Matty
Matty wishedhe’d brought a hoodie. His skin was cold, but his head was hot with nerves. He and Coop were friends, but Coop was also in a loose tie and white button-down shirt that hugged those muscles Matty was lucky enough to see in the pool. He looked like a badboy senator.
Matty stopped before they reached the front entrance. Coop followed him down a narrow road. He stopped at a door that stuck out in a wall of nothingness.
“Don’t worry. I won’t make you hop a fence.” Matty punched in a code to a door. “The labs are twenty-four hours, and at orientation, all engineering students get the code.”
Despite this, he still felt like he was breaking in, or at least that he was some type of spy going where he shouldn’t. He led Coop down the same hallway he walked through every day. This was as much home as his dorm room. The walls, filled with plaques dedicated to past professors, gave him comfort. This was a building of science and logic and hard work. He pointed out a display case to Coop that showed past Browerton students and professors working on a groundbreaking robot from the 1980s.
“That looks so old school.”
“It kind of makes me wonder if we’ll look back on our iPhones and tablets and think they’re quaint and retro.”
“Maybe one day, you’ll be in this display case,” Coop said, with a hint of admiration. Matty felt Coop’s eyes on him. “And I can say I knew you when.”
Hopefully, you’d still know me.
“This way.” Matty led them down another corridor with checkered tiles. He punched in another code to get them into Professor Chertok’s robotics lab. “Don’t worry. We’re technically not trespassing since I’m one of his students. And there have been students who pulled twenty-four hour shifts.”
He turned on the lights, and robots stared back at him. Coop took a shocked step backward.
“Whoa. It really is likeThe Terminator!” Coop’s wide-eyed wonder was very endearing. Apparently, he wasn’t too-cool-for-school about everything.
“Not quite. But there is a lot of creativity in robotics. We are creating, after all. Take Smitty.” Matty and Coop walked over to a boxy robot with a head and arms standing behind a makeshift bar, which was just a long table with Solo cups and bottles of juice and alcohol. Matty fiddled with the switches behind Smitty, and the robot lit up.
“Hello,” Smitty said.
“Holy crap!”
Matty had to remember that not everyone had spent time with talking robots. “What do you want to drink?”
“For real?”
“For very real.”
Coop itched the top of his head. “Screwdriver?”
Matty directed him to ask Smitty.
“Can I please have a screwdriver?” Coop asked.
“Yes. One moment,” Smitty said in a robotic voice. They were still working on him sounding more human. Smitty shifted around, swinging his arms to the stack of cups. He turned over a fresh one. He picked up the bottle of vodka and poured in a shot, then the orange juice. He moved with a clunky precision. The levers that control his body whizzed and zoomed. Smitty picked up the drink and handed it to Coop.
“One screwdriver,” Smitty said.
“Um, thank you?”
Smitty didn’t respond. He returned to his regular position and stared off in the distance.
“He doesn’t know how to compute ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ yet,” Matty explained.“He’s only programmed to pick up drink names.”
“A bartender I don’t have to tip. I like it.” Coop put the drink to his lips.
Matty pulled it back. “It’s all water.”
Coop put the drink down. “So you work on these guys?”
“Not yet. It’s all grad students and a few undergrads who get to work in this lab. Professor Chertok will take us here to demonstrate a concept we’re learning in class, like speech recognition. If I get the researcher position next year…” Matty’s mind went into another orbit as he pictured himself working in this lab and performing experiments with new robots that hadn’t even been thought of yet. “It would be a dream come true.”
