Wood Sprites

3: Mundane Monday

“I think we’re lucky that our male genetic donor is dead,” Jillian whispered in art class the next day.

Louise glanced automatically to Jillian’s tablet to see what had triggered the comment. Her twin had multiple newspaper web pages up, all featuring a Boston murder case. According to the headlines, the killer’s name was John Wright, who had beaten his wife, Ada, to death. “What?”

“Leonardo DaVinci Dufae had one sister. Ada Lovelace Dufae. She married John Wright and had one son, Orville Wright.”

Louise snickered at the names. “Wow, the Dufaes have a twisted sense of humor when naming children.” DaVinci had been a scientist as well as an artist. Ada Lovelace had worked with Charles Babbage on the prototype of the computer. Orville Wright had invented airplanes with his brother, Wilbur.

“Yes, obviously our grandfather hated being Tim No Middle Name Dufae.”

“I wonder what they would have called us.”

Jillian squinted a moment. “The mind boggles. The Wright brothers are the only sibling pair of inventors that leap to mind. But Orville is our cousin, not our brother.”

“You can be Wilbur. I’ll be Jane Goodall.”

“I’ll be Marie Curie, merci beaucoup. You should be Maria Goeppert Mayer, since we’re already Mayers.”

“Marie? Maria? We have a hard enough time with people telling us apart. I’d rather be Jane Goodall.”

“Okay, monkey girl.”

“Okay, Wil-burr.” Louise giggled.

She winced as Miss Gray raised her voice. Gage was causing problems again. He really needed to be on some kind of ADHD medicine.

Jillian sighed. “I can’t find out what happened to Orville after his mother was killed.”

“Oh.” The headlines made sense now; their Aunt Ada had been murdered by her husband. “How old is he?”

“He was ten when his mother died.” Jillian pulled up a picture of a boy that looked eerily like Louise now that her hair was boy-short. His dark eyes were haunted; they spoke to her of unimaginable horrors. “He saw it happen. He’s twenty-two now. Wherever he is. Trying to find out anything about him is getting me spammed with hits on the airplane inventor. Our stupid grandfather!”

Jillian fell silent, focused on creating a more accurate genetic family tree than the one that hung over their fireplace at home. Ironically both were equally bare. Orville was their only cousin by blood or birth. Their “Aunt Kitty” was a girl that their Grandma Johnson took under her wing but never formally adopted.

Louise tapped the icon in the corner of her tablet to check on their art teacher Miss Gray, who liked to roam while her students sketched. Making eye contact would warn her that the twins weren’t working on the assignment. Normally not a good thing, but since they were hacking various computer systems, it could be catastrophic if they were caught. Louise had a monitoring application that tracked the tablet that Miss Gray usually carried during class, but sometimes she put it down. The program showed that Miss Gray was in motion on the other side of the art classroom.

Louise minimized the window and went back to chasing down leads on their older sisters’ surrogate mother, April Geiselman. She had three leads so far: one in Hawaii, one in Arizona, and one in New York. She needed to dig into their past to see if any of them had lived in Pittsburgh at some point.

The morning had been surreal agony as they went through the motions of pretending to be normal nine-year-olds. Almost everything covered in class, they’d learned before enrolling in kindergarten as four-year-olds. After a series of tests showed that they read at college level and could do advanced algebra equations, the public school system had tried to push the twins straight into middle school. Their parents resisted the move, stating life was more than just grades. Instead of calculus and chemistry, the twins were enrolled in first grade to learn a more complicated subject: socializing with their peers.

Unfortunately, “peers” was a very imperfect fit.

In theory their school was for the gifted. Yes, all their fellow students tested higher than the typical fifth-grader, but they were also dropped off by nannies in BMWs. At times it seemed that the parents’ net worth was more important than their children’s IQ. It meant that otherwise fascinating subjects were dumbed down to the class average. Art, for instance; their assignment was to draw a two-dimensional still life of what the teacher arranged on the center table. How interesting could a flat representation of a bouquet of sunflowers, a collection of stoneware bowls, and a length of red velvet be?

Luckily the teacher was letting them use their tablets instead of forcing them to use actual pencils and paper. It meant that for the first time all morning they could work on saving their siblings. According to Cryobank, there were four embryos still in storage. While the sex of the embryos wasn’t given, Jillian decided that it would be best if they were three girls and one boy. Louise had considered the matter and had to agree. More than one boy and they would gang up together and be totally annoying. Case in point — the whole reason they weren’t using pencil and paper was because Kelsey and Gage had stabbed each other repeatedly during their last freehand drawing lesson. At least the boys kept Miss Gray’s attention off Louise and Jillian.

Louise grinned as she hit pay dirt on the April Geiselman in New York. “Look,” she whispered, tilting her screen. “Her records show that she was born in Pittsburgh! She’s the one! And she lives in the Upper East Side!”

Their datapads suddenly enlarged their drawing window. Louise controlled the urge to glance up to double-check that their teacher had actually moved into viewing range. If their teacher realized that they were using her tablet to track her movements through the classroom, she would probably hover over them, and they would have to actually pay attention to the assignments. Louise’s sketch was just a rushed collection of yellow pen swipes to place-hold the sunflowers. Louise winced, picked a red that roughly matched the velvet, and added in the draped fabric in the same quick lines.

“Is that all you have done?” Miss Gray said above her head.

“I had more.” Louise made a show of pausing and considering her drawing. “I didn’t like how it was going, so I erased it. It seemed too — too real.”

“Too real?”

“Well, if we wanted the picture to look real, wouldn’t we just take a photograph of the flowers?” Out the corner of her eye, Louise could see Jillian frantically drawing on her blank tablet. Louise held up her picture to keep Miss Gray’s attention; she at least had something to show and had already started into a reasonable excuse. “Art is translating what we feel into a visual medium. Obviously, the flowers can’t look like a photograph or otherwise I wouldn’t be putting my emotions into the picture. To me sunflowers are like. . like. .”

“Flowing sunlight,” Jillian prompted in a whisper.

“Flowing sunlight.” Louise babbled on to give Jillian more time. “Like the sun dripped down onto the flower and will flow away again. It’s all bright and sunny and temporary. At any moment, poof, it will be gone. What I had before just seemed too permanent. It didn’t have that ‘life is fleeting’ kind feeling.”

Miss Gray was getting that slightly panicky look she had often with the twins — like she realized she was in over her head. Jillian’s theory was that this was because it was Miss Gray’s first year of teaching and she hadn’t firmly latched on to the idea that she was an adult. Louise leaned more toward the notion that Miss Gray was smart enough to know that they were pulling something over on her, but not smart enough to figure out what or how.

“I see. Well. Then. Jillian, what do you have?”

Jillian held up her sketch. She’d gone to extreme cartoon to cover her lack of details. The sunflowers had eyes, huge sharp mouths, and were holding wriggling students in their leaves. One student was crying “Help me” as she was being dropped headfirst into a gaping mouth. “These are carnivorous sunflowers from Elfhome. Like strangle vines and black-willow trees, they’re distant cousins to Venus flytraps and the waterwheel plant. Those are both snap-trap plants as opposed to flypaper traps or pitfall traps that you have in butterworts and pitcher plants. Did you know that the black-willow trees on Elfhome can walk close to two miles per hour and can swallow a man whole?”

Miss Gray gave a tiny whimper, and her eyes went wider.

Louise ducked her head and pressed her lips tight together to keep from laughing.

Jillian frowned at her datapad as if she was totally unaware of the effect she was having on Miss Gray. “Luckily all Elfhome plants need some magic to thrive, and magic doesn’t exist on Earth, so these are most likely harmless.”

Miss Gray whimpered again.

Elle Pondwater unintentionally rescued them by waving her hand and calling, “Miss Gray, I’ve finished!” Elle and her friends were on the other side of the room; all dressed in their Girl Scout uniforms. The distance illustrated that the twins were currently failing at socializing with their peers. “Can I put my picture up on the wall display?”

“That would be good, Elle.” Miss Gray fled their table while Elle uploaded her drawing onto the wall display. “Oh, Elle, that is wonderful!”

While reasonably intelligent, Elle was not one to think outside the box. Add in her need to please adults, and it came as no surprise that Elle had done exactly what Miss Gray asked. Her picture looked like a bad photograph of the objects on the center table. Elle beamed with imagined triumph. “My mother set up art classes at the Children’s Museum of Art for our Junior Legacy National Proficiency Artist Badges. It was eight sessions of private lessons, all in drawing.”

Elle showed off her badge and explained that they were having a meeting after school to coordinate their cookie drive with the Daisies, Brownies, Cadettes, and Seniors. “We donate half the money so that underprivileged girls can go to camp.”

Jillian was moving her mouth in silent mimicry of Elle, getting the tilt of her shoulders and toss of her head down perfectly but adding in a dramatic roll of the eyes.

Louise shook her head. She really didn’t know why Elle bothered Jillian so much. It could have been because Elle was one of the few people who never believed a word coming out of Jillian’s mouth. Or maybe it was because the reason that Elle didn’t believe Jillian had nothing to do with the level of truthfulness of her statements. She could say that the sun was hot and Elle wouldn’t believe her.

Nor did it help that Elle’s mother had been a Miss Universe before becoming a trophy wife. Elle got “classic American Beauty” in bucketloads. She was freakishly tall and had stunningly pale skin that seemingly had never seen the light of day. Despite being blond-haired, blue-eyed, and beautiful, she was also unexpectedly smart, although not in the same league as the twins. Her mother dressed her in impeccable fashion and had taught her stage presence when she was still a toddler. It surprised no one that Elle got all the lead roles for the class plays, from Cinderella to Snow White.

Jillian had wanted those roles, but because the twins were short and brown, she was always cast as the evil stepmother or witch. She tried her hardest to steal the spotlight from Elle by going big and chewing on the scenery. She had taken the news hard when they learned that their father, Leonardo, had only been five foot seven. Their Aunt Ada had never even cleared five foot; she was only four foot and eleven inches when she was killed. While Esme Shenske was five foot six, chances were not good for them getting much taller.

Louise didn’t mind being short, but she didn’t plan a career in Hollywood.

“I liked your sunflowers,” Louise said after the bell rang. Everyone swept out of the art room because recess was next. The twins followed slowly since they planned to continue working on their tablets.

“I can draw better than her when I put any effort into it,” Jillian complained.

The twins used their Barbie dolls to do motion capture, painstakingly moving them one step at a time in front of a green screen. Even with their computers doing the bulk of the processing, the twins spent countless hours drawing in finer details on their videos. Their Summer Court Palace of Soulful Ember, Queen of the elves, would put Elle’s still life to shame.

“We both know you can, so why let it bug you?” Louise poked at Jillian, trying to push her out of her mood. “I bet Elle only spent so much time learning how to draw well because her mother wanted her to be good at it. She only does things to get praise. She doesn’t know what she likes when she’s alone.”

Jillian snorted. “She likes being popular.”

“She doesn’t know how to be anything else. You’ve seen how Mrs. Pondwater treats her like a little puppet.” Louise pretended to have a sock puppet on her hand. “Stand straight. Say ‘how nice it is to see you’ and smile.” She had the pretend puppet straighten and mouth the words. “How nice it is to see you.” She clawed her fingers so that the “smile” was a showing of fangs.

Jillian snickered and then sobered. “I suppose that’s true. I think why I get annoyed by her is because she could be such a cool friend if she wasn’t so. . so. . her! Everything is a competition, and she has to win.”

Louise shrugged. “She’s been in beauty pageants since she was three. What do you expect?”

“But she doesn’t win because she’s smarter or wiser or more creative. She wins because her father is rich and bought himself a beauty queen as a wife. She wins because her mother doesn’t need to work and set up endless little bribes to make sure her daughter is the most popular girl in class. She wins because she’s tall and blond — and I’m not.”

“So basically you’re pissed off at her because she’s not as smart or creative as we are and needs her mommy to fight her battles?”

“Shush you, monkey girl.” Jillian paused at the playground door. On the other side of the asphalt, Elle and the other Girl Scouts were playing jump rope. Elle’s loose blond hair waved like a banner in the weak spring sunlight as she skipped through the doubled ropes. They stood a moment, watching enviously, as Double Dutch was one of those things the two of them couldn’t do alone. “I just wish sometimes Elle could be our friend without one of us having to be the loser. It’s not like with you — I don’t ever have to worry about which one of us is the winner.”

Said the twin that everyone said was the cutest and the most creative. Louise blinked quickly to keep tears from showing in her eyes and lifted up her tablet to distract Jillian. “So, Wilbur, now that we found April Geiselman, what do we do?”

“We go and see her!” Jillian glanced back at Elle and smirked. “And I think I know how we’re going to do it.”

Jillian decided that they’d go disguised as Girl Scouts selling cookies.

Louise wasn’t sure they needed disguises. And she was fairly positive that they hadn’t needed to actually join the Girl Scouts in order to obtain the uniforms. She suspected that Jillian secretly just wanted to join but wouldn’t admit it. Elle had been so stunned when they showed up at the after-school meeting that she just stood there, mouth open, with a confused look on her face. Mrs. Pondwater was much better at covering her emotions. She ran on autopilot, welcoming them to the troop with only flashes of horror going through her eyes when she happened to look at Louise’s blast-shortened hair. Jillian had told everyone in class that Louise’s new hairstyle was because of an accident with bubblegum so there were no embarrassing questions about explosions, leveled playhouses, or emergency-room visits. Mrs. Pondwater apparently knew the truth, which indicated that the woman obsessively tracked everyone who touched upon her daughter’s life. She obviously didn’t want to take responsibility for anyone who had already managed to blow themselves up once. The spirit of Girl Scouts — as Jillian pointed out — was to accept any girl no matter her ethnic and social group.

So they would have the uniforms, cookie order forms, and a creditable alibi for all of Saturday.

Neither one of them remembered that Saturday was their birthday.

“The Girl Scouts?” their mother said for the third time after they told her. She was in her power business suit, her briefcase on the counter, and dinner from the supermarket’s hot deli still in its insulated bag on the kitchen table. The evening news was on but muted.

“Is there something wrong with the Girl Scouts?” Louise got out four plates and four forks.

“You said we should try to play with the other girls more.” Jillian investigated the bag. “Oh, good, rotisserie chicken!” She pulled out a small full chicken and then other containers that held steamed brown rice, salad makings, and fresh fruit.

“There’s nothing wrong with Girl Scouts.” Their mother took off her heels with a sigh of relief. “I thought — oh, what’s her name. .?”

“Elle Pondwater.” Louise supplied the name and four glasses.

“Yes, that Elle’s mother ran the Girl Scouts here and you thought she was materialistic and extremely controlling. What’s changed?”

Since it was true, Louise let Jillian field the question.

“By ignoring the Girl Scouts, we were allowing Elle to control that power base. By infiltrating that clique, we could disrupt her monopoly on it.”

Their mother pursed her lips, studying Jillian with eyes narrowed. “I am never sure whether to be dismayed or proud when you talk that way.”

Louise tried to soften the statement. “The other girls don’t seem to be aware of what Elle is doing, but she is using the group to exclude us. Today in Art she did a ‘Let’s all sit together’ and then picked the other side of the classroom.”

Their mother hummed something that sounded like “Oh, that sneaky bitch.” She tried not to say negative things aloud, wanting them to make up their own minds about people. She couldn’t, however, keep completely silent when she was angry for their sake.

“She’s never mean to our faces.” Louise supplied serving forks and spoons for the chicken and the side dishes.

“God forbid people realize what a backstabber she is.” Jillian poured milk for herself and Louise. “All the other girls probably think she’s always nice.”

“Pause!” their mother suddenly cried to the TV, which had frozen the picture at her command. “Go back a story. Unmute.”

The screen switched to the Waldorf Astoria’s famous façade in Manhattan. The reporter was standing across Park Avenue while people with signs marched in front of the hotel’s entrance. “Demonstrators gathered today in front of the Waldorf Astoria to protest the UN’s plan to enlarge the quarantine zone controlled by the Earth Interdimensional Agency in southwestern Pennsylvania.”

Keywords appeared at the edges of the screen indicating linked stories. In the top left was a mini-window showing the original story that had spawned the current events. The United Nations had set up only a one-mile-wide band around Pittsburgh. When the Earth city shifted to Elfhome, a virgin forest of towering ironwood trees took its place. The lack of magic kept invasive species from taking hold in Pennsylvania, but it hadn’t stopped humans from wreaking havoc. A few weeks earlier, someone had managed to illegally log part of the forest, triggering a call from the United Nations to increase the zone to ten miles wide. It would, however, cut deep into several towns that had grown up at the edge of the zone.

The reported continued, “The Waldorf Astoria serves as the embassy for the representatives of the Royal Court of Elfhome when they’re on Earth. Currently, however, there are no elves in residence.”

“Exactly!” their mother cried. “So why are they there?”

“The famous landmark hotel will be the site of a black-tie event on Saturday evening for the Forest Forever, an United Nations Foundation charity that advocates against deforestation worldwide. Celebrity supporter Lady Lavender of Teal is scheduled to arrive sometime today.”

Their mother cried out as if stabbed.

“Isn’t that one of your events?” Jillian asked.

“Yes.”

The garage door opened and closed as their father arrived.

He came padding in the basement door, dressed in scrubs. “Sorry I’m late.” He gestured toward the TV, which was offering more stories about the protests. “Apparently the protests screwed up all the traffic in Manhattan.”

“You took the car?” Jillian asked.

Their father found this funny for some reason. “Yes, Detective, I took the car.”

“You only take the car when you have stuff to pick up,” Louise said.

He took his chair, canting his head toward their mother and spreading his hands in a plea for help.

She sat beside him. “Our daughters have decided to join the Girl Scouts, and on Saturday they will be selling cookies.”

“This Saturday? On their birthday?”

Louise winced and glanced at Jillian. They’d forgotten in the flood of information on their genetic donors and siblings, both born and unborn. “We weren’t doing anything special on Saturday. You had your event.”

“I had that covered.” Their mother used “had” instead of “have” to indicate that the news report meant she might have to work after all. “And you didn’t want a party, but that doesn’t mean we can’t plan something special for just the family sometime on Saturday.”

Louise exchanged another wince with Jillian. They’d turned down a party because they weren’t really friends with any of the kids in class. “Sunday is just as good as Saturday.”

Their mother nodded in agreement, probably because she had no way to foresee her work schedule.

“What do we do about their present?” their father asked.

“What present?” the twins cried.

“We can give it to them early,” their mother said. “But dinner first. Our food is getting cool.”

They ate with Louise wondering what their parents might have gotten them. She could almost hear the capital P in “present” that indicated that it was expensive. Her father had taken the car out and picked it up today, so it was something too large to carry home on the subway. Her father obviously thought it was a wonderful gift and that they would love it. Her mother was more reserved; the twins might not like it as much as their father expected them to. Which parent was right? What could they possibly have gotten the girls? What did they want? Jillian would want a camera to replace the one they’d blown up. A camera wouldn’t have required the car. Louise would want a dog or a pony or a monkey, but those were all impossible since their father was allergic to animal dander.

Judging by the looks that Jillian was giving her, Jillian couldn’t guess, either.

Finally the meal was judged over and their father went back down into the basement garage. Soon he was back, empty-handed.

“Where is. .” And then Louise saw it and squealed in pure excitement. It was a dog! A pony-sized dog! For a moment she was filled with shimmering, bright, pure joy, and in her delight, missed the first clues.

Then Jillian said quietly, “Oh, Lou.” And Louise knew that something was horribly wrong with the gift, and as her excitement drained away, she saw that the dog wasn’t real.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Their dad had missed her crash and burn. “You really have to look closely at it to see that it’s a robot.”

“Yes.” She forced herself to agree. It was a big, square dog, nearly as tall as the twins, with pure white legs and belly. A creamy gray poured over its back. Its tail, face, and ears were black, with just a little white around its nose and muzzle. Its tail curled tight into a loop of gray that ended with a tip of white. If it had been real, it would have been the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

Jillian was watching her closely, bottom lip quivering in sympathy for her disappointment.

“What kind is it?” She pushed the words out, glad that she managed to sound happy. “I don’t recognize the breed.”

It stood waiting, more impassive than a real dog would ever be. That was the problem with robots. They were either too hyper or too still. Apparently the programmers had decided that with such a big facsimile, they would err toward still.

“It’s an American Akita,” their father said.

Because her mother was watching her closely, Louise went and petted the dog. The fur was a little too soft. Its tail wagged in perfect imitation but it didn’t sniff at her hands or lean against her touch or look about the new room with curiosity.

“It’s so big,” Louise said.

“But why a dog?” Jillian joined her in petting the robot.

“We’ve never been comfortable with how much time you spend alone,” their mother said. “The explosion really made us rethink your safety.”

“It’s a nanny-bot?” Jillian looked pained. “We’re nine.”

“Going on twenty,” their mother said. “And Seda Demirjian let us know that she and her husband are getting divorced and they’re putting their house up for sale.”

“Oh,” Louise said as understanding dawned on her. “Vosgi won’t be going with us on the subway anymore?”

“No.”

Vosgi was sixteen and had acted as their transportation babysitter for the last year. Before that it had been Carl Steinmetz, but he’d graduated. None of their other neighbors attended school in Manhattan.

“We’re going to be commuting alone?” Jillian said.

Their parents shared unhappy looks. “Until we can think of a better solution than a nanny-bot, yes,” their mother said.

“So, what do we call her?” their dad asked.

Louise didn’t want to call the nanny-bot anything.

“What was the name of the cat?” he asked.

They looked at him with confusion. Because of his allergies, they’d never had a cat.

He made a motion of something drifting up and away. “The toy cat?”

“Popoki?” Jillian cried. “No, we’re not calling it Popoki.”

Once upon a time that was now growing to be a dim memory, they had a small robotic cat, Popoki. It had met an untimely end involving a pair of large helium balloons and their lack of understanding how much lift said balloons could generate versus the weight of the small toy. Louise’s last memory of Popoki was it floating up over the Steinmetz’s house. It went higher and higher, its electronic meows growing fainter, until the balloons were a tiny dot drifting toward the ocean. Jillian had been inconsolable for days.

“George.” Their mother scolded their father with his name. “What was the dog in Peter Pan? This one looks like it.”

From the perked-up ears to its curled tail, the robot looked nothing like the nanny dog of Peter Pan. The only similarity was its size and the pattern of its markings — but then everyone always thought the twins were identical.

“Nana,” Louise said. “She was a Newfoundland in the original story, but Disney made her a Saint Bernard. They’re the same size dog, only Newfoundlands are usually all black.”

“Saint Bernards are easier to illustrate facial emotions, because of their markings,” Jillian said.

“It doesn’t feel like a girl to me,” Louise said. “It feels like a boy dog.”

“A boy dog?” their father said.

“Something like. .” Louise thought for a moment, but the only male names that were coming to her were Orville and Wilbur. What was another famous inventor? “Tesla.”

Jillian giggled, recognizing the path that Louise took to get to the name. “Okay, Tesla!”

“Very cool name.” Their father crouched down beside Louise. “Do you like it, honey?”

She wanted to say no. It probably cost a lot of money that could have been spent on things she and Jillian would have liked more. It was, however, a practical gift considering the situation. If they couldn’t safely commute to school, their parents would probably take them out of Perelman School for the Gifted and enroll them someplace else. It wasn’t that she loved Perelman, but “someplace else” could be anything from a local high school with kids four years older than them to a boarding school. “It’s a wonderful present. Thank you, Daddy.”

With the magical words, he melted, hugging her tightly. “Oh, I love you two so much. I want to give you the world.”

Jillian waited until they were safe in their room.

“Merde!” Jillian cursed in French. “C’est des conneries. Fait chier! Fait chier! Fait chier!”

Louise shook her head as she pulled up the website of the robot’s manufacturer. “If they hear you, they’ll ground you,” Louise warned, keeping to French until she knew if Tesla had an eavesdropping application or not. They had initiated the robot’s setup program in the kitchen by registering his name and that the twins were his primary owners. The big dog robot was slowly working its way around the room, mapping it.

“They wouldn’t understand what we’re saying even if they heard us.” Jillian growled in French and flung herself onto the bed. “It’s the whole point of using another language.”

“Merde!” Louise hissed her own curse and kept to French. “Yes, it has an eavesdropping application and GPS. Not only can they keep track of it via a phone app, they can ask it questions. It can answer in thirty-two languages!” She dialed Tesla’s number on her cell phone and he answered with a deep male voice. “Konnichiwa.”

She cycled through the various breed voices. German Shepard said “Guten Tag” in a slightly more tenor male and Shih Tzu said “Nǐ hǎo” in a bright and chipper female voice. She groaned and cycled quickly through the voices, looking for one that didn’t set her teeth on edge. The Welsh corgi had a British boy’s voice that reminded her of Christopher Robin.

She changed the default and sent a command to the robot.

Tesla shook his head and murmured, “Silly old bear.”

Jillian grabbed a pillow and screamed into it.

Louise groaned as she read on. “They can download video from his eyes.”

Jillian screamed into the pillow again.

Louise read further and laughed.

“There is nothing funny about this!” Jillian’s shout was muffled by the pillow still over her face.

“Tesla has a nano nonstick-coating on its feet. It micro-vibrates each foot before entering a home.”

“That’s not funny.”

“What Tesla doesn’t have is the optional gecko feet that lets the robot dog scale walls and ceilings.”

“What?” Jillian sat up.

“Look.” Louise played the video of a robotic corgi walking up a wall.

“Why would you want your dog to do that?” Jillian cried.

“Spider dog, spider dog, does whatever a spider dog does,” Louise sang.

They giggled, playing the video over and over. Tesla continued to work his way around the room, ignoring their laughter. They had slipped out of French with “spider dog,” but Jillian carefully returned to it to carry on a serious discussion. Luckily the auto-translate option wasn’t the default and their parents hadn’t turned it on.

“Seriously, what we are going to do?” Jillian asked, curled beside Louise on her bed. “How are we going to go see April Geiselman with a spy dog in tow? The whole point of doing the Girl Scout thing was so everyone would think that after a short subway ride, we’d be with adults.”

Their parents would insist that they take Tesla. The protests against the proposed expansion of the Earth Interdimensional Agency-controlled strip of land around Pittsburgh were spreading across the city to include the United Nations building and the Chinese embassy, as well as the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.

If they took Tesla with them, though, their parents would know about their detour to the Upper East Side to see April Geiselman.

“Merde.” Jillian sighed out the curse and continued in French. “So the problem is three part. First is that it reports our position via GPS. Second is that our parents can ask it questions about what we’re doing. Third is that they can download video of what it has seen during the course of the day.”

“Oui,” Louise agreed. “It records video, so the entire day is accessible.”

“It’s a camera,” Jillian said slowly. “We can control what it sees and edit the video like any other camera. So really, it’s not a problem.”

Louise considered a moment and nodded. “Oui.” She flipped to the specs on Tesla’s GPS system. “At least we have four days to come up with a plan and test it.”

“It’s going to be so embarrassing to take it to school.” Jillian sighed deeply. “You know how it’s going to go down. Everyone is going to say we’re too poor for a real nanny. Just like the Darlings.”

“C’est la vie,” Louise murmured. “They already know we’re poor. I don’t care. Ah ha!”

“That sounds good.”

“Magnifique!” Louise said. She’d discovered the weakness of the spy application. It lay not with the robot but with their parents’ phones. She reached over and lifted up what was left of their camera that she’d been attempting to fix. Jillian had clung to it until the EMT pried it out of her hand, so it had escaped the fire. The lens, however, had been smashed. It had all the same GPS and communication software that Tesla had. They could simply rig it so that their parents picked up the camera’s output when attempting to check on Tesla. “Meet mini-Tesla.”

“Ooohhhh!” Jillian grasped the concept instantly. “C’est magnifique!”