worried by the second.
“Yes, of course. Er . . . is there something I can help you with?”
“Not unless you’ve remembered how Flinkwater got its name.”
“Sorry. My memory’s not what it used to be, Ginger.”
At least he remembered my name.