12

Protos Alert!

Joan issued her emergency signal, alerting the other Robots in the Lab to assemble immediately.

As the most senior robot in the lab and the recognized leader of the robots, it was up to Joan to keep them safe. The Protos looked up to Joan, and not just because she could fly. Joan was the most experienced and their commander. Joan was the one to bring order and give orders.

“Protos assemble!”

Joan’s army chugged, raced, and whirled into view, in the center of the lab’s hardwood floors. This ragtag group—Drags, Cy, Tipsy, and Joan herself—were the parents’ favorite prototypes—the ones they’d affectionately called their Protos, as the robots now called themselves—and they were ready for action.

Each robot was a custom creation built for a different and unique function, from exploring distant planets (Drags, designed for a NASA contract) to protecting and helping people who were old or sick (Cy, a commission for the Gates Foundation) to military recon missions (Joan, built for the Pentagon, long ago).

Only Tipsy was different; she had been a labor of love between Min and the ParentorGuardians one summer, when Min first started showing interest in robotics.

Tipsy had been designed just . . . to be. As a result, it sometimes seemed like she was the best loved and most broken of them all . . .

One function unified all of the Protos, however—at least, as far as the Protos knew.

(They had little experience with the actual galaxy, having never been past the Outfront to get the mail, with the exception of Joan, who had flown as far as the river.)

Joan spun around excitedly as the rest of the Protos lined up. “ATTENTION! STRAIGHT LINES! LIGHTS ON!”

Cy and Drags just stared at her. Tipsy fell over on her face.

Joan cleared her throat as she waited for Cy to yank Tipsy back up. (This was not a new sight; her two-wheel self-balancing physics had never worked properly.)

Once everyone was vertical, Joan tried again. “Okay, team, I don’t want to frighten you, but I need to let you know I’ve just been attacked. It looks like the four-leggers have launched an offensive on the house . . .”

They looked at her blankly. Joan whirled a propeller, exasperated. “Combat! I’ve just seen combat! What did you think that alarm was about?!”

“Yay! Com-bat!” Tipsy sang, wheeling in a circle.

“What do you mean, combat?” Drags rolled backward, alarmed.

“C-c-c-combat?!” Cy whirled the pincher hands that seemed to sprout from his neck. “But the four-leggers have never attacked before, right, Joan?!”

“Commander Joan. I told you. It’s especially important we stick to the protocols, now that we’re at war.”

“W-w-war?!” Cy stuttered.

“You heard the alarm. I’ve already spied not one but two four-legger hostiles. Could be the start of a larger offensive.” Joan wobbled slightly. “They came at me, all sharp teeth and vicious claws! It’s a miracle I’m still . . . hovering . . . here.”

Her bad propeller spluttered out. Joan ignored it.

“To your stations! Check for visuals. We need a proper assessment! If it’s a proper attack, we should be able to see something from the Outfront.”

Drags, a compact, treaded tank, rolled up a fallen shelf board and onto the stainless-steel desk that occupied the center of the home lab, taking up his position in front of the computer.

Cy followed him up, moving to the far side of the desk, where he used his pincher to clamp on to the molding of a large glass window. Then, Cy extended his neck until he could get a clear view out to the driveway and the brick house beyond it. Specifically, the old gray cat Obi sitting in his stroller.

His appendages were shaking with fear, until he saw what there was to see: the same view he had seen every other day. “Sir yes sir? This must be some new threat. I don’t think it’s the old four-legger . . .”

Joan whirred briskly. “Copy that, Cy. Can we get a confirmation, Drags? Status of the four-legger threat?”

Drags cleared his throat, rolling up onto a slightly higher stack of papers to get a better view out the window. “Well, I can confirm that it’s just sitting there. If that’s what you mean. Not much to confirm about that.”

Drags had been built to operate a remote camera and cross rocky ground in search-and-rescue situations and future interplanetary exploration. What he lacked in AI sophistication he made up for in perfect vision and the brute strength of his rubber treads. There was no pile of laundry Drags could not plow his way through, which was how he’d gotten his name—rags were always trailing behind him.

Joan spluttered just high enough now to get her own quick visual, a little recon in the form of a look out the window to the chubby, furry creature who sat in the strange four-wheeled recreational vehicle parked between the two houses.

As usual.

The OB creature was as vintage as the commander herself; it had been there ever since the first day Dad had soldiered together Joan’s original wiring.

Hushing her propellers, Joan stopped hovering, coming to land gently on her perch high atop the monitor on the lab’s cluttered steel desk.

Up here, she was surrounded by 3D printers and 2D scanners, by soldering irons and electric screwdrivers and neatly labeled bins full of copper wires or plastic cables or bits of spare circuitry or tiny motherboards: all of the things that Joan—that all of the Protos—had been built from.

It reminded her of their creators and how strange it was to see their shared aerodynamic black desk chairs now empty.

“That wasn’t the one who attacked me. The attackers were . . . miniature versions. Newer models,” Joan said, finally looking away.

Four visual sensors remained fixed on the four-legger.

OB_1_Catno_B was now applying its tongue to the general vicinity of what Joan knew to be its biological waste exit. Joan had neither a tongue nor a waste exit, but the pairing still did not seem logical.

OB stopped this strange ritual and looked up. Joan felt a surge of worry when she saw Max, now carrying a small brown box, walk across the driveway toward the silent furred four-legger. She considered flying out to investigate when House interrupted.

“Joan, I have much more to tell you, but the girl Min is approaching the lab. At the next opportunity I will give you more information and instructions. Until then, be vigilant.”

Joan ordered her squad back to their charging positions, ready for Min’s arrival. As the bots scurried onto their shelf, Joan flew to her charging post and set down, reviewing what House had told her, comparing it with what she knew.

She knew (and had the scratches to prove it!) that four-leggers had breached the house’s perimeter. She also knew her programming instructed her to avoid four-leggers, so they must be a threat. But what House had said was much more frightening.

A threat to her Protos! And a threat to the family? She wasn’t sure she could trust House, but it all added up, and Joan was not one to take chances when the safety of her people was at stake.