Theremin floated through the halls of Franken-Sci High toward the Student Clinic. He was nervous. He’d never had to visit Nurse Bunsen before, but he had seen other freshmen students come back from the clinic looking pale and unsteady. When he’d asked them what had happened, they would usually mumble something about “unusual methods,” but they couldn’t complain too much because they’d been cured.
Not being able to perform a simple bar code scan had shaken up Theremin. That had never happened before.
It is Father’s fault, Theremin mused. He gave me human emotions and thoughts but only “adequate” intelligence.
Theremin knew that his father’s greatest fear was that Theremin would be even smarter than he was. So Dr. Rozika had worked a flaw into Theremin’s programming. If Theremin began to do really well at one thing, he’d immediately lose his ability to do something else.
But I wasn’t doing anything great before my scanner conked out, Theremin remembered. In fact, I had just messed up, sending that brain flying. . . .
At least Shelly didn’t mind that he was a bit different. She’d always understood him. When his dad had first enrolled him in Franken-Sci High, the other robot students had been friendly toward him. But then he’d started glitching . . . and because he had human-like emotions, glitching made him feel really angry.
One day he’d failed a simple quiz in Engineering Artificial Life Forms, and at lunch Klaatu had teased him about it.
“How could you fail at that, dude?” his robot friend had asked. “I mean, you are an artificial life form!”
Theremin had gotten angry and smashed everyone’s algae-infused pudding cups, and even though robots don’t need to eat for fuel, some of them had taste receptors and had gotten really bummed. Theremin wasn’t allowed to eat lunch with them anymore.
The next day Theremin had been sulking at a table by himself when Shelly walked up.
“Can I sit here?” she asked, with her big smile, and of course Theremin had said yes. And the two had been best friends ever since.
And now here is this Newton guy, appearing out of nowhere, Theremin thought. Shelly had been all smiley and friendly with him, too. What did that mean?
He stepped up to the door to the Student Clinic, and the door slid up into the ceiling. Theremin scanned the room. Inside, two kids were sitting on a bench. Across from the bench was an empty desk with a grinning skull on top, along with a plaque that read: NURSE CARLOTTA BUNSEN.
On the wall in front of Theremin was another door decorated with instructive posters. They said things like: SAFETY GOGGLES SAVE EYES! and BE CAREFUL WORKING WITH ELECTRICITY: IT CAN BE SHOCKING!
Theremin sat down on the bench next to a kid he knew, Gustav Goddard. Gustav turned to Theremin.
“What are you here for?” he asked.
“Code-scanning problem,” Theremin replied. “You?”
Gustav wiggled his eyebrows—or rather, the part of his face where his eyebrows should have been.
“Had a little problem in my Unconventional Chemistry class,” Gustav replied. “I sort of blew my eyebrows off.”
“I didn’t even notice,” Theremin replied. He nodded toward the girl sitting on Gustav’s other side. Her hands were curled up into little balls and she was licking them.
“What’s up with her?” Theremin asked.
“Oh, that’s Tori Twitcher,” Gustav said. “She got hit by a mind-control ray by accident and now she thinks she’s a cat.”
Tori looked at Theremin. “Meow!”
The door with the posters on it opened, and a boy walked out. He had a patch over his right eye.
Nurse Bunsen stepped out behind him.
“Run along now, Leopold,” she said. “Don’t worry, it should grow back by tomorrow. Or maybe Tuesday. Wednesday, at the latest.”
Theremin studied her. She wore a spacesuit instead of a nurse’s uniform. A clear helmet. Short hair that had little swirls in it like soft-serve ice cream.
“You’re next, Tori,” she said.
Tori was swatting at a fly. She didn’t look up.
“Here, kitty kitty,” Nurse Bunsen said in a sweet voice. Tori’s head jerked up, and then on all fours she followed the nurse into the exam room.
“I’m glad all that’s wrong with me is some missing eyebrows,” Gustav remarked.
“Uh-huh,” Theremin said. He wasn’t really listening. He was still thinking about that new guy. Newton was definitely human, not mecho-humanoid, so they didn’t have to worry about him exploding. But there is still something weird about that guy, Theremin thought.
He hoped that Shelly’s theory would turn out to be right: that Newton was the victim of an amnesia formula, a simple prank, and that Mumtaz would fix it. Then Newton would remember that he had other friends, and he could go hang out with them. And Shelly and Theremin could go back to being best buddies again. A terrific twosome. A dynamite duo . . .
The door creaked open again. “Good as new, Tori,” Nurse Bunsen said as Tori exited, looking normal again. “Gustav, you’re next.”
Tori looked at Theremin and Gustav. “I hate Mondays,” she said.
Gustav went into the exam room, and Theremin’s robot brain tracked the time as he was waiting. Exactly 17.4 seconds later, Gustav came back out. Where his eyebrows should have been, two new eyebrows had been drawn on in marker. Purple marker.
“Whaddya think?” Gustav asked, wiggling his marker eyebrows.
Theremin thought Gustav looked ridiculous, even for a human, but he didn’t want to say that with Nurse Bunsen standing right there.
“Um, fab,” Theremin replied, searching his memory banks for synonyms. “Cool. Brilliant.”
“Thanks!” Gustav said brightly, and left.
Nurse Bunsen crooked a finger at Theremin. “Come on in, Mr. Rozika.”
Theremin cautiously followed her into the next room. His danger sensors started to jump a little. In the back of the room was a huge aquarium filled with electric eels. They sizzled in the water.
“What seems to be the trouble, Theremin?” Nurse Bunsen asked.
“Something’s wrong with my bar code scanner,” he replied.
“Is that all?” Nurse Bunsen sounded disappointed. “Let’s give you a little test.”
She pressed a button in the wall and part of the wall opened up. A metal tray slid out, stacked with a group of items in a pyramid shape.
“When your father founded the robotics lab here, he designed this robot vision test,” she explained. “Start scanning the items on the bottom, and move to the top.”
Theremin floated over to the items. The first item on the bottom left was a package of toilet paper. Theremin’s eyes flashed red over the bar code.
“Eight-count of Super Soft Stuff, double-ply,” he reported, and Nurse Bunsen nodded.
He moved to the next item—a jar full of eyeballs. Theremin scanned the bar code.
“Twenty-four assorted replacement eyeballs,” the robot announced.
“Keep going, Theremin,” the nurse encouraged him.
He scanned his way up the pyramid.
“One gravity-resistant soccer ball.”
“One loaf of gluten-free bread.”
“Microscope, Curie model 620.”
Nurse Bunsen put a hand up to stop him. “Your scanner is working fine, Theremin. Better than fine,” she told him, and then she laughed. “You know, they always need good scanning equipment in the cafeteria, if you’re looking for a part-time job.”
Then she cackled at her own joke.
Scanning equipment.
His processors started to overheat. I am no mere piece of equipment, he thought. I am a boy—yes, a robot boy, but a boy! With thoughts and feelings. And right now I am feeling . . .
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!” Theremin screamed. He knocked down the pyramid, sending everything crashing to the floor. The jar of eyeballs broke, and the eyeballs rolled all over the room.
“And it looks like your energy levels are just fine, Theremin,” Nurse Bunsen said.
Couldn’t she see that he was upset? That just made him angrier.
“I’m outta here!” he announced, and he burst through the door, sending shards of metal flying, shredding the “Safety Goggles Save Eyes” poster in the process, and leaving a Theremin-shaped hole in the door. Theremin didn’t even notice.
Everything is going wrong! he fumed. And it all started with the new kid!