JMJ

Chapter Four

Up in the Air

"Here you are, Dr. Wakeman," said Melody as she set dinner on the table with charm. "Sirloin steak with Pesto alla genovese and roasted potatoes."

Nora Wakeman plopped down on her chair and clasped her hands together.

"Oh, delightful! That Dr. Locus sure was spoiled by the likes of you!" she teased with mock derision that magnified her obvious rapture.

Here she chuckled as she took her fork to the el dente pappardelle dish. She savored it like a child with Christmas chocolate. Once she swallowed she seemed to feel refined just from tasting such a treat and she patted her lips with her napkin like a queen.

"Delicious, Melody!" said Wakeman. "I had no idea that you were such a good cook!"

"But you say that every day, Mom," sighed Jenny leaning into her fist, elbow on the table opposite her mother. She took a disgruntled sip from her oil can.

"Oh, XJ-9," said Dr. Wakeman waving her hand in good-humor, "don't be such a sourpuss. We'll never have to worry about meals again now. She could probably make a good meal from just about any ingredients lying around the house."

"I don't know about that," said Melody wringing her hands; she was quite aware of Jenny's jealously at meal times. "I can't create recipes. I make what I already know. All the dishes programmed into me are from his mother's old recipe box."

"Even better! A mother that's a good cook knows how to make meals from scratch as well as a scientist can make a ray gun with hair drier and an old toaster oven."

"Too bad she was a better cook than she was at raising a sane son," muttered Jenny all the more sour.

Not about to allow Jenny to spoil her good mood Wakeman turned to the steak and the potatoes.

"Everything is brilliant! We almost don't have a wine good enough to good with it!" Wakeman gushed.

Jenny rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on."

Melody's blush meter had her glowing bright pink, and she grinned embarrassed as she looked down at the floor and gracing it with a brush of her shoe.

"Sit down with us, Melody," said Wakeman. "You deserve to relax now."

"And watch my mom turn into jelly over food," Jenny remarked.

Gentle as ever, Melody took a seat and her oil can between Wakeman and Jenny.

"If you're so envious," said Wakeman after a time of awkward silence in which the only one jolly was Wakeman herself, "we could program you with Melody's recipes and you could both be good cooks!"

Jenny sighed and slumped in her chair but at least she no longer was so tense about her position with her mom.

"But I'm going to college. I don't have time to do that too."

"Well, then just enjoy Melody's virtues and stop being so silly about it!" sniffed Wakeman.

"I don't mean to be a bother," Melody said.

"Oh, never mind her," said Wakeman returning to her pleasant mood with another bite of pasta. "XJ-9 has always been a bit sensitive and overprotective. Her loyalty is that of a loving retriever even if a bit selfish."

"Mom," moaned Jenny.

Melody smiled and hid it in her sip on her straw.

Ding, dong!

"Should I go get the door?" asked Melody.

"No, no, you've done your work. XJ-9, would you be a dear and—"

Exasperated, Jenny threw back her head, but scooted her seat back with a loud squeak. "Yeah, yeah, I'll get the door."

"It's just food, ugh," she grumbled to herself out of Wakeman's hearing down the hall.

She swung open the door. Her eyes all but popped out of her head. Kenny hiding behind a cheerful looking Bradley Carbunkle was not the first thing she had expected.

"Hiya, Jen!" said Brad. "Look who I found in the junkyard!"

"Hi, Jenny," said Kenny bashfully. "I told him this wasn't a good idea."

"What wasn't a good idea?" Jenny demanded.

Brad did not have to answer that. She saw the rusted out state Kenny was in. She knew that Dr. Mogg wouldn't let him get in this condition except out of purposeful neglect. Although there was a tiny part of her mind that brought up the files on Mogg, and he seemed like the last person to abandon something he was so proud of and throw him in the junkyard, she was already overwhelmed with the invasion of personal space.

"Brad!" Jenny complained. "My house is not a homeless shelter for lost robots!"

"See?" said Kenny to Brad with a shrug. "I told you she wouldn't like it."

"Aww, c'mon! I had to bring him here to have him fixed up at least, but he said so himself that he wouldn't mind just being stored here, right Kenny?"

"Well, as long as I knew that Jenny wasn't going to be mad about it, but—"

"There, see?" chirped Brad. "He's my robot anyway. I might just bring him home with me eventually!"

"Oh, Bradley Carbunkle!" said the voice of Mrs. Wakeman.

Jenny spun around and saw her mom right behind her.

She be about to talk sense into her friend, but she doubted.

"I thought you were eating your 'delightful' dinner," grumbled Jenny with a slouch.

Wakeman ignored her. "There's no way that you're in a condition to care for something as complicated as YK-9." She crossed her arms. "I won't hear of it. Besides, unlike Dr. Locus who was a madman criminal and most-likely deceased, Dr. Mogg is not a criminal by the legal definition despite his pettiness and sniveling— not to mention very much alive and at large."

As Kenny slumped, his rusty joints screeched. Despite herself Jenny's brow puckered with pity. So did Wakeman's a little.

"But he threw him away," Brad pointed out. "Once you throw something in the trash, it's an automatic freebee for anyone else in my book. I mean, look at him, does it look like Mogg cares?"

"He might if he knew I had him," Wakeman said rubbing her chin. "He's funny that way."

"Then he can stay with me! Or Sheldon even!" said Brad.

Wakeman gave a most disapproving frown at the mention of the prodigy.

"Maybe I should just go back to being the junkyard dog," suggested Kenny, and just on cue, a piece of rusted metal fell right off his flank.

He slumped more than ever and made a little doggy whine. Jenny was unable to handle a second longer of this suffering creature.

"Oh!" she moaned. "Brad's right!"

"He is?" demanded Wakeman suspiciously.

"We can't just leave him like this! I never thought that Mogg was as bad as this, but this—this is just unforgivable! And it's not Kenny's fault! Please, Mom! We have to at least fix him!"

"Jenny…" Kenny's voice was hushed with shock.

"Please, Mom! Please!" begged Jenny falling to her knees now in exasperation.

"But just a second ago, you were…oh…" sighed Wakeman; she paused a moment to examine her daughter's distress. "Please stop groveling, XJ-9. Of course, we'll fix him, but once he's fixed…"

"How can it be bad to keep him if Mogg never knows, though?" Brad asked. "Go ahead and tell them, Kenny. Mogg has a new model. He's not gunna go hunting Kenny down or anything. Besides, just remove the code that links him to Mogg or whatever."

Pause.

"And you want to be a scientist," remarked Wakeman.

"What?" demanded Brad.

"'Remove the code' indeed," muttered Wakeman turning round promptly and trotting back into the house like the proud woman she was.

"What?" Brad whined.

"If he doesn't have a tracking system in him like mine that can just be turned off then removing an original computer code inside a program as complicated as a robot's brain can't just be removed, Brad," Jenny told him kindly. "It's like telling someone to remove the DNA code of a human to block the genetic biological link to a parent."

Brad slumped. "Oh."

"Well, are you three coming in or not?" called Wakeman still headed for her laboratory.

"Coming Mom!" called Jenny.

"And he had better be housebroken!" Wakeman added.

Jenny and Brad turned blank-eyed to Kenny.

"I'm housebroken," Kenny pouted.

Jenny sighed. Why did this have to be happening to her?

"Come on," she said.

The boys followed. Melody watched cautiously as the trio went up to the lab, and it was slow going for Kenny up the steps in his condition. Jenny flew past the struggling pair.

"Life used to be so normal around here," grumbled Jenny as she stepped through the door before Brad and Kenny caught up.

"Life would not be normal if it never changed," remarked Wakeman. "And if you really do want to grow out of your teenaged programming and upgrade to the realm of adulthood, you had better get used to it. You've been quite unreasonable of late."

"But you expect me to just share my house with these total strangers!" Jenny burst out.

Then she blushed a little blue, afraid that Kenny had overheard. She glanced back down through the doorway, but Kenny was much too busy trying to work out an especially rusted joint in his ankle that seemed to have given way. She turned back to Wakeman.

"I thought he used to be your boyfriend," Wakeman remarked.

"But he's a dog," Jenny said.

"Perhaps not for long," Wakeman said. "It depends on how deeply rooted that part of his programming is. If you can overcome being a teenager, he can overcome being a dog."

Jenny raised a brow. "You're going to risk messing with his programming after all that stuff you were just saying about Mogg?"

"Anything thrown away in the junkyard is free for anyone else to take!" retorted Wakeman.

Suddenly there came piercing howl that shook the foundations of the house. Jenny's hair pieces bounced straight up as much as Wakeman's hair stood on end.

"Ahh!" screamed Brad as a muffled aftershock.

Then: BANG! Boosh! Krinch! Bung! Koorash!

Mother and daughter stared at each other. Then after some muffled moaning, groaning, and whimpering from below the floor, Wakeman trotted for her workstation.

"You better go and start acting like the mature robot of this house and get your illegitimate younger-brother model up here," Wakeman told her.

"But I am mature!" snapped Jenny.

Wakeman did not answer. She did not have to.

"Fine…" Jenny relented. "Do we have to call him my brother, though? It's so weird since I used to date him."

"Against my wishes as I recall."

In a shot after that Jenny zipped with full flight speed down the steps already broken anyway as she caused the debris to fly around her. Stretching out her flexible arms, she pulled Kenny up and set his poor rusted body (minus a limb or two still down by Brad who had chased Kenny down the steps) in front of Wakeman. What was left of Kenny fell apart around him as soon as he was put down.

His interior frame writhed like a snail without its shell. A distorted whimper like a puppy afraid of bath time emanated from it.

"Dr. Wakeman, do you want me to fix the stairs?" called Melody at the door with Brad with whom she had flown up the stairs.

She set Brad very gently onto the floor, and Brad dropped the pieces of Kenny down with the rest of the mess.

"No, no, I have a self-repair system built into the house that will begin working in a half hour or so once it's been long enough with no further signs of destruction," muttered Wakeman rubbing her aching temple. "And I told you, Melody. You're allowed to call me 'Mom.'"

"Yes, Mom."

"Say, Mrs. Wakeman," said Brad now on his feet again. "I can handle this, you know. You should go back down to dinner or whatever. It's the least I can do to make up for the trouble."

Again Wakeman paused. She sized Brad up with the deepest scrutiny.

Brad grinned innocently.

"Suit yourself, Carbunkle," muttered Wakeman, "but if I find you've made anything worse around here, our deal is off permanently."

"You can count on me, Mrs. Wakeman!" Brad cheered; his boss and teacher was always threatening things and Brad had grown to not taking these threats at all seriously.

"I'll help!" Jenny decided; though in part to escape watching her mom eat.

She had no desire to see her get out the mini cheese cake Melody had baked for her. If Melody did not watch it, the slim body of Mrs. Wakeman was going to expand to a harmful degree.