Jester Book 1: Abduction

Chp 19: A Long Overdue Meeting

On another starless night in the corner of town, a young girl studied the night away. Head down with a soft yellow bulb bearing over the papers before her. On her right was a little pencil cup filled with bolts and screws. A soldering tool was visible in the open drawer on her left. There was a contraption with a colorful spectrum of gears and joints acting as a paperweight. Underneath was a small stack of papers with answers to questions already filled out.

She had long since completed her assignments. Her mother tried doubling the workload to keep up with her growing prowess. With intelligence like hers, it's nearly impossible to formulate a curriculum she hasn't mastered. Those history questions put her in a slump though.

With the monotony of modern education conquered she could focus on more pressing matters. The current page of her notebook read: Absentee Brawler Search or A.B.S. for short. Two pages worth of strange oddities she had discovered during her investigations. She started the notes when Chester first asked her to keep an ear to the ground for him. At that time all she could find were kids gossiping about where the Brawlers could have gone. Now she had much juicier details to report.

To start, she'd been listening to the walls for days. It was hard to sneak around with Nani's software constantly monitoring her. Usually, she would dupe Nani's sensors by hiding in the vents but she'd grown too big for those tricks. However, she managed to keep track of her and Pam's occasional conversations. Besides accidentally hearing that her birthday gift was ready she also caught something odd. Pam and Nani were talking about an upcoming project. Though she couldn't hear it over the crackling oils within the stove, Jessie did catch one statement, "...they're all offline now..."

Jessie made sure to jot that down. She couldn't catch any more of their talk since Nani went on the search soon after. It was the robot's constant check-ins that kept her from getting the vital details. After she dodged another Peep-shaped inspection she took a moment to analyze her findings. Her mother said, 'They're all offline." If the 'they' she's referring to are her junk collection bots that would be a bold lie. Anyone within a thousand feet would be able to hear them rushing throughout the night. So it must be something else.

Her childish mind imagined what the 'they' could be. Maybe a set of specialized bots deep within her lab. Or it could be she's on a secret mission as well. Has she successfully disabled the laser grids in her way? She chuckled at the thought, imagining her mother going on a super-secret mission as a spy. Her portly body trying to sneak through a heavily guarded vault was too funny.

Her finger traced the bulleted list. "Who is Adam?" she whispered while chewing on the pencil's eraser. She had recently managed to sneak up on her mother during a call. She was arguing with someone named, Adam. Whoever this guy was she seemed extremely miffed talking to him. That wasn't the only time she'd caught her mid-conversation. This Adam person would call her all the time when she was younger. It just now dawned on her that he might be important. Who is he?

She caught herself before nearly rocking out of her chair. This experiment was tougher than any problem her mother could think of. There was another major oddity she had to mention. Her mother kept staying extra late inside the lab. Jessie would sometimes find herself waking up to the sound of Pam entering the home at four or five in the morning. Jessie knew that there wasn't much to entertain her inside the warehouse itself. She must have been spending sleepless nights inside her underground lab. That was dedicated to massive projects. It was under those floors that Nani was originally created. She hadn't been down there in years so she had no idea what kind of advancements she's made since then. Could it be another super robot? Something to help with the missing Brawlers cases?

All these questions and more were scribbled between the pages of her binder. She doesn't know how, but she's certain that this will help him out somehow. He and her mother must be working on the same thing, even if they don't know it. She wishes her mother would listen to her whenever she explained that Chester was innocent. Pam always brushed her aside, saying that she was biased because of her crush. A statement that always ended with Jessie rushing away with flushed cheeks. If only she knew about their secret meetings. Though she did promise Chester she'd keep quiet about that.