The Receiver

1 0 - A R C H I V E S

I aimlessly scroll through book titles in the library on the laserscreen, no idea what I'm looking for. The list is dominated by science and math-related volumes, few of which are fiction. At home, Mom always had all types of novels—mysteries, sci-fi/fantasies, romances, memoirs and autobiographies—but eventually they all had to be sold, along with most everything else we owned, to pay rent. I can't find any classic literature in this collection aside from Asimov's Robot Visions.

It doesn't take long for me to get fed up and start searching by keywords. Even this proves to be more difficult than I anticipated.

"Control of the past," I think aloud, echoing Milo.

My words pop into the blank keyword field, but all the list produces are physics textbooks on time and gravity.

"This is bullshit," I sigh.

Again, my words pop onto the screen and the results show books and articles about animal waste and its contribution to water pollution.

I shut the screen off, the laserlight collapsing into nothing, and lean back against the couch, arms crossed, feeling sorry for myself about not being able to find anything.

"Miss," Frank interrupts my sulk fest. "I've just been informed your name has been added to the enrollment log at The Tesla Academy. Congratulations."

I turn to look at Frank. "I've been accepted?"

I almost forgot that I applied.

"Yes. Classes begin at your convenience."

"You think they have a library there?"

"Checking..." Frank's sensors spin, then flash twice. "The digital archive at TARS hosts over twenty-six point two million textbooks, peer-reviewed journal articles, recordings, photographs, and compendiums on robotics-related subjects."

I smile.

#

The bot giving me a tour of the robotics academy moves like he's skating on water. From the words printed across his chest plate, Proto347, I assume it's taken his designers more than a few models to achieve his fluid movement. The material he's made of mimics the look of stone so that he looks like he's been chiseled from marble. I think he's supposed to resemble one of the great statues constructed during the Italian Renaissance; I think I saw it in one of Mom's art books, but the memory is hazy now. I spent the first few minutes inspecting him from head to toe, trying to find the sutures on his brainchamber or a charge port somewhere on his posterior plates, but could see nothing but the rock-hard abdominals and oversized hands and curly hair.

Below the waist he is featureless, with only smooth metal where his junk should be. Then he politely informed me that for him to stay on schedule, we needed to begin our tour so that concluded my examination.

We make a single loop around the entire building, passing corridor after corridor of classrooms and groups of students, some on foot, but most on those hover boards. They chat with one another or whoever's on the other end of their conversation. They wear cuffs around their ears, like a much smaller version of my bracelet, so I assume they're not all mumbling and laughing to themselves.

347 drops me off at my first class: Mechanical Engineering I. The students inside are already out of their seats and huddled around an operating table at the front of the room where another prototype lies on its back. More and more parts litter the worktable. The scene reminds me of an old-school dissection. Mom used to tell me horror stories about how it was like a scavenger hunt for frog parts. Find the liver, scoop it out. Now the bladder, then the intestines. She much preferred dissecting art and poetry.