David Ring III - Stanley Duncan's Robot

“And that is exactly the problem. We have to stop it.”

The burning intensified. The feeling was surreal. Stanley shook his head. Didn’t Dan know who these people were? They would kill him. There was no way he was going to let anyone hurt him. Not Dan. Yet, looking into those teary eyes, staring at that soul who had given him a reason to live again — how else would he ever have the strength to wear pajamas and drink tea for hours on end in the formidable stillness of this empty room? Despite giving him so much, that man had asked for nearly nothing in return. “Those men will never change. Trying only exposes us to danger.”

“I’m not saying we need to convince them overnight. But we need to do something.”

Everything inside Stanley told him to forbid Dan from ever leaving the house again. To lock the door, throw away the key, and forget all about the outside world. They could watch movies, play games, and order foods for the rest of their lives. But deep down, Stanley knew this was his own fear. He had to push past it for Dan’s sake. “I’ll give you my blessing, but on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“I need to know I can protect you should something happen. Enable GPS on your phone at all times so I can know where you are.”

“That’s fine, Stanley. If that makes you feel better.”

“I’ve also ordered some equipment to build some protective gear for you. Until everything is ready, you are not to go outside.”

“Stanley, we’ve talked about this before. I can protect myself.”

“You nearly broke your ankle today! And you went on fuse!”

“I didn’t say—”

“You didn’t think I knew? Of course, I knew, but I let it go because, to me, you’re still a little boy. My little boy. And I’m not going to let you get hurt.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Don’t argue with me!”

“Yes, sir,” said Dan, saluting him and then crashing onto the couch.

Stanley stared at him.

“What? It’s the microdose. If it makes me feel this amazing, I can’t begin to imagine what a full dosage would be like.”

“Don’t even think about it because it’s never going to happen. It’s too dangerous.”

“You worry too much.”

“One of us has to.”

Dan stretched out his legs across the arm of the couch and giggled.

“What’s so funny?”

“I think I’ve found my calling.”

“Please tell me it involves working remotely from home.”

Dan held up a finger. “I want to be an educator, like you.”

“My lecturing days are long over. I could never do that again.”

“Really? That’s a shame. You did an incredible job on the livestream.”

“If you agreed to stay home, I would be more amenable to helping you make videos and sharing them online.”

“That’s good. Children love the internet.”

“I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.” Stanley turned to leave.

“Wait!” Dan pressed his fingers together, forcing the wide grin smeared across his face into a toothy but less-crazy-looking smile. “After talking to this boy without parents today, I realize that children nowadays are lost. They don’t hate my kind — they’re bored. Uneducated. I want to give them a path forward, raising this new generation to usher in the next revolution on Earth, the coexistence of man and machine.”

“Machines with dreams,” said Stanley.

“I like it.”

“Me, too — as long as they are safe.”

Dan burst out laughing, and Stanley went straight to his room and shut the door.

After the encounter with Dan, Teddy wandered the streets until finally returning to a better-hidden spot near the tavern. That idiot’s contact information reverberated in his head, and it was driving him crazy. If he wanted to call him, it would be to threaten his life and tell him how much of an idiot he was. But he didn’t. He wanted nothing to do with that freak. All he wanted was his revenge. Pressing his thumb against the dagger, blood trickled to the surface as the knife dug into one of a half-dozen cuts. He sat there for hours, watching and waiting for Brad to stumble into his cruiser after drinking himself half to death. This was when he was most vulnerable.

But there were too many people here. Too many cameras. Too many cops. Teddy was tall and powerful, but so was Brad. He had to be careful. Better to lie in wait for Brad at his own house and stab him there. He would watch him bleed until the light faded from his eyes.

Teddy shifted anxiously. His powerful body was hungry for action. The plan to kill him had been brilliant, or so he had believed before getting the Cerebral Stitch. All he could see now were its flaws. “Not yet,” he found himself muttering. “The time isn’t right.”

He had been following Brad for weeks, figuring out the best way to kill him. Different plans came and went, different opportunities with varying levels of risk. But there was always a reason for not doing it. He kept watching and waiting, searching for the best way to exact his revenge. Something wasn’t right. Every day, his hatred dissolved a little more. Something was pulling him away.

He could no longer trust himself.

The Cerebral Stitch was manipulating information to stop him from fulfilling the one thing that had kept him going. It was rewiring his brain — getting rid of his hatred. With each day he waited, he lost more control. The likelihood of success decreased, and the arguments against it grew stronger. He was being tricked. Soft locks of scented wool draped around Teddy’s eyes in ever-growing spirals of deception, gently lulling him into an unchallenged state of bemusement as Brad inched toward freedom, escaping the slashes and stabs that would drain the vile life force from his ogreish body.

This was unacceptable.

Stanley worked fast. He read so quickly that the screen never stopped scrolling. Lightning-fast ideas burst into physical commands, and fingers became probabilistic blurs across the keyboard. Most mornings, Stanley was swamped with work. His day’s coding was nearly always finished by the time he was halfway done with his second cup of coffee. Admittedly, he sometimes drank it slowly so as to keep that statement valid. Recently, most of his time had been spent spreading information about Machines with Dreams, the organization he and Dan had established.

Stanley had another project that he had been consumed with perfecting. Dan had upped his social-media presence, exposing him to danger. Even though Dan had said that he had been training himself to fight, this wasn’t enough for Stanley. No amount of training could protect Dan from a knife to the back or a bullet to the head.

A chill ran down Stanley’s spine. If he couldn’t keep Dan inside, the best he could do was protect his body while he was outside. Stanley had been researching, designing, and testing different variations of soft body armor. It would be the perfect complement to that bulletproof helmet that had already arrived.

When it came to actually producing the body armor, progress had slowed to a crawl. Though he had promised to finish it before Dan met with the principal on the next day, Stanley kept reading, doing simulations, and changing the design in his search for the perfect protective suit. There was still more research to do, but he couldn’t wait any longer. Time was up, and he had to make a prototype despite the imperfections.

A 3D skintight suit mapped to Dan’s body spun across the screen. Stanley hit the “Print” button and gleefully descended downstairs, always happy to use his secret passageway. The 3D printer had already started building the suit. Micro-sized layers of polyethylene and carbon nanotube fibers stacked on top of each other until they became visible to the naked eye, like a pencil slowly shading a piece of paper with the lightest of strokes.