My Best Bud is a Bot! by Jos Van Brussel

Author:Jos Van Brussel
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: J+A Publications

Chapter 14

I managed a weak smile, and held up my hand in greeting.

“Hey, Mark!” I said.

“Where’s the phone?” he barked, searching around.

“I, erm…” I decided to go with the truth for once. “Colin took it. Said he needed it.” Well, almost the truth, anyway.

He frowned darkly. “Colin took it, huh? Didn’t I tell you never to give it to anyone?”

“It’s not like I had a choice,” I explained. “He just takes whatever he wants.”

“Perhaps I should ‘handle’ him,” Mark said, stroking his chin. Then he moved his gaze to me again. Curious. Probing. “Maybe later. For now, we have important work to do.”

“We have?” I whimpered, swallowing. “Great!”

“Just let me get this straight,” he said, plopping down onto my bed.

“Uh-huh?”

“You spent a lot of time on Contacts, right?”

“Loads,” I said automatically.

“You friended people, spent time on the device…” he murmured, more to himself than to me. He sighed. “Then I don’t get it. I really don’t get it.”

“Me, neither,” I muttered.

“Mh?”

“Nothing.”

“Right.” He patted the space beside him on the bed. “Sit.”

I sat.

“We need to do a compatibility check,” he explained.

“Oh-kay,” I said, as if I understood what he was talking about.

“There’s only so much information we can glean from your online behavior.”

“Sure.”

“I have studied you carefully, of course.”

“Of course.”

“But something puzzles me.”

“That’s not good.”

“It isn’t,” he agreed. “Your behavior is erratic. Not according to the norm.”

“Oh?”

I was so terrified, I could hardly keep my teeth from clicking. Once again, sweat was trickling down my back.

“So we’re going to open you up and see what the trouble is,” he announced with a grin.

“You’re gonna… what!” I said.

He tsk-tsked. “See? That’s just what I’m talking about. A normal subject would never respond like that. It’s almost as if you were never exposed to the software at all.”

I gulped as he gazed deeply into my eyes.

“It’s all right,” he murmured softly, his cold stare reaching straight into my soul. “It’s quite all right…”

It wasn’t quite all right. In fact, it was far from all right, but I still pretended to agree with everything he said.

“Now sleep,” his soft voice sounded, his eyes still fixed on mine. “A deep, deep sleep.”

I didn’t feel like sleeping, more like running around and flapping my arms like a chicken. Instead, I closed my eyes and slumped onto the bed.

“Good,” he mumbled. There was a soft whirring sound, and I carefully opened one eye to see what was going on.

What I saw then, turned my blood to ice.

Mark had pulled up his shirt, and pressed his belly button. Right before my very eye, he just… opened up!

It was as if his belly was just a flesh-colored panel. It now slid open like a sliding door, and revealed an intricate maze of circuits and wiring. Lights flickered inside him, and an entire tray rolled out, then opened up like a toolkit, revealing more metal parts.

Mark… was a robot!

Of course! That explained everything. His superhuman strength. His strange behavior. The way he talked…

I held my breath as I lay there.

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