18

Introducing Elmer

Min stuffed her pizza into her mouth, washing it down with Capri Sun. She was in a hurry to eat before Max came back inside with his box full of furry problems. Not even cheese-in-the-crust could improve her mood.

“I can’t believe Max wants to adopt two random strays,” she said through a mouthful of cheese. “Stupid, smelly, hairy, germy, bum-licking, poop-sniffing, probably poop-eating kittens.”

“I think only dogs do that,” Javi said, settling into the couch. “I’m pretty sure cats go in a litter box and bury their poop and are generally pretty clean.”

“You just watch, Max will bring home the only two kittens in the world that aren’t potty trained.” She sniffed, her nose already suffering from whatever vile, poisonous toxins the cats spewed into the air.

“Min, I feel you. It’s only temporary, right?” Javi tried.

Min finished her slice, picked up her pack, and headed for the lab. “I’m going to work on my project. I better not see any FUR near the lab.” She slammed the door behind her.

Inside the lab, Min took a deep breath.

Phew.

Finally.

This was her happy place. Where she could build anything she could imagine.

Shelves lined the walls, full of books, spare parts, row after row of the building blocks of anything she could imagine. Motors, wheels, stacks of metal parts she could combine in any configuration she wanted. She ran her hand along a shelf piled high with sensors that could detect light, sound, water, temperature, movement, and more. Below that were shelves lined with the information she needed to make it all work—electronics manuals and books on physics, programming languages (so many of them!), and robotics.

This was where she spent time with her parents, learning, in the beginning, things like how to solder, or how to make an LED light blink.

This was where she’d discovered the mysteries of electricity and the power of code.

This was where she’d figured out that if you just learned the right things and found the right parts—and yeah, did the right work—you could build something incredible.

Maybe even change the world.

Min had built little computers, then four-wheeled robots that she controlled with her phone, then self-balancing robots . . .

With each day, her creations grew more complex and interesting.

Her parents’ old prototype robots were also kept in the lab when they weren’t tasked with some kind of job around the house. Some of them were theirs, some were hers; what Min made was with her parents’ help, but mostly, she followed the countless tutorials and videos she found online.

Our Protos.

Min felt comforted by them, almost like friends she’d known for a long time—even if they were the kind of friends that had blinking lights and sensors. They were comforting her now anyway. Especially Tipsy, her first creation, and her favorite . . .

She walked to her corner of the lab and switched on a monitor, reviewing the final instructions for her next project, what she was sure would be her greatest creation of all.

“Wait until you see this guy. You’re gonna love him,” Min said, eyeing the Protos. They sat, lights on but motionless on the shelves next to the desk.

Min lifted her latest robot work-in-progress down from her work-in-progress shelf and placed it on her workbench.

The robot had four limbs, a bulky body, and a head.

It sat, or squatted, waiting to be switched on.

Min’s robot was different because it didn’t roll on treads or wheels, like most of the robots her friends built from kits.

Hers was designed so it could move and walk like a monkey or gorilla. It could use both legs and arms to walk, but it could also stand and walk upright.

Min smiled at her creation. “Almost ready for your test drive, Elmer?”

Elmer didn’t answer.

Max had come up with Elmer’s name one night at dinner, after telling Min about some proboscis monkey he followed online. It was all pretty ridiculous, but Min liked the name—and the glue—so she went with it.

Unlike a primate, Elmer’s arms and legs twisted and rotated. Honestly, they could even twist and rotate in ways human limbs couldn’t, which meant Elmer could do way more than a human could.

Elmer could, for example, crawl like a crab or spider. Elmer could cross almost any kind of obstacle, even stairs or uneven ground—stairs were the number-one enemy of all robots!—and if Elmer were ever knocked over, he should be able to get back up.

Theoretically . . . hopefully . . . maybe.

Min got her screwdriver and tightened the tiny screws holding his limbs together. “You’re a tough guy, aren’t you, Elmer?”

He was. Elmer would be tough to beat in a competition. Min had built his arms and legs out of lightweight metal pipes, designed to be super strong but not too heavy to move quickly.

Still, the motors for his joints were factory strength, meant to lift heavy loads or to operate for long periods of time. Min had recycled them from appliances and other machinery she had scavenged during trips to the dump with her mom.

Mom has a great eye for garbage, Min thought, tightening the screw on the bottom of Elmer’s belly, which Max kept insisting on calling his belly button.

Wrong.

That wasn’t all.

Elmer’s joints could also rotate extremely quickly if necessary, which made swinging, swatting, even jumping possible. Min imagined Elmer leaping over his robotic enemies at the city competition—squatting down when they tried to punch back—then clobbering them with a left hook. Theoretically, it could happen.

Ideally . . . probably . . . possibly.

She’d seen robots like Elmer do stuff like that, at least online. Min had gotten ideas for lots of different parts of Elmer’s design from other people’s robots—the internet was full of them.

“That’s cheating,” Max had yelled, but he just didn’t get it.

“It’s called collaborating,” Min had yelled back. “It’s called open source, look it up!” Min knew that lots of people put their code, designs, and ideas online, hoping they would be used and improved on by others. “If I have seen further, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants”—something Isaac Newton wrote—was a favorite quote from Min’s favorite teacher.

And it was true; by the time Elmer’s final design had come together, she had borrowed ideas and concepts and drawings and bolted together designs from probably twenty or thirty different projects she had studied online, through videos and drawings and blueprints.

She couldn’t have done it alone. Some of the best ideas had come from her friends in the Robotics Club—and she’d solved some of her friends’ prototypes’ problems too.

And besides, the rules for Battle of the Bots allowed for adapting and borrowing from other designs, as long as the end product was something original.

And Min’s robot really was his own special kind of creation . . . as original as Min herself.

So original, he might even win . . . !

Min gave herself a moment to imagine the victory. The lights flashing, a real-life NASA scientist handing her a trophy and an invitation to work with them for the summer.

Min eyed the room around her, not wanting to get her hopes up. Still, with a lab like this, how could she not win the Battle of the Bots?

Min sometimes felt a little guilty having such a well-equipped lab to use for her project, but only a little. Jake Burton was on a team coached by college coaches from Bayside City College. Paige Blum had started a girls’ team at North Brentwood, and they had more kids and more funding than all of Bayside Middle School. Charlie Cooper’s team had a whole iced-tea company that for some reason paid for everything they needed. It was called a sponsorship, Min knew—but what did iced tea have to do with fighting robots?

She tried not to think about it.

Besides, none of that really matters, does it?

It was Min’s special touch that made Elmer unique, wasn’t it?

And Elmer, he wasn’t just going to be a robot—he was going to be a warrior, who would crush the competition at the Battle of the Bots.

Right?