Poetic Justice (Soft Robotics 2.0)

0.12(paradox)

POV: GRACE

When Colin gets mad at me, I try to keep him blocked for a full 24 hours. He has to be in my lab to work, so during business hours, I hole up in my office with the door locked and the lights off. When he waits outside my lectures, trying to corner me as the class disperses, I approach a random group of students packing their bags, and I ask if they want to talk about resume building or networking or something. A lot of them are brimming with entrepreneurial sycophancy, so a group tends to gather around me in a sort of human shield as I walk out the door past Colin.

When the day is done, I spend the night in my apartment with the armoire securely in front of my door. Tonight, I'm re-fusing IVY. While I'm working, at 9:52PM, one of the motion sensors that I buried underground in the courtyard outside my apartment is triggered. But when I view the feeds from my hidden cameras—the standard ones, the infrared ones, the AI that I taught to recognize Rumlow's mugshot—there's nothing there. I reason that it must have been an animal, slithering too low or flying too high to show up anywhere else. Still, I sit cross-legged in front of the armoire while I blowtorch IVY, my back against the barricade as if I can hold it there with sheer stiffness of posture.

By 3AM, IVY looks good as new, which is to say, in one piece, but still not strong or flexible enough to demonstrate any progress to Meridian. I don't remember falling asleep, but I wake up again with the dingy carpet of my living room pressed into my cheek at 5AM. I go to work again.

At 6AM, Colin hammers on the door of the lab, knowing his 24 hours are up. I let him in because he yells that he brought me an iced americano.

"This is a hostile work environment," he says, handing me one of the two Starbucks drinks he's carrying.

"Sorry I went out the window again," I say.

"Sorry's not gonna cut it with Meridian later."

He dumps his backpack onto the ground and sits on his usual rolling chair. As he swings his feet up onto the workbench in front of him, he accidentally flips a control switch with the back of his sneaker, and the six foot tall robotic arm looming over him groans to life.

"Fuck," he mutters, planting his feet back on the floor, flipping the switch back off, and mashing the arm's emergency stop button next to it for good measure.

It powers off and he sighs in relief, leaning back in his chair again. That arm has inexplicably homicidal tendencies. It started as a university-backed project, and Colin's primary research focus, but I had to nix it when it swung at an undergrad. Colin calls it ANGEL, but I think that's a lazy joke. I don't find any humor in homicidal tech anymore.

"I think I'm gonna disassemble that thing and have it taken to the dump," I say, eyeing it. I sit down on the corner of his workbench and jam the straw into my drink.

He stops in the middle of tapping open his straw wrapper, hovering still in the process, blinking up at me. "I thought Dan said you and I could keep working on it? As long as students aren't within its reach?"

"Yeah," I say. "He doesn't know that it intentionally tried to choke you out, though. It's crazy dangerous."

He opens his mouth, then closes it again. He looks around, as if Dan the Department Chair should be around here somewhere to defend him. Then he snaps, "I've spent the past year on it, Grace!"

See, this is why I have to bolt from Colin so often. "Please don't yell at me," I groan. "Never mind. Do what you want. I don't care."

He sighs. Then he deflates. "No. It's ok. I'll get rid of it. Let me do it."

I blink. I'm suspicious. Or maybe I just think I'm supposed to be suspicious, because he's being nice. I can never tell the difference. I stare at his face. He pushes his glasses up his nose.