A few minutes later I was on my bed, under the covers. Norman was on the floor, stretched out on top of my sleeping bag. It was like a sleepover, but the other kid was a robot.
Out of the blue, Norman started singing that French song that goes, “Alouette, gentille Alouette, Alouette, je te plumerai.” Hey, my dad used to sing that song to me when I was little! Having nothing better to do, I joined in the singing.
“Alouette, gentille Alouette, Alouette, je te plumerai.”
I didn’t know what the words meant in English, so after we were done singing, I asked Norman to translate.
“It is a lovely song about plucking feathers from a lark and preparing it for cooking,” the robot said. “First you pluck the head, then the nose, then the eyes . . .”
Gross. I was singing about bird murder and didn’t even know it!
Norman was silent for a while. But I wasn’t feeling the least bit sleepy, which wasn’t too cool, since it was a school night. If I didn’t fall asleep pretty quickly, I’d end up dragging myself to classes the next morning.
“Matt?” the robot said. “Ma boîte me manque.”
“In English, please,” I told him.
“Pardonne-moi. I miss my box.”
“Okey-dokey, pokey,” I said. Like Mr. Henley, my music teacher back in elementary school, used to say, “If all else fails, why not rhyme?”
“Yes, I really miss my box,” Norman said. “I miss it with every revolution of my hard drives.”
I got the feeling that Norman wasn’t going to stop talking about his precious crate until I fetched it. So I stood, growled in Norman’s direction, left my room, tramped into the living room, grabbed the spare set of keys from a hook, opened the door, and snuck down the hall to the lab, where Dad had moved the box to. Inside the lab I saw my dad sitting at the computer, writing software code, lots of numbers and letters and those arrowy things: < >.
“Hey, Dad,” I said.
“Hey, rocket ship,” he said, typing. “Problem?”
“Norman misses his box,” I said.
“Ah,” he said, like a robot missing his shipping box was a perfectly normal thing.
I grabbed hold of Norman’s crate, dragged it through the lab, down the hall, into my apartment, through the living room, and into my room. Norman saw his box and sort of flung himself into it. Straw and foam peanuts bubbled over the top as he arranged them over him.
“Merci, Matt,” he said. “This is much cozier.”
As I was going back to my bed, I realized that Norman could have gotten his own box, but by whimpering he was able to get me to do the heavy lifting for him. The stinker! But I couldn’t stay mad at him for too long. He was learning how to be a kid.
Midnight. I was finally about to fall asleep when several lights underneath Norman’s skin flashed, and he said in this weird robot voice, “Engaging system self-check . . . Engaging system self-check . . . Engaging system self-check . . .” And then he said all the things he was checking, the processors, the drives, the ports, and the thingees and the whatevers.
“Checking RAM module one of twenty-six . . . Checking RAM module two of twenty-six . . .”
Ugh! I covered my ears and flipped onto my side. It wasn’t going to be easy having a robot for a brother, I realized. I might never sleep again!