Back home. Norman was in pieces on the worktable in the lab. Dad was hovering over him, tightening tiny screws near a hipbone. It was freaky seeing my brother’s head removed, wires dangling out of the neck opening. It was almost like he was . . . dead.
“How’s Norman doing?” I asked, trying to not look at the robot’s head, but my stupid eyes kept going back there.
“Not so great,” Dad said. “Norman and his cousin have been infected with a computer worm that wreaked havoc on their core files. I believe we stopped it from causing any more harm, so now it’s a matter of fixing the damage and restoring lost data.”
On a video screen on the computer, I watched my uncle make similar repairs to Jean-Pierre Jr. Two headless kid-bots! My stomach was getting a little queasied out. “Is Norman going to be okay?”
Dad shrugged. “Time will tell. But even if we can get him up and running, it may take a while before he’s his old self again. The worm tore through his files like a missile with teeth.”
I looked at helpless Norman and felt awful about every bad or selfish thought I’d ever had about him. So what if he was more popular or smarter than I was? I just wanted him to be okay.
When the screws were tightened, my dad and uncle had a video chat. Parts of it were in French, but from the English parts and from knowing more French since Norman showed up, I could figure out some of it. Basically, my dad and uncle were baffled at how a worm was able to bust through firewalls and into encrypted files, especially since the software programming the robots existed only on Dad’s and my uncle’s computers.
“It’s almost like this was an inside job,” Dad said, going back to English. “But only a half-dozen people know about Norman and Jean-Pierre Junior, and we trust all of them, right?”
My uncle suddenly looked pale. “I would trust my two assistants with my life,” he affirmed.
Dad gave him a look. “And what about Véronique?”
Uncle Jean-Pierre scratched at his face and seemed kind of embarrassed.
“Jean-Pierre?” Dad prodded. “Is there anything you want to tell me?”
“Véronique left me two days ago,” my uncle finally said. “She said she could not be with a man who cares more about computers and robots than he does his girlfriend. It was quite a surprise. I thought . . . Well, I stupidly believed that she was the one.”
Dad appeared sympathetic for a moment, but then switched to a look of grave concern. “I hate to ask . . . but . . . could she have planted the worm? Would she do that, sabotage our work?”
My uncle shook his head fiercely, but even while he was doing that I could see a big pile of doubt creep into his face. “She’s more of a materials person than a software person, so she would have needed outside help launching a worm,” he said. After a deep sigh, he added, “Véronique is mad at me for not paying attention to her, but I can’t imagine her wanting to harm the robots. She worked on them for years, just like we did.”
“Can you find her, see what she knows?” Dad asked. “If she has been talking to the wrong people . . .” His voice got really quiet.
My uncle pointed behind Dad, at me, I think. I guess they didn’t want to talk about that subject with me in the room. Sometimes it rots being a kid.
Uncle Jean-Pierre cut the link after saying he needed food and a café au lait. And I wondered if my dad had eaten anything all day. He had done that before, worked in his lab all day, skipping lunch and dinner.
Dad went back to work on the robot.
“Can I help with Norman?” I asked. “Like hand you a screwdriver or something?”
“Oh, sure,” Dad said, smiling. He pointed to a screwdriver. I picked it up and handed it to him, and he started removing the casing around Norman’s hard drives and RAM modules. It was almost like we were in an operating room, and I was the guy in charge of handing the surgeon the correct scalpel, or screwdriver. It was a big job.