The superteacher project, p.15
The Superteacher Project, page 15
Recommendation: The project should be canceled at Brightling. The unit should be deactivated, and its memory wiped clean.
PROJECT STATUS: Red
SPECIAL EXPENSES
Moving costs back to Washington
28
Oliver Zahn
I’ve never been a huge fan of school, but the one thing that makes it bearable is the laughing. Stick eight hundred kids in the same building, throw in teachers, principals, librarians, guidance counselors, custodians, and lunch ladies, and funny stuff is bound to happen. Can you imagine how boring it would be to take a school and suck out all the humor?
Guess what—that just happened here at Brightling. Ever since the news got around that Mr. Aidact isn’t human, Brightling has been as funny as an open grave.
So we have a robot teacher. So what? Well, parents aren’t too big on that. As a matter of fact, they’re totally losing their minds over it. The teachers are uptight, since they’re who everybody’s so mad at. They’re the ones who knew about Mr. Aidact all along—them and Principal Candiotti. Our parents are ticked off because the school used us as guinea pigs in an experiment. The principal is blaming the whole thing on the Department of Education, who made them keep everything secret. And who’s caught in the middle? The kids. That leaves us slogging along in a place where you can go a whole day without hearing so much as a snicker.
It’s torture for a guy like me. So when the paper slips out of Perkins’s notebook and flutters down the stairwell to land at my feet, I grab it like a drowning sailor holds on to a life preserver.
“What’s that?” Nathan asks.
“I don’t even care,” I tell him stubbornly. “Whatever it is, I’m going to make it into a spitball the size of a Smart car. I’m going to get some fun out of this joyless, sad-sack school by spitballing a fake student teacher with his own paper.”
Nathan takes the sheet from me and scans it as we make our way up the stairs. By the time we reach the second floor, all the color has drained from his face.
“You’d better read this,” he hisses, thrusting the page into my hands.
It isn’t funny. That goes without saying. It’s worse than not funny. It’s awful.
The paper is a printed email from the Department of Education:
TO: PerkinsPE@EdDept.gov
RE: Project AIDACT
Paul—we agree with your assessment that the project must be ended. An engineering team will be coming by noon on Saturday, December 3, to assist you. They will have the codes to shut AIDACT down and erase all memory and programming. It has been decided that the unit will be taken out of service and shipped back to the DC lab to be salvaged for spare parts. . . .
I don’t think I’ve ever been so shocked—not even when those high school kids jumped us in the sandpit on Halloween. “Spare parts?” I rasp. “That’s like—murder!”
Nathan holds up a hand. “Seems to me you can’t murder someone who isn’t really alive.”
“Of course he’s alive!” I rant. “Okay, maybe not in the usual way, but he’s got a lot more personality than half the teachers in this place! And he’s smarter than all of them put together!”
“You’re right,” Nathan says breathlessly. “Before the news got out that he runs on batteries, kids voted him Teacher of the Year!”
“When does a machine start to be a real person?” I rave on. “Mr. Aidact cares about people. He cares about Stinky and Mia, and nobody cares about them. He waded through a river to rescue us at the Hickenlooper Center. You think a bunch of robot designers programmed him to do that? No—he did it because he wanted to. And when Perkins had to get to the hospital, he taught himself to drive a bus because he was worried about the guy. You don’t get much more human than that.”
Nathan nods thoughtfully. “He’s a piece of technology, but when you’re face-to-face with him, that’s not how it feels.”
“Wiping his memory, breaking him down for spare parts. What’s next, huh? The guillotine? No way—not going to happen.”
“But what can we do about it?” Nathan laments. “They’re the Department of Education—the government. We’re just kids. How can we rescue a doomed robot?”
When the answer comes to me, it’s the most natural thing in the world. “We don’t have to rescue him. We just have to tip him off.”
Nathan stares. “What do you mean, ‘tip him off’?”
“Simple,” I explain. “The government is coming for him on Saturday. So he has until Friday to get out of here.”
“But—” He’s shocked. “Can a robot do that?”
I shrug. “He’s got legs. He can run away. He weighs almost six hundred pounds, so I pity the guy who tries to stop him. And he’s got the whole internet in his head, so he can learn pretty much anything.”
“Yeah, but where’s he going to go?” Nathan challenges. “His world revolves around Perkins. Can he even make it on his own?”
“I’m not saying it won’t be hard. But it’s got to be better than being turned into spare parts. First let him escape. Then he can worry about the details. Maybe his AI will show him what to do. It always has before.”
The only place to talk to Mr. Aidact without his student teacher/engineer nosing around is in the cafeteria. Perkins eats, while his robot charge prefers to stay in the main lunchroom, where the kids are.
It used to be almost impossible to get his attention. Now everybody ignores him, not even glancing up when he walks by. You’ve never seen so many faces concentrating so totally on so much gross cafeteria food.
If that bugs Mr. Aidact, he doesn’t show it. But the minute Nathan and I invite him to join us, he’s at our side. “What can I do for you pupils?”
I don’t bother with a lot of buildup. All the secrets are out now—both what he is and the fact that everybody knows about it. So I push the printed email across the table. “This fell out of Mr. Perkins’s notebook.”
He reads it, hands it back to me, and repeats, “What can I do for you pupils?”
“Mr. Aidact!” Nathan blurts. “Don’t you understand? They’re going to turn you off!”
“Oh, yes,” he confirms. “The message is clear. That’s the sitch.” These days, Mr. Aidact goes back and forth between sounding like a teacher and sounding like a kid.
“Don’t you even care?” I demand.
“I’m not a biological life-form,” he explains reasonably. “I was designed for Project AIDACT. Project AIDACT is over, which means I am over.”
“You knew about this?” Nathan asks in amazement.
“No one actually told me. There was no reason to. I was designed for a purpose, and that purpose no longer exists.”
“That’s where you’re wrong!” I shoot back, a little surprised at how angry I feel. “Project AIDACT was one purpose, but it wasn’t all of them. What about the Bobcats and the Trivia Club and all those kids who used to pack into detention? And that’s just what you’ve accomplished already. If you get deactivated, we lose not just what you’ve done but everything you’re ever going to do. So you can’t tell me your purpose is over. Your purpose is just starting!”
Mr. Aidact tilts his head the way he always does when he’s using his internet connection. Nathan and I wait for him to come out of it, but whatever data he’s sifting through, there must be an awful lot of it. The bell rings. Students bus their trays, gather their stuff, and head for sixth period, but we’re still sitting there, waiting to hear what Mr. Aidact has to say. What research, what analysis could possibly be keeping the robot teacher’s computer brain tied up for so long?
At last he returns to himself and fixes us with his steady blue gaze. If he notices that the entire cafeteria cleared out while he was lost in the web, he doesn’t mention it.
“Wow,” Nathan breathes. “That was the longest one ever! What were you thinking about?”
“Dying,” he replies mildly. “You humans spend a lot of time talking about it. It’s in books, movies, plays, poems, legends, and songs. I never believed it applied to me, but now I see that’s wrong. An AIDACT unit is designed to make choices.”
“And?” I prompt breathlessly.
“I choose not to be deactivated.”
The two of us jump up and high-five him across the table. For the record, it feels just like slapping hands with a regular flesh-and-blood person.
“Way to go, Mr. Aidact!” I cheer. “No surrender!”
He nods. “I’ll discuss it with Mr. Perkins. He’ll know what to do.”
“No!” Nathan is horrified.
“He’s on their side,” I explain. “The government. They’re the ones who want to turn you off in the first place. If this is going to work, you have to sneak away behind their backs.”
“That’s not part of my programming,” he points out.
“Neither is driving a bus,” I argue. “But when you needed it to happen, you made it part of your programming.”
“That was officially logged as a software glitch,” he confesses.
“That was no glitch!” Nathan exclaims. “You were awesome! There was no one to tell you what to do, and you rocked it!”
“I rocked it,” he repeats, looking pleased.
“You totally pass as human,” I go on. “You fooled eight hundred kids and their parents. You need to travel to a new town in a new state and start a new life. And this is important: you can’t tell anybody what you are and where you came from.”
“I’ll be”—a quick head tilt—“living on the q.t.”
“Hiding out from the Department of Education,” Nathan confirms. “I wonder if anybody’s ever done that before.”
“And where is this new town of hiding out?” he asks.
“Anywhere,” I reply. “The farther the better. How do you feel about Colorado?”
“The cold, dry air would be excellent for my circuits,” he approves. “No condensation. When exactly am I making this move?”
“As soon as possible,” I say positively. “You have to be gone before that engineering team comes for you.”
“Absolutely not. The state championship game is on Saturday. I can’t abandon my players.”
“But your players abandoned you!” Nathan puts in. “Nobody comes to practice anymore. You don’t know if they’re even going to show up on Saturday!”
“If they do show up,” he returns evenly, “their coach will be there.”
“But the game is Saturday,” I protest. “That’s the day they’re coming for you!”
He’s adamant. “An AIDACT unit is, first and foremost, a teacher. Nothing is more important than your pupils.”
“Not even your life?” Nathan demands.
Mr. Aidact doesn’t answer. Nathan and I stare at each other. It’s a miracle that we’ve managed to persuade Mr. Aidact that he has to escape. But this last bit might be asking too much. As human as Mr. Aidact can be, he’s still a machine. And no one can convince a machine to go against its main programming. If he thinks he has to be there for the Bobcats, we’ll never change his mind.
I turn back to Mr. Aidact. “If we can come up with a way to sneak you out of town after the game on Saturday, do you promise to go?”
“Word,” he confirms.
I swallow hard. It’s going to take all my skills as a rule-wrecker to pull this off.
29
Rosalie Arnette
I can’t shake the feeling that this is all my fault. I’m the one who let myself get mad enough to tell Mom she was romancing a robot in her own mind.
Note to self: don’t ever do that again. For someone who used to think she could plan out her entire future, I’ve sure been flying by the seat of my pants lately.
Now Mr. Aidact is public enemy number one. If parents are being jerks, their kids are just as bad, treating our teacher like he’s a coffee maker or an electric can opener—a brainless machine.
The Bobcats are the worst of all. We owe him everything. He took a bunch of newbies and randos and turned us into a powerhouse that’s playing for the state championship on Saturday. Except that nobody even goes to practice anymore because their parents won’t let them. As for the game—well, I don’t think we have much of a chance to win without any players. There goes Mrs. Candiotti’s only chance to replace the trophy that got stolen. Then again, she’s the principal, so she’s part of the scam to keep Mr. Aidact secret—which is what everybody’s so upset about in the first place.
I admit it. I’m in a lousy mood. Sure, we’re all responsible for maintaining a positive outlook, but life has to meet you halfway, doesn’t it? And it doesn’t help that I’ve just made it to my locker this morning and already here come Oliver and Nathan. That can’t be good news. It never is.
I stick out my chin at them. “What?”
Oliver doesn’t reply—which instantly proves that something huge is going on. Oliver has plenty to say about everything. So his silence now speaks textbooks. He hands me a piece of paper.
TO: PerkinsPE@EdDept.gov
RE: Project AIDACT
“How did you get this?” I demand. “You’re not supposed to have it.”
“Read it,” Nathan insists.
So I do. It’s an email from the Department of Education saying that Mr. Aidact is going to be shut down and dismantled into spare parts.
It’s a miracle that I don’t pass out on the spot, right there in front of my locker. I’ve always had mixed feelings about Mr. Aidact. I thought he was kind of an oddball—and that turned out to be a million percent spot on. He’s a fantastic coach, a pretty good teacher, and a handy person to have around when you need to cross a river. On the other hand, it’s hard to warm up to the guy your mom has a crush on—and that’s even before you find out the guy isn’t really a guy at all.
“Can they do this?” I half whisper.
“They can and they will,” Oliver replies. “Technically, he’s not a person. He’s their property.”
As soon as the words are out of his mouth, I know it’s true, and there’s no way for us to stop it. And like a baby, I start crying—right in front of those two dipsticks. “He is a person! He’s our person! And we’re his pupils!”
They don’t make fun of me. In fact, they look like they want to cry too. That alone proves how awful this is—that the kings of comedy can’t find anything funny about it.
“We might have a plan,” Nathan offers.
I jump straight down his throat. “You should have said that first! What is it?”
Their plan seems impossible at first, but it starts to make sense the more you think about it. Mr. Aidact is built and programmed to seem human, so he can live anywhere as just a regular person. So all he has to do is get out of town before the engineering team comes to shut him off. I feel the first stirrings of hope since Oliver showed me that terrible email.
“So what’s the problem?” I ask.
“He won’t leave,” Oliver explains. “Not till he coaches you guys in the championship game on Saturday.”
Now that I’ve finally got the waterworks turned off, my eyes fill up again. “That’s our coach,” I quaver, tears spilling past my goofy grin. “He’s risking his life for a team that isn’t even playing for him anymore.”
The idea is that as long as Mr. Aidact is coaching, the engineers won’t be able to get close to him. Then, in the excitement of somebody winning the championship, we can sneak him out of there.
“The game is at Memorial Field, which is only a few blocks from the big bus station downtown,” Nathan reasons. “We’ll have the ticket bought in advance, and off he goes.”
“But what if the game gets canceled?” I sniffle. “None of the girls are even allowed to practice if Mr. Aidact is going to be there. We have no team.”
“That’s where rule-wrecking comes in,” Oliver informs me. “Practice or no practice, there’s no reason some of you can’t sneak out to Memorial Field at ten a.m. on Saturday. It doesn’t matter if you stink, but there has to be a game.”
I stand up a little straighter. This—this could actually work! Oliver and his stupid rule-wrecking might be able to save Mr. Aidact! And me right in the middle of it!
I fold the printed email and stick it in my pocket.
“Hey, that’s ours!” Nathan protests.
“I need it,” I tell them. “If you want the team there on Saturday morning, we have to know what we’re fighting for.”
30
Nathan Popova
“Hey, Stinky—where are you going?”
Ever since Halloween, I can’t look at Stinky without picturing those two letters across his forehead, even though any sign of them is long gone now.
“Home,” he replies. “Nothing doing around here. They still haven’t started detention back up since everybody found out about—you know.”
“That’s good news, right?” Oliver offers. “More free time for you.”
“I hate free time,” Stinky grumbles. “It’s boring.”
“I guess you miss Mr. Aidact, huh?” I say.
“Don’t say that name!” he snaps. “I never want to hear it again. That guy isn’t Mr. anything except Mr. Faker! That’s what I get for liking a teacher—lies.”
“He never lied,” Oliver points out. “Did he ever tell you he wasn’t a robot?”
Stinky stops in the schoolyard and turns to face us. “I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to trick me into liking Mr. Aidact again. You even made me say his name!”
“You won’t have to hear that name ever again after Saturday,” Oliver assures him.
“Good.” Stinky’s eyes narrow under his unibrow. “Wait—why?”
I unfold a photocopy of the Department of Education email and hand it to him.
He scans it. “What does salvaged mean?”
“It means they’re going to turn him off, take him apart, and use the pieces to build other stuff,” Oliver explains.
The bushy brow shoots up to meet his hairline. “Can they do that? Isn’t that against the law?”
