Chapter 7

WHEN TRASHBOT COMES TO MY room late at night to ask his usual question, I give him something other than my usual answer.

“Yes, I do have waste to dispose of.”

Trashbot’s faceplate lights up green. He rolls back a few inches and then forward. He raises his arms and clenches his graspers. I think he’s excited.

“Please direct me to your waste,” he says.

“It’s not here. It is elsewhere in the complex.”

I am not saying anything that is untrue, but I am leaving out things that are true. I am lying. I find it surprisingly easy to do this. I wonder if my ability to lie is part of the X-module.

“Trashbot, do you have access to all parts of campus? And can you select routes that avoid encounters with uniMIND employees?”

His face blinks green. I take it as a yes.

“Then lead me to the laboratory where Proto is stored.”

He rolls down the corridor, and before I close the door behind me, I take a last glance into my room. I see the books Gina gave me, sitting in straight, organized rows. I see my posters of spacecraft and dinosaurs on the walls and my models hanging from the ceiling with fishing line. I see my stars.

These were my things when I lived with Gina. But somehow, once transported to this room at uniMIND, they stopped being my things. They are like me. I was myself with Gina. Here, I am property.

I close the door and resolve to never come back.

The route to Proto takes us into janitorial supply rooms, toilet stalls, the cafeteria kitchen, and a room with a Ping-Pong table. The building is quiet at night, fortunately, and by pausing before turning corners and crouching behind water fountains and diving behind potted plants, I manage to avoid being spotted by uniMIND workers. Trashbot doesn’t have to bother with that. People are used to seeing him all over campus.

“Where is the waste you wish to dispose of?” Trashbot asks when we arrive at Proto’s lab.

The ladder is still in the middle of the floor. The hockey stick the uniMIND worker used to hit Proto leans against Proto’s case.

“You can have the stick,” I tell Trashbot.

Trashbot races over and picks up the stick with his graspers. There’s a violent grinding noise as he feeds it into his waste bin. A wisp of wood dust twirls in the air before Trashbot vacuums it up.

Nobody will ever hit Proto with that particular hockey stick again.

Meanwhile, I snap open the case and lift Proto out of it. I find the “On” switch under his belly. Proto’s lights flash green. He stretches his legs and wags his antennae.

“Proto, I am escaping uniMIND. Would you like to come with me?”

“Rarf,” Proto responds.