One
Most of the time when Midtown pulled its students into an early morning assembly, it was to ridicule them for how they acted in an earlier assembly, to give them another generic pep talk about grit and hard work, or to announce upcoming school sanctioned events that everyone already knew about. So, to put it simply, most of their assemblies were pointless.
The teachers and staff knew it, too. Every time there was an assembly they’d usher students straight from the school’s front doors to the musty auditorium (because why would a science and technology school bother spending money on the Arts?) with obvious disinterest. Most of them still had steaming cups of coffee, freshly poured from the teacher’s lounge communal pot. Many of the students looked about the same, dragging their feet and wishing they could have at least put their backpacks away before they’d be forced to listen to forty five minutes of Principal Morita’s monotone voice.
This particular day seemed the same as all the others. Students unloaded from buses, hopped out of their parents’ cars, and crawled out of nearby train stations to flood the front steps of Midtown School of Science and Technology. But instead of walking down the halls and going to their lockers, they were forced to the side and directed toward the auditorium, a sure sign of an incoming assembly.
Book bags still in hand, students followed one another into the auditorium and spent several minutes trying to find friends to sit with. Michelle was lucky enough to have found her friend (possibly best friend) Ned Leeds on her way in, and the two of them took seats in the middle section near the front. Sitting up front sucked, sometimes, because whoever was on stage was always making eye contact with you, but it also meant no other students wanted to sit there and Michelle and Ned usually had the area to themselves.
“What do you think this one’s about?” Ned asked quietly. It was almost 7:30; most of the students who’d be showing up for the day were already in their seats.
Ned pulled a granola bar and a small thermos of already sweetened coffee out of his bag and handed them over to Michelle, then did the same for himself. It was sort of their ritual— every other day, one of them brought breakfast. Michelle brought blueberry muffins yesterday.
Michelle shrugged and sipped her coffee carefully. “No clue. Didn’t they talk to us about ‘The Importance of Personal Hygiene’ last week?”
“No, last week was emergency procedures. The week before was personal hygiene.”
The coffee was still scorching hot. Michelle blew on the surface of the dark liquid before taking another drink. “Oh yeah, you’re right. Mr.Davenport pretended to be an intruder and Morita hit him with a Nerf Sword.”
“Yep. I feel safer already,” Ned said with squared shoulders. “As long as I have my trusty foam sword, I will gallantly defend myself and my fellow students-“
Michelle was still laughing when microphone feedback screeched out of the auditorium speakers. Several students attempted to cover their ears. “Can I have your attention please? Quiet down, please. Thank you.”
Principal Morita was on stage now, talking into a microphone and looking way too energized for the time of day. “Good morning, Midtown high.”
The students responded with a flat Good morning, Principal Morita. He either didn’t notice or didn’t care about their lack of enthusiasm.
“I know you all have places to be, things to do. But late yesterday evening I was given some exciting news, and I thought you all should be told right away.”
Morita paused for effect. No one talked. Ned accidentally crinkled his granola bar wrapper and Michelle shot him a dirty look.
“As you all know, Midtown has a long list of generous alumni, corporate, and charitable donors that allow us to operate at such an impressive capacity. It’s always been our first priority to help students get involved in their communities and have access to experiences that may not be available for kids at less endowed institutions.
“Today, we have a great example of one of those special experiences. So, on behalf of Midtown High and its esteemed faculty, I’d like you all to give a warm welcome to our biggest donor, Tony Stark.”
For several seconds, no one moved. Tony Stark? Seriously? Who was Morita trying to kid? Midtown had welcomed some neat speakers in the past— last year they had the guy who played Dean Thomas in Harry Potter, which ended up being pretty cool. But aside from that, every speaker they’ve ever had was irrelevant or drop dead boring.
That’s why when the curtains at the side of the stage rippled and Tony fucking Stark walked out to stand next to the principal, the entire student body went apeshit.
Stark waited patiently for the crowd to settle, hands in his pockets and tinted glasses perched on his nose like he was born to deliver speeches at high schools.
“This is insane!” Ned whispered to Michelle excitedly. “Tony Stark! At Midtown! Can you believe it?”
“No, not really,” she said plainly. “Why’s he wearing sunglasses inside?”
Ned looked offended on Stark’s behalf. “That’s his trademark, you know that.”
Michelle did know that. They’d covered some of Stark Industries’ newest developments in robotics class, so she’d developed a base knowledge of the company and its accomplishments. Ned was obsessed with Tony himself, though. Him and Michelle had spent quite a few Saturday nights watching his press conferences and TV interviews on YouTube. He was obviously shallow and an absolute snob, but Michelle had to admit, he was entertaining.
The audience finally silenced and Morita handed Stark the microphone. He stepped forward and eyed the room. “That’s true, you know. I am Midtown’s biggest donor.”
Everyone started clapping again and Tony flashed a quick smile, but they calmed quickly with a wave of Stark’s hand. “But in all seriousness, I’m happy to give a couple mil’ of my own money, as well as a sizable chunk of SI’s, to Midtown High. This is a great school with immense potential.” He paused for a moment to make eye contact with students sitting closest to the stage, a classic crowd involvement tactic. Of course that meant Michelle and Ned were in the line of fire, and his wide eyes found the two of them through the light blue lenses of his glasses. “I wish I’d had a school like Midtown to attend when I was younger. Places like this keep you grounded, really make you thankful for your friends and your teachers. You’re in good hands.
“That’s why, upon careful consideration, I believe I can trust you all with one of my most prized possessions. My tech.”
Tony finally broke eye contact with Michelle and walked toward the other side of the stage. Ned’s eyebrows were so high that Michelle thought they might fly off his forehead.
“As many of you know, Stark Industries has spent years developing technology to make life better. Easier. More user-friendly. We wanted to take the world and its contents and squish them into one convenient package. And let me tell you, this package is about as squishy as it gets.”
Tony snapped his fingers twice, and the same curtain he’d walked out from behind earlier started shifting.
“It is my great pleasure to introduce all of you to my Proprietary Electronic Two-factor Experiential Robot. Or, as I like to call him, P.E.T.E.R.”
And with a dramatic flourish of Tony’s hand, the curtain finally parted and out walked what was unmistakably...A teenage boy.
“Is this a joke?” Michelle heard a student a few rows back ask a friend.
“Who is that kid?” Someone else asked.
“It looks seriously punchable,” Flash Thompson said, a bit too loudly.
Tony chuckled. “I know, you all probably think I’m crazy. And yes, Peter here does look a little punchable. But I advise against doing anything of the sort because, one, he’s worth more than this entire school, and two, you might break your hand. His skull is made of titanium.”
Peter came to a stop next to Tony. Being so close to the stage gave Michelle ample time and opportunity to observe the thing standing before her.
Peter was relatively short, just a bit smaller than Stark himself. It had the distinct face and bodily shape of a sixteen year old boy, all the way down to a head of fluffy brown hair and bright brown doe eyes. Somebody had taken the time to put it in a pair of blue jeans and New Balance sneakers, topping off the look with a Stark Industries crewneck.
“Peter is a highly complex artificial intelligence system. His main purpose is mass data collection and synthesis, but the coding is so advanced that we’ve discovered way more practical applications. You could stick him in almost any situation and simply by reading the behaviors and tendencies of others, he would begin adapting.
“Some of you may be wondering, why did we make him look like a person? On top of that, why did we make him look so small and goofy?”
That earned Tony a collective giggle from the crowd. He smiled at his own joke and pressed on. “We wanted to put Peter in an extremely complex environment, one in which he’d be forced to read social situations, take in new information, and truly adapt to survive. And what’s more cut throat than high school in the twenty-first century?
“Regarding his looks, we needed him to be as nondescript and non-threatening as possible. If everyone who interacts with him is afraid of him, the data he collects regarding social interactions will be totally skewed. He had to look like someone everyone could be friends with. So we slapped some synthetic skin and a friendly face on him and called it a day.”
“Why do you call it a ‘he’?” Flash suddenly shouted from his seat. “It’s a hunk of metal, isn’t it?”
Principal Morita looked absolutely mortified by the interruption and was already stepping forward to apologize when Tony waved him away. “A good question, honestly. What’s your name, kid?”
“Flash!”
“Alright, Dash-“
“I said Flash!”
“Yeah, Sash, whatever. I refer to Peter as a ‘he’ because he’s so much more than an ‘it’. True to the name, Peter is a two-factor system composed of bio-synthetic elements and computerized data processing capabilities. To put it simply, he’s got a computer brain and fake organs. The whole point of creating him was to humanize him, to integrate advanced technology into society safely. If we create some unidentifiable hunk of metal and send it out into the world, no one will want to come near it. Also, myself and my team spent thousands of hours developing Peter. When you spend that much time with something, you tend to treat it like a friend.”
A robot with fake organs that was meant to act like a person. Michelle wasn’t sure she liked the idea. Humans are humans because they can think for themselves, can feel emotions and have genuine life experiences. How could any robot ever compare? Using technology to replicate human life was a sad imitation of what Mother Nature intended.
“But we’re off-track here. My point is, for the remainder of your school year, your Principal has given me permission to integrate Peter into your student body.”
Michelle had never heard a group of people shriek so loudly. People were hopping out of their seats and high-fiving one another. Many were already claiming their place as the robot’s official human companion. Overall, Midtown High seemed excited to have a hyper-personified machine in its midst.
Michelle could not say she shared their enthusiasm.
“Here’s how it’s gonna work. One of you will be randomly selected to be Peter’s model student. He’ll operate on this student’s class schedule, interact with them, and learn from them for thirty days. After the thirty day period is over Peter should have collected enough data to move about classes and other situations on his own and won’t need a guide. Please note that immediately after his initial integration into your school, he is to be treated like any other student. Like I said before, ingenuine interactions will negatively skew his data.
“I’ve left my official terms and rules with Morita, who will be distributing a copy to all of you. But here are my most important stipulations. One, don’t intentionally harm Peter. Yes, he’s a robot and he’s durable and he can’t feel real pain, but his systems are delicately balanced. Serious damages could take months to years to fix. Two, Peter is allowed to leave campus for field trips or extracurricular activities with a designated buddy, but whether or not he leaves for any other reason is up to your principal. If you think you can take him somewhere without asking, think again. He’s got one of the most accurate GPS tracking devices ever invented literally implanted in his forehead. We at SI will get flagged immediately if he goes anywhere suspicious.
“And finally, in case of an emergency, do not let him try and resolve the situation. Just like any other robot, he’s been programmed to react accordingly in very specific scenarios like fires and other disasters. But, as much as I hate to admit it, an adrenaline and fear-fueled human is almost impossible to replicate and even harder to predict. In a dangerous situation Peter will move forward with basic problem-solution programming. All of you are smart enough to know that in a real crisis, that won’t be enough. He might even get in the way. So for your own safety as well as Peter’s, if he’s ever doing more harm than good, use Command Code P911. It’ll initiate a complete shutdown of both of his systems, and he’ll need to be sent back to Stark Industries for rebooting.” Peter must not have been fully activated yet, because it didn’t react to P911, only blinked when Tony mentioned the emergency command code.
Peter actually did that. Blinked. Every once in a while, after a few seconds or so had passed, its thin eyelids would close over its soulless eyes and open right back up. Its chest also visibly distended and compressed as if it were breathing, which made Michelle horribly uncomfortable. They really spared no detail when they were making it lifelike. She wondered if it had a fake pulse, too.
“I’ll be taking Peter back with me to SI for some final checks, but as of tomorrow morning, Peter will be a student of Midtown High. I expect you to welcome him with open arms.”
The cafeteria was even louder than usual during Michelle and Ned’s lunch period. Everyone was freaking out over the robot. Oh my god, Tony Stark was at Midtown! Oh my god, Tony Stark is giving us a state of the art personified robot! Oh my god, someone gets to spend an entire month with it!
Gag. Michelle was glad Midtown had so many students. It made her chances of getting placed with Peter smaller and smaller.
“The synthetic skin is insane,” Ned said as he shoveled mashed potatoes into his mouth. “Did you see him? He had freckles! The attention to detail was amazing.”
“It,” Michelle corrected. “It’s a machine. Not a person.”
“Whatever. It’s still cool. Man, I really hope he gets placed with me. Do you think he’s complex enough to play video games? Or do my Pre-Calc homework for me? Oh! I wonder how the synthetic heart works! It’s got to pump somehow, right? Do you think he’s got blood?”
Ned was an endless stream of questions for the next forty five minutes. Tony Stark was his idol, so she knew Stark trusting their school with something so important was a big deal to him. She’d let him enjoy the magic of it while it lasted. As for her, she planned on keeping her head down and pretending she wasn’t involved whatsoever.
“Who do you think will get chosen as Peter’s guide? Personally, I think it’s gonna be Betty Brant. She’s always giving tours to prospective students, I feel like she’d be a good companion.”
“Stark said the guide would be a random student.”
“They’re never actually random, MJ. There’s always criteria. Always.”
“If you say so.”
The rest of the day passed uneventfully for the most part. Everyone was a bit more hyper than usual, but that was to be expected.
What Michelle did not expect was to get pulled out of her last class of the day and called down to Principal Morita’s office.
As she did the walk of shame out English and down the hall, Michelle tried recalling everything she’d done in the last seven hours. Had Morita heard her saying something bad about Stark? Or about Peter? Had he actually started noticing that she read books in gym class? Surely she wouldn’t get called down to the office for that, right?
His door was open when she approached, and she knocked on the threshold carefully. “You wanted to see me, sir?”
“Yes, Miss Jones, please sit.” Morita motioned to the two chairs in front of his desk, and Michelle took the one closest to the door. It wasn’t as if she planned on bolting, but the fact that she had the option made her feel better.
Morita closed the lid of his laptop, made a note on a nearby stack of Post-Its, and then looked directly at Michelle. “As you know, Miss Jones, Stark requested that we randomly select a student to be Peter’s guide for the next month.”
“Sure.”
“Stark also requested that we make sure the selected student was responsible enough for the task. We disqualified anyone with a disciplinary record or a GPA lower than 3.5. We then compiled a list of students who had the required GPA as well as a history of extracurricular participation. Stark wanted Peter to be as involved in out-of-class activities as possible.”
Ned was right. There were selection criteria. And all of those criteria fit Michelle to a tee.
Michelle only nodded in understanding, seemingly silent and indifferent on the outside. But on the inside, her heart was sinking to her toes.
“From there, we more or less chose a name out of a hat.”
A beat of silence.
“Congratulations, Miss Jones. You’ll be Peter’s companion for the next thirty days.”
The ten minutes after that were a complete blur. Morita told her to report to his office first thing tomorrow, then gave her numerous papers and packets, most of them regarding procedures for keeping track of the robot. P.E.T.E.R. is not to leave school grounds without explicit permission from Principal Morita or Tony Stark himself. Peter is to be treated like any other student for the sake of accurate data collection. Peter may need help tying his shoes, sometimes. That’s one of the glitches we never quite worked out in his programming.
The stipulations went on and on, an endless list of information that Michelle would never be able to memorize by tomorrow morning. How was she supposed to get anything done with all of these rules? Wasn't this thing supposed to be self-reliant?
Morita watched Michelle try and fail to shove the papers into a folder. “This is a huge favor you’re doing the school, Michelle. Donors like Stark are hard to come by. We’ve got to keep him happy.”
Michelle finally forced the paper stack into the folder and slipped it between two textbooks in her backpack. “By being his lab rats?”
The question came out with much more attitude than she intended. Luckily Morita took it in stride and just chuckled at her slip up. “It seems that way.”
The end of the day bell rang and Michelle stood from her seat, slinging her backpack onto her shoulder.
“And Miss Jones? I understand that this might be a nuisance. I want you to tell me if having Peter around becomes too much. Of course we’d like to follow Stark’s instructions and keep him with one student if possible, but if Peter’s presence really starts affecting you mentally or academically, we can look into transferring him to someone else. Okay?”
It was exactly what Michelle needed to hear. That she wouldn’t be totally trapped with that thing for a full month with no escape. If things got bad, she could pass it off and make it someone else’s problem.
“Okay, sir. Thank you.”
“Of course. I’ll see you back here in the morning.”