I put away the dishes from the dishwasher, and then I had to take a bath. In the tub I sank under the water to see how long I could hold my breath: fifty-four seconds. But I was counting kind of fast, so it might have been closer to forty seconds.
After I changed into pajamas, I returned to the lab, running fast down the hall in case any neighbors came out of their apartments—it’s impossible to look cool when wearing pj’s—and saw that Norman was back together and powered up. He and Dad were having a video chat with Uncle Jean-Pierre and his robot kid Jean-Pierre Jr., though my dad and uncle were doing all the talking. Dad and Uncle Jean-Pierre chat on the computer nearly every day, like they are best friends who can’t go more than a day or two without catching up. I like it!
And it was kind of fun, comparing robot to robot. Jean-Pierre Jr. had a narrower face and darker eyes and looked quite a bit like my uncle. Both robots were wearing their berets, and for a few seconds I thought of them as the Beret Brothers, and almost laughed. But then I realized they’d actually be cousins, which wasn’t as funny.
“Hello, Matthew,” my uncle said as I sat down close to Dad. I said hey, and noticed that my uncle’s girlfriend, Véronique, was tootling around in the background. Véronique is, uh . . . well, I’ll just go ahead and say it: BEAUTIFUL. I was always happy to see her on chat, even if I did turn into a nervous blob of weirdness! It happens.
My dad and uncle went back to talking about Norman and Jean-Pierre Jr., and repairs, software updates, and junk like that. I was sitting right there, but I might as well have been sitting on the moon. I felt even more left out when they switched to French. About the only word I recognized was Mom’s name, so I guessed they were talking about Mom not welcoming Norman into the family with open arms.
It was getting late and I was getting bored, so I was about to tell my dad that it was time for Norman and me to go to bed, when Véronique threw down some kind of tool, said, “C’est de la folie, de posséder tant de matériel de qualité inférieure!”—I could only guess what those words meant—and slipped next to my uncle, pushing him and Jean-Pierre Jr. aside so it was mostly her face on the screen. It was not a happy face. But then she peered at me on her screen and threw on a quick smile.
“Hello again, Matt,” she said. “How are you this evening?” I noticed that she didn’t say hi to Norman, even though he was sitting next to me.
“Um, fine,” I said, squeaking a little. Something about Véronique’s voice always wonked me out a little. So deep. So mysterious.
“I was about to complain to your father and uncle,” she said, changing over to a mild frown, “about all the second-rate tools and equipment we own, when great wealth—and new tools!—could be ours if we went forward with news about our advances in human robotics. We could even afford to build a decent lab. In my opinion, waiting a year to break the news is absolute idiocy. It would be like waiting a year to cash in a winning lottery ticket!”
“But darling,” my uncle said to her, “we’ve already discussed how important it is to test how the robots react to family and social life, the pressures and daily demands. And that will take time. At least a year.”
Véronique scowled at Uncle Jean-Pierre. “They are machines, not people, and they have been thoroughly tested. If they blow a circuit board, we put in a new one. If they assault a chaton for no reason, we tweak the programming. What more is there to test?”
I caught my dad rolling his eyes and quietly groaning. This was not the conversation he wanted to be having.
“Apparently I’m the only one here who wants to be très rich,” Véronique went on. “We could charge fifty thousand euros per robot, and I bet both of you that we would have hundreds of orders just on the first day. We’ve invented the next great must-have gadget, and you imbeciles want to sit on it for a year. Complètement ridicule!” She winked at me, then aimed ugly looks at my dad and uncle before jumping up and stalking away.
That was majorly weird. But at least I got a wink from Véronique, and a smile. Zing!
On the screen, Uncle Jean-Pierre rubbed his face and sighed. “Sorry about that,” he said. “Véronique has been moody lately. I suppose I should try to talk to her, get to the bottom of it. Good night, ma famille.” He cut the connection before any of us could say good night.
I looked at Dad. He shrugged uneasily.
“Well, that was silly,” he said, clicking off the video link. “If we do go public in a year, Véronique will get her fair share of the prize money, if there is any, and all the recognition she deserves. But we never once discussed mass-producing robots this early, before all the bugs have been worked out. That thought . . . it makes me uncomfortable.”
Dad went on to explain that Véronique was primarily responsible for choosing the materials for the robots’ hair, skin, eyeballs, etc., and without her help the robots would probably look like machines instead of like boys. “I wonder what’s going on with her,” he said. “Sudden greed? A desire for instant fame?” He shook his head. “Humans! Too complicated to deal with, at times.”
True, but we can’t all be robots!
A big yawn overtook my mouth. “It’s Norman’s and my bedtime,” I said.
“Norman doesn’t need to sleep,” Dad said, “though every night at midnight he will do a system self-check, empty his cache, and dispose of any clutter.”
That was totally unfair. So I told my dad that if Norman was going to live like any other kid would live, he needed an early bedtime like the rest of us.
Dad did one of his speed thinks, then handed me the robot. I didn’t feel like carrying or dragging Norman to our apartment—he’s kind of heavy—so I set him down, and we tramped out of the lab. The robot was walking better now, no stumbles or hesitations. I wondered if Dad had made an adjustment.
“Matthew,” Norman said as we neared our door, “is Mademoiselle Véronique not a nice person?”
“Uh, you mean because of the video chat?” I asked. “She was just upset about something. Girls get that way a lot. It’s one way you can tell us apart.”
“No, not that,” he said. “It is just that I did not enjoy how she referred to Jean-Pierre Junior and myself as robots and gadgets when we were right there, listening. It may be technically accurate, but . . . I just did not like it.”
“I understand,” I said, patting Norman on the shoulder and telling myself to never call him a robot or a gadget to his face.
Once inside our apartment we scuttled to the bathroom, where Norman watched me carefully while I brushed my teeth, then he said he wanted to give it a try. I washed off my brush, put some toothpaste on it, and handed it to Norman. He moved his hand back and forth so quickly I thought he might wear his ceramic teeth down to nothing, or break the brush, but that didn’t happen.
“Très rafraîchissant,” Norman said, smiling and showing his teeth. “Very refreshing.”
“Yep,” I said, enjoying my own minty feeling.
On the way to my room, which I guessed was now our room, Norman said, “Our father and uncle are brilliant men.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” I said, which the robot took as a command.
“Polaris, the brightest star in the Ursa Minor constellation, is a multiple star located approximately four hundred thirty light-years from Earth, with a temperature of about seventy-two hundred Kelvin,” he said. “Or did you know that already, Matt?”
“Maybe I did,” I said, not wanting to appear dumb, even if I was sort of feeling that way. Like, for example, what the heck is a Kelvin?