A Book Club to Die For by Dorothy St. James

Author:Dorothy St. James [St. James, Dorothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

What did you do to LIFU?” Anne demanded. I’d been so wrapped up replaying the conversation I’d just had with Marigold, I hadn’t noticed that Anne had come into the library’s café to look after the fallen robot. She was standing next to my chair at the café counter with her bright yellow fists propped on her hips. “It’s completely messed up. And now we’re going to have to explain to Keven how we broke his expensive prototype.”

“I didn’t break anything on that defective piece of metal. All I did was push it over,” I said.

“You pushed it over?! I know you don’t like technology, but don’t you think attacking a defenseless robot is going too far?”

I held up a finger. “One, that thing isn’t defenseless. The unnatural color of . . . of, well, all of you is proof enough of that.” I lifted a second finger. “Two, I didn’t attack it.”

“You just told me you did!” Anne cried.

“No, I told you that I knocked it over. Which was necessary in order to save one of our patrons from becoming that thing’s next victim. Why did Keven bring it back? It’s a menace.”

She cocked her head to one side and looked at me. “That’s what happened? Really?”

“Ask the barista. He was cowering behind the counter when I came in.”

“I was,” the barista said, and he turned a bit red.

Anne bit her lip as her gaze ping-ponged between me and the robot. “I don’t understand. It was never even supposed to come into the café. It’s only supposed to roam around the main library floor aiding anyone who needs it. And Keven promised he fixed the other . . . um . . . problems and disabled the security features.”

“Look on the bright side, this gives you an excuse to see Keven again,” I said.

“I don’t—”

“Everyone seems to be gaga over him,” I said, not unkindly.

“He is dreamy,” the barista agreed.

“Well, I’ve never met someone that brilliant,” Anne confessed while turning a bit red—er, orange—in the cheeks as well. “I worked with bona fide geniuses in Silicon Valley, and Keven makes most of them look stupid.” She smiled to herself for a moment before sobering again. “I don’t understand what’s going on. LIFU was working beautifully this morning when he brought it over.”

She returned to the robot and knelt beside it. “What did that mean lady do to you? You can tell me,” she cooed to the machine in a sugary-sweet voice I’d never heard her use before.

“I didn’t do anything to it!” I protested.

“Ah!” Anne looked up at me and smiled.

“What?” I asked. I wasn’t sure why I’d stayed to watch her treat that thing as if it were alive and in possession of feelings. I had work to get back to and, more importantly, a murderer to find. “What is it?”

“It looks like whoever last used the robot jammed it up with several nonsense requests. Most of them are strings of letters that don’t even form words. All this gibberish probably overloaded LIFU’s AI system.

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