Whatever Happened... to Robot Jones? Continued

Chapter 9: The Predecessor and the Successor

Not until that late afternoon, when his bedroom door was closed in front of him did Robot finally feel his circuits cool, his internal wiring unwind. And yet, his very first thought when he was all alone tinged with all the grimness of a church bell at a funeral.

I am in so much trouble.

He hesitated to open his chassis and pull out the now two student files that sat there, perfectly unharmed. And virtually still unread-all except for that little pink sheet that sat at the top of Shannon's other papers, of which Robot couldn't comprehend enough to feel that bad about it. For the whole day after the mission to get into Ms. Wilson's office, which Robot finally admitted to himself was a total failure to his objective, concerning Andy, Robot had been quiet and nervous. Socks, Mitch, and Cubey, thankfully, didn't seem to notice, not even when Robot had no reaction for Cubey's news of the new Video Virtuoso, that would help gamers unlock new cheats in a variety of video games. He even got away with turning down their offer to hang at the arcade. 'Still stuck on cracking that Andy case,' Socks told the others. If only that were still true.

There was still a way to preserve Shannon's honor, if Robot somehow snuck in and replaced the files. But it would be unlikely that Ms. Wilson would be believing him or any student who tried to report to her about one of Madman's fits, and get her to leave her office, now. He could try to break in at night, but Madman would know of only one student who had the strength and who was technically equipped within his own body to break down a door, or simply break the lock. And even if he didn't, Madman was Madman. Did he really need more evidence than that to pin this on Robot Jones?

And what about the files themselves? Maybe Finkman's file was just gathering dust, but what about Shannon's? What if the reason it was turned sideways, Robot thought, slapping his face as it only then occurred to him, was that there were papers being added to it? Every time a student got in trouble would warrant cracking open the file, wouldn't it?

Thankfully, at least at Polyneux, where detentions were dished out almost as often as pimples to unlucky students, they weren't bothered to be recorded. If Shannon got detention, likely for no reason but that everybody at Polyneux was due for regular detentions, it wouldn't require cracking open her file. Thank Goodness for Madman, in that respect alone. But that didn't mean Shannon's file wasn't set sideways for some other reason. Robot remembered the P.E. Pardon slip, wondering if that had anything to do with it. But that slip had to have been there since the start of Shannon's sixth year. And if the files were put together with the most recent paperwork on top, that would mean there was nothing new added to her file since she'd arrived. Still, like Finkman's, her file was surprisingly heavy, suggesting to Robot that she'd transferred in from elementary school with a lot of paperwork.

Robot groaned. It was all so simple, he could practically read the file without even looking at it. Someone might even argue that he could still literally read the file without ever cracking it open, via X-Ray vision, though his wasn't sophisticated enough to read individual pages, like in a book, or in this case, a manila folder. He couldn't command the ray to penetrate with such precision as to allow him to see each individual page in a closed tome. Robot knew, because he'd tried that before in an attempt to speed-read Mrs. Kavendash's horribly long history book. Once, he even tried to read one of the copies of the textbook on Mrs. Kavendash's book shelf when he was struggling with an exam. It had not worked, and the next test after that is when he began relying on the Scantron's cheat sheets. As far as anybody knew, he hadn't attempted to cheat before the Scantron came into play, and he planned on keeping that detail under the rug.

The only way he was going to be able to read this file was by opening it, and at that point, he'd have no one to blame for himself for what his eyes came across. He cursed himself. Why was he even considering this? Why did risk and moral reason cower in the face of the opportunity to learn more about this girl?