Chapter nineteen

The robot had all but left the quarterdeck when I tried his patience. Dex grabbed me by the right hand and spun me around to face him. He wasn’t bored anymore, the fire that I grown to love had returned to his synthetic eyeballs. He was as ready to hit me as he had ever been before, but he couldn’t, not in that moment. If he punched me right then, he would never hear about the real plan I’d concocted.

“Tell me.” Throwing caution to the wind, I decided to tell him my diabolical plan.

“First I will Feeblejoint you to the ground. Then I will find a way to give you calypsus.”

Time stopped. The little robot fell onto its back laughing. He was having a freakin’ electronic seizure he was laughing so hard. The worst of it was, he couldn’t stop laughing. Every time I thought the laughter began to die down, even a little, he’d look over at me and start back up all over again. I think some of that plasma stuff was leaking out of his eyes – a robotic version of tears of joy. Though it was embarrassing, I was happy to see Dex as good as dispatched, as though it were an early victory for me in our war. Within a minute or two, Dion had stopped working on the Magnatron and came over to see what all the fuss was.

“Must’ve been a pretty good joke,” Dion said, happy to see the appearance of Dex and me getting along. Dex must’ve noticed Dion walking up and so the mirth started up all over again: as though his gigglings were dictated by a broken record, and each new stimulus brought him back to the beginning of the laughing song. “Is he alright? I mean, what did you say to him, buddy?”

I looked at Dion and repeated the last sentence again: “I told him I would find a way to give him calypsus.” Dion’s smile faded as before, and he grabbed me squarely by the shoulders. He then looked into my face and then my eyes, intensely. He held me there, not laughing at all, and looking at me with a gaze fit for the Grim Reaper.

“Don’t even joke about that.”

“I told you that I was going to kill him, man.”

“Not by giving him calypsus! That’s suicide.”

“No, it isn’t. I’ll be immune to it and Dex’ll be done for, at least that’s what the book says.”

“What? What book? What the heck are you talking about, Lester?”

“This one.” I brandished the now-ancient tome called The History of Systech and Its Application within the Connexus, and held it out for Dion to look at. He grabbed it and held it close to him, but he didn’t look at it at all. In fact, he was holding the book to keep it away from me, I realized. Meanwhile Dexeter just couldn’t stop laughing.

“Where did you get this?”

“From the Library,” I said. I felt like a young boy whose father caught him stealing.

“This book is not a joke, dude,” Dion said, admonishingly.

“Why do you care, dude?” I said. “You know I want to kill him. You never told me not to.”

“Actually, I said you couldn’t do it. As in, Lester will not be able to kill the Solomon Decksetter model. And I care because Dex is a friend of mine.” The busted record had returned to the start of the song of laughter once again.

“Are you kidding me? He’s a fucking robot! Robots can’t have friends.”

“These ones can.”

“What? Seriously, where the fuck is all this righteous shit coming from? I thought we were becoming friends.”

“We were – we still are becoming friends, Lester. But I can’t have you killing my robots –”

“Your robots?” Dion didn’t say anything, so Dex’ laughter easily filled up the empty space in our heated conversation. Dion picked up the book and, turning to the last few pages of the book, he showed me the book’s About the Author page. There in the book was a picture of a very dark African American dude in a suit and tie. It was Dion. As I squinted at the page, Dion talked.

“I am Dion Demeter, the inventor of Systech and the entire line of Solomon robots.”