The Flinkwater Factor (8 page)

19

Mrs
. Duchakis

I tied the belt from my dad's terry-cloth bathrobe to Redge's collar and we set off for the Duchakises'. Because when you think “dog,” you think “animal,” and when you think “animal,” you think Myke Duchakis. Myke was the president and founder of Flinkwater High's AAPT Club. AAPT stands for Animals Are People Too.

Seven years ago, on his sixth birthday, Myke's parents had taken him to the 4-H barn at the Iowa State Fair, where he met a piglet named Bacon. Young Mykey's favorite food—up until that moment—had been bacon.

“Daddy, why did they name him Bacon?” Mykey asked.

His daddy, an ACPOD engineer with the ­people skills of a rabid hyena, explained in graphic detail the facts of farm life and slaughterhouse
death. They'd had to carry Myke out of the 4-H barn, screaming his lungs out.

At that moment, Myke Duchakis became a vegetarian, and a champion of all creatures great and small.

Myke lived on Gilbert Avenue—normally a ten-minute walk, but with Redge having to sniff every lamppost and fire hydrant, and pee on most of them, it took us half an hour to get there. I counted seven black SUVs cruising the streets.

Uncle Ashton was right—the DHS was on Flinkwater like ticks on a dog.

My plan—I always have a plan, in case you haven't noticed—was to introduce Redge to Myke, have them instantly bond, then leave the dog in his care. It was a good plan, but like many good plans, it was not without flaws, the first one being that the door was answered by Mrs. Duchakis, a round-headed, round-bodied woman with graying hair that she wore long and straight in a failed attempt to make her face look thinner.

“Is Myke home?” I asked, giving her my best smile.

“Oh Dear Lord,” she said, looking at Redge.

Unsure how to respond to that, I waited for more.

“Dear God in Heaven,” she added unhelpfully.

I tried turning up my smile a notch.

“Lord Save Us,” she said.

All this talk of the Lord was making both Redge and me uneasy. I had not factored the Almighty into my plan.

“I hope to heaven that is
your
dog, Ms. Crump,” she said, “and not some stray creature you are hoping to foist upon our overpopulated household.”

What can I say? The woman was a mind reader.

“I just wanted to introduce him to Myke,” I said.

Mrs. Duchakis sighed, and when she sighed, her head sank so low between her shoulders that it looked as if it was about to disappear turtlelike into her ample torso.

“He's back in his menagerie,” she said.

20

Myke

It may be that the reason Myke Duchakis had so many animals was that he himself was adopted. From his name you might expect Mycroft Duchakis to be a half-British-half-Greek aristocrat. Myke wasn't like that at all. He claimed his biological parents were from Egypt. Physically he had the look of a North African desert prince raised on French fries and Iowa sweet corn. In other words, he was as round as his adoptive mother.

Redge and I found Myke in his bedroom—aka the menagerie—feeding cheese curls to a three-legged squirrel. It was a peaceful scene—a boy and his squirrel—until the squirrel got an eyeful of Redge, and Redge spotted the squirrel. Naturally, the squirrel being a squirrel, and Redge being a dog, things got very exciting.

Again, not part of my plan.

Redge let out a soul-shattering bellow, sending the squirrel rocketing toward the ceiling. I had not known that squirrels could cling to ceilings, but apparently they can, even three-legged ones. Myke also attempted to levitate himself, but he was not so successful. The other various creatures in the room—one chinchilla, several mice, a pigeon, a guinea pig, and a leopard gecko—began running, flapping, squeaking, squawking, and hissing frantically. Fortunately, all but the squirrel were in cages. I grabbed Redge by the collar and dragged him out of the room while Myke ran from cage to cage, frantically attempting to calm himself and his tenants. I shut the door and waited in the hall.

Myke was a little upset with me. I couldn't blame him. I should have known his bedroom would be full of small creatures he had rescued over the years, and I knew Redge was, well, a
dog
. I just hadn't put together that those two things didn't mix well. As my dad would say, I had not
synthesized
all available data. Oh well.

After a few minutes, Myke poked his head out and suggested—rather stiffly, I thought—that we retire to the backyard.

“Sammy could have hurt himself!” Myke said, by way of initiating our conversation. We were sitting outside by his rabbit hutch. I had tied Redge to the
leg of my lawn chair. He was looking longingly at the two flop-eared bunnies who were peering nervously out from their chicken-wire enclosure.

“Who's Sammy?” I asked.

Myke rolled his eyes. “My
squirrel
?”

“Oh. Sorry about that.”

“They're innocent creatures, you know!”

I could tell that Myke was about to go on one of his Animals Are People Too rants, so I hit the switch on Redge's collar.

“—never seen one of
those
before! They look like squirrels. Fat squirrels with long ears! I am a good dog. I—”

“Shut up, Redge,” Myke said.

“—would like to play with those squirrels and maybe eat one too. My name is—”

Myke reached over and switched off the collar.

I think my mouth was hanging open.

“You two know each other?” I said.

“Of course,” he said. “I busted him out of jail just last week.”

21

The U
ncanny Valley

“A couple of weeks ago, before all that SCIC stuff happened, my dad said he wanted to show me something cool,” Myke said, making a face. “You know how my dad is—he's always showing me stuff he thinks will make me more manly.”

I nodded. Myke's dad moonlighted as the Brazen Bulls' football coach.

“So I went over to where he was working—you know that long gray building way in the back of the ACPOD campus?”

“Area Fifty-One,” I said. We called it that because the building in question had extra security, and nobody outside of the engineers who worked there knew what went on inside.

“Yeah, well, that's where my dad works,” Myke said. “Turns out they do cybernetics experiments on animals there. My dad arranged a special pass
for me and introduced me to Redge. He thought I'd think it was cool to talk to a dog.”

I looked at Redge, who was now lying on his belly, his long snout pointed at the rabbit hutch. “Does he understand what we're saying?”

“No more than any other dog,” Myke said.

“I don't get it. ACPOD makes robots. Why are they doing animal experiments?”

“To my dad, animals are just flesh-and-blood robots,” Myke said. “I think they're trying to make them more robotic.”

“By making them talk? That's sort of creepy.”

“I know,” Myke said, looking at Redge. “It's like the Uncanny Valley.”

I remember my first visit to the Uncanny Valley like it was yesterday. I was four years old, and my dad brought home one of the very first Dustbunnies. Remember Dustbunny?

The D-Monix Dustbunny was the first self-actuating quasi-intelligent cleaning bot for the home. According to D-Monix CEO Josh Stevens, it was the invention that would “change everything.”

“No more wiping, sweeping, polishing, scrubbing, or dusting,” he said in the video ads. “Just sit back and let Dustbunny do the work!”

My mom hates cleaning, so she bought one the first day it went on sale. She took it out of the box,
put it on the living room floor, and turned it on. I thought it was a real rabbit. It looked like one, right down to the floppy ears and the blinking black eyes. But when I tried to pet it, it was cold and plasticky-feeling. I screamed.

Don't get me wrong; I love robots. But when a robot starts looking like something that is alive, it's sort of disturbing. That creepy feeling is called the Uncanny Valley.

The Uncanny Valley isn't an actual valley, it's more like a feeling. It was named back in the last century, when robotics researchers realized that making robots that looked and acted like people was not such a good idea. A metal humanoid robot like C3PO from the old Star Wars movies was fine. Who doesn't love C3PO? But when humanoid robots got realistic skin and eyes and smiles, people didn't love them so much. It's just too  . . .
uncanny
. Robots should look like robots, not people. Or bunnies.

Mom thought the Dustbunny was creepy too, so she returned it. So did a lot of other people. A few months later ACPOD introduced the smaller, quieter, distinctly robotic DustBot. It was a huge success. We have six of them. The DustBot was the product that made Gilbert Bates a billionaire, while the failure of Dustbunny nearly bankrupted D-Monix Industries.

Josh Stevens went ballistic. He claimed that Gilbert Bates had stolen his idea. The battle in
court lasted for years. In the end ACPOD won the case. Ever since then D-Monix has stayed out of the robot business and focused on computers. Dustbunny was Josh Stevens's greatest failure.

But I gotta say, his D-Monix computers rock.

“My dad says that eventually they'll be able to program animals like computers. He's working with D-Monix Industries to develop a set of controls that wire right into an animal's brain.”

“D-Monix? Why? They're ACPOD's biggest competitor!”

“D-Monix developed the hardware interface and licensed it to ACPOD last year. George G. George himself is overseeing the project. Anyway, I didn't think it was cool at all, sticking wires in a dog's head. I could tell right away that poor Redge was freaking out, having that voice come out of his collar. I sort of freaked out myself—I mean, it really is Uncanny Valley territory, hearing that dog talk.”

“Yeah, you should've seen my mom. She's scared of nothing, but hearing Redge talk just about curled her hair.”

“Your mom doesn't have curly hair.”

“Exactly. So what did you do when your dad introduced you to Redge?”

“I started yelling,” Myke said. “Telling my dad he had to let the animals go. Redge wasn't the only
one—they had some monkeys wired up too, only they weren't talking. Except for one who kept yelling something about ‘stinky no-tails.' I think Redge here was their first success story. If you call that success. Of course they didn't listen to me, and my dad hustled me out of there. So I went back a few days later and busted him out.”

“You just walked into ACPOD's most secure building and walked out with a dog?”

“When I was there with my dad, I sort of broke the lock on the south door, at the back of the building. It looks like it's locked, but if you jiggle the handle from the outside, it pops right open.”

“I still can't believe you didn't get caught. Doesn't that building have all kinds of extra security?”

“This was a few days ago. Practically everybody was bonked, remember? And the only guard on duty was an AAPT member.”

“AAPT has members?” I had thought Myke was the only one.

“
Many
members,” he said, daring me to doubt him.

“Wow. I had no idea, So, the guard just ignored you?”

“I told him I wanted to visit Redge. He put the security cameras on an infinite loop and disabled the infrared sensors.”

“So you just walked in and let Redge out?”

“That's right. I was going to let all the animals go. I got one of the monkey cages open, but that didn't work out so good.”

I looked at Redge. “Let me guess . . . .”

“You don't have to guess. Redge took off after the monkey. The last I saw of him, they were tearing down the hallway. That monkey could move! The guard and I looked for an hour. We finally gave up and I came home.” He shrugged. “I figured they were still in the building, but obviously they got out. At least Redge did.”

“What happened to the monkey?”

Myke shrugged, regarding the dog with something less than love. “What are you going to do with him?”

“Me?
You're
the one who let him out!”

“Yeah, but I can't keep him. As soon as my dad sees him, it's back to the lab.”

“Well
I
can't keep him! For one thing, my mom is one hundred percent anti-dog. Also, Barney would kill him.”

“Barney your cat? He's only a quarter Redge's size,” Myke pointed out.

“Yeah, but he's tough. Our DustBots are terrified of him.”

Redge had waddled off a few paces and found something new to roll in. He must have triggered
the switch on his collar, because the next thing we heard was,
“—itchy-itchy-itchy. I am a good dog. My name is Redge. Autopsy Monday. Monday autopsy for Redge. Dr. Ostley says good dog Redge . . . .”

Myke and I looked at each other.

“Monday is autopsy day, Dr. Ostley, dog food, treat, dog food  . . .”

“Do you think he knows what he's saying?” I asked.

“ . . . crunchy dog food. Smelling good dog food . . . .”

“I think he knows what he
heard,
” said Myke. “I think he heard this Dr. Ostley say something about doing an autopsy on Monday.”

“Autopsy, as in you have to be dead to have one, right?”

“Redge is hungry. Redge would like his dog food now  . . .”

“Yeah.” Mike walked over to Redge, patted his head—

“ . . . yum-yum dog food—”

—and switched off the collar.

“Monday is tomorrow,” Myke said. “If they find him, he's dead! We have to do something.”

I was staring hard at Redge. “You know, except for that collar, he looks like any other basset hound,” I said.

“So?”

“So what we do is we figure out how to get that collar off him.”

Taking off an ordinary dog collar is easy, but what do you do when the collar is hardwired into a dog's brain?

Myke examined the two leads attached to Redge's skull. “I'm afraid if we just yank the wires out we'll kill him.”

“How about if we cut the wires?”

“I don't know . . . .”

“We need technical advice,” I said.