Robotics Genius 

Chapter 7

The Bot Orgie

    In Mark’s office, he layed out what he thought would be fair,”Tim, this shrinking technology will change the world. If you’re willing, I want you to be my partner in Bots. Full fifty fifty split. Trust me, we’ll have more money than we could possibly spend. Just the shipping implications are staggering. Like putting the entire contents of a container ship in an airplane. What do you say, will you be my partner?”

    “I would love to be your partner.”

    Mark said,”That’s great. First thing we should do is build another one here in our lab so we can fully test it before revealing it to the world. You agree?”

    “Sounds good to me. Always good to have our ducks in a row.”

    Mark said,”Good, only problem is I lost my operations vp. Lily, I saw what you did while I was in the hospital. I’m offering you the position of operations vp. Salary would be one point five million a year with a full benefits package. Are you up for the challenge?”

    Lily with tears in her eyes said,”Oh my God Mark, yes, thank you so much.”

    Mark said,”Lily, you earned it, thank you.”

    Within a few weeks the second shrinking machine was operational. Mark had papers drawn up and we signed into our partnership. Ed was ready to come back to work. Mark and I discussed it and decided to make Ed our director of security. I called Ed and asked him to come to my office. 

    Ed walked in after knocking. “Ed, how are you doing?”

    Ed smiled,”Much better now, I wanted to talk to you.”

    “Hold on, let me give you some news first. Mark and I decided to make you Director of Security. That comes with a significant raise. Almost triple what your current pay is.”

    Ed was excited,”Thank you Mr.Dwyer, thank you so much! I’ll make this company more secure than Fort Knox.”

    “I’m sure you will.” Remembering Ed had something on his mind,”You said you wanted to talk to me about something?”

   Ed's expression quickly changed to one of concern, ”Yeah, about that, you see Chris came here within a half hour of when someone was programming the robots. His house is an hour away. So the timing is off. I asked the other guards if he had a laptop with him and none of them saw a laptop.”

    “That is quite concerning…” Shit, Chris had an accomplice. Damn, who else. “Ed, tell no one about this. Also we’ll keep all the system guards up. No changes unless you hear directly from Mark or myself, ok?”

    Ed said,”You got it Mr.Dwyer.”

    “Good man, now I have to break this to Mark.”

    Ed shook his head and said,”He’s not going to like this. Good luck, thanks again.” Ed showed himself out. 

    Who, damn it, who else could it be. Ed is out because he was trying to save us. So, Ed and Mark are the only people I trust right now. Well, I better get this over with. 

    I get off the elevator,”Hello, you must be Mark’s new assistant.”

    “Hello, my name is Shelly and you must be Mr.Dwyer.”

    “Nice to meet you Shelly, you can call me Tim. Is Mark available?”

    Shelly said,”No, he’s out with his wife. He didn’t say where they were going.”

    I chuckled,”It’s ok, I know where they are.” Poor girl, doesn’t have a clue. 

    I knocked on the door, punched in the code. “Is it ok if I come in?” I hear some kind of sloshing wet sound. “I’ll come back later.”

    Mark pipes up,”Nonsense, get in here. It must be important.”

    “Definitely, we have another person involved with trying to murder us.”

    Mark said,”How do you know?”

    “Ed figured it out. The time it took Chris to get here was too short. It was only a half hour. Chris’s house is an hour away. He didn’t have a laptop with him.”

    “Damn, no way of knowing who. I’m guessing we still have the program traps in place”, Mark stated more than it was a question. 

    “I didn’t remove them. I think I’m going to go over the quarantined program that Chris tried to install. Maybe it’ll yield some clues. I think we should be cautious, we have no idea how, when or if the other person will strike at us. Also I think we keep this between us and Ed only.”

    Mark said,” I guess you’re right. Don’t need gossip alerting them that we’re still looking for them.”

    I was going over the quarantined program. He knew about my trap, he disabled them. All but one, which I’m guessing he didn’t know was there. That Mark or myself have to be present to make changes. Whoever it is, is definitely too close for comfort. 

    We continued testing on the shrinking machine. We started shrinking animals. A mouse at first. It worked well. We returned it to size. Then we tried a chimpanzee. After shrinking him, he was quite excited. “I wonder if the durability is there?” 

    Alan, thinking out loud,”How do we test that?”

   From behind us, Lily walked over to the chimp and said,”Let’s see.” She slowly stepped on the one inch chimp. Putting her weight on him, we heard a crunch and the front of her black pump dropped to the floor. She twisted her foot. We could see the excitement in her eyes. Lifting her foot, the stringy gooey remains were evident. 

    “Well shit, guess we need to work on that one.” 

    Lily smiled as she scraped the remains off and said,”Yes, definitely not working.” She turned and walked out. 

    Alan said,”What a woman.” He was visibly shaken by her actions. 

    Randal said,” I never thought I would be envious of a chimp, yet there it is.” First time I ever saw Randal let his guard down. I guess we aren’t so different. Jimmy just stood with his mouth agape. 

    Leah came in looking at us,”Ok, what did I miss?” Alan gave her the sorted details. She also had a look of shock. 

    I had Yolanda hook into the shrink control. Since all the bots communicate with each other, any of them should be able to help us with the durability problem. Yolanda finished in about thirty minutes. 

    “Thank you, Yolanda.”

    Yolanda winked at me and said,”You’re welcome, Tim, any time.” We brought another chimp in and shrank him. 

    “Anyone want to check if it worked?” Yolanda stood up, walked over to the frightened chimp and stepped on him barefoot. The chimp disappeared under the ball of her huge foot. She lifted her other foot off the ground. She twisted a little on him. She stepped off. 

    We all looked wide eyed for the result. The chimp jumped up screaming and shaking his fists.  “I call that a success. Thank you again, Yolanda.” 

   Yolanda said,”Let me know when you want to take the chimps' place.” She blew me a kiss as she sat down. Then it dawned on me, they never imprinted on anyone. They were looking at me because of communicating with Jenna and Julia. Mark was so engrossed with Steph, he wouldn’t even entertain the idea of another bot. So that leaves me. 

    Leah said,”What are you grinning about?”

    “Oh a, nothing, just glad it’s working, that’s all.”

    Leah with a look of disbelief,”Yeah, right.”

    We brought the chimp back to its original size and put him in a quiet area to calm down. He was obviously shaken from his ordeal. Everyone in the lab was daydreaming after we had finished the shrinking machine. 

    Everyone had left for the evening, I was finalizing all the parameters and backing them up. I smiled to myself and said out loud,”Well, it’s ready.”

    Yolanda asked,”Do you want to try it on yourself?”