YuTu was only just ahead of me. It turned the next corner, driven by some crazed, digital mission. I rounded the bend and entered a nightmare—the most popular café in town. About thirty people sat at the tiny wooden tables. They were unaware of their impending, metal doom.
“Stop that robot!” I yelled. Everyone turned to look at me.
I was within arm’s reach of YuTu. Then, a waiter carrying a tray of food and drinks stepped out of the door of the café. I lunged forward desperately but was too late.
YuTu crashed into the waiter’s legs. He buckled sideways and fell to the ground. I plowed into the waiter and the robot. The tray of drinks fell, with cakes and banana smoothies raining down on all three of us like a flurry of sweet snow. A large cappuccino landed on the waiter’s lap.
“Ahh, cappuccino in my pants. Cappuccino in my pants! A robot has put cappuccino in my pants!” he yelled and yelled until the laughter of the quickly gathering crowd drowned him out.
Hoisting myself onto my elbows, I looked around at the devastation. The closest customer to us was a lady, a bit older than my mother, with a laptop covered in stickers in front of her and a look of disbelief on her face. She had a piece of chocolate cake squished on her head like an awkward hat and a river of chocolate sauce dripping down her face.
“Bravo, bravo, bravo,” came a slow chant from somewhere behind her.
I saw Dalk standing above me, grinning. Then his face shifted to an exaggerated look of fear. “Well, it looks like I’m in real trouble. It’s clear you have some magical ability with robots, and this is going to be a tough competition. Oh AZ, why do you persist? Why do you even try, when you already know? You do, don’t you? You already know that I will win, and you will just keep embarrassing yourself.”
Ok, now this is the worst thing that could have happened.
Bzzz, BZZZZ, BZZZZZZZZZZZZ.
YuTu was whirring, with lights flashing and smoke streaming from multiple parts of its body.
BANG!
There was a small explosion, more smoke, and more laughter from the crowd.
Well, now at least it really can’t get any worse.
“Oh dear, darling, what has happened to you? What have you done?” My mother dodged through the crowd, simultaneously panicking, apologizing, and embarrassingly wiping the waiter’s pants.
“She’s not normally like this,” my mother said, eyes darting for cover.
Disaster.
An hour later, I was in bed, head under my pillow. Cake, smoothie, and coffee washed off. The robot in the bin. Dignity buried deep in the earth.
T-Minus Eighteen
Then came two days of humiliation at school. Dalk had surely practiced his reenactments, building to a crescendo of him lying on the ground, mimicking the waiter.
“Cappuccino in my pants, CAAAAPPUUUUCCINOOOOOO INNNNN MMYYYYY PAAANNNTTSSS! Ha ha ha ha. And then…no, wait…just listen…” His adoring fans were trying to finish the story, but this was Dalk’s show. “Then her cheap robot blows up and her mother comes in to rescue poor, little Aye Zed.” This show played over and over.
How long could this go on? Maybe if I officially pulled out of the competition, apologized, and polished Dalk’s shoes for a year, he would stop? Probably not.
“It’s a great first try. All the smartest people in the world had big failures early. Marie Curie got rejected from a number of universities. Come on, you can do this,” my mother said after I got home from school on the second day of humiliation.
“I guess,” I replied, not at all convinced.
A week after the “capu-splosion” (as it was being called), I got called to the school office because I had a visitor, which was weird. I never had visitors. I was directed into a spare office to see a lady who looked familiar.
Where have I seen her before? Oh no…it’s the “cake on the head” woman from the cafe.
“Hello,” the lady said. Her calm voice surprised me.
“Um, hi,” I responded.
“I understand your name is AZ. I believe we briefly met last week at the café,” she said.
“Um, yes, um, briefly. I’m sorry about that…cake…landing…on…your head…”
“The cake, oh yes, don’t worry about that. It’s the most fun I’ve had for a while. My name is Lucia Machado, and I was wondering if I could talk to you for a few minutes.”
She wore blue jeans and a simple white blouse. Her hair was in a tight ponytail.
Well, what do I have to lose? I sat down on the chair. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
“You were testing that robot, correct?” Lucia asked.
I was a bit taken aback by her curt tone, but I had a strange urge to answer quickly.
“Yes, um, correct,” I said. For some unknown reason, I felt I had to impress this lady.
“The robot is part of a school robot-building competition, correct?”
“Correct,” I said, getting the hang of this conversation.
What is going on here? And where is this going?
“The competition allows teachers, parents, and coaches to support the project, but the robot must be fully built by the students, correct?”
“Correct.”
“The robot can be built with a team of up to ten students, correct?”
“Correct.”
“Do you want to win the competition?”
Woah, why does she want to know that?
“Correct. Umm, well, I’m not sure. I did. But it is so hard. I think I’d like to win. But it seems impossible,” I said.
“All big achievements seem impossible before they are done. You shouldn’t have to think about it. Do you, or don’t you?” Lucia said.
I can’t win this. Unless this lady has a magic wand? It would be good to win. Just for the look on Dalk’s face. And the feeling of winning…it must be amazing.
Lucia was looking at me with soft eyes, clearly comfortable with silence.
I lifted my chin and looked into Lucia’s eyes. “Yes,” I said. “I want to win.”
“Good. I would like to coach you on the project. I have a few conditions…” Lucia handed me a single sheet of paper.
Lucia Machado will coach AZ in the school robotics competition under the following conditions:
1.You listen.
2.You work very hard.
3.You never give up.
“Now you can think about it. Think it all through and, if you accept my offer, then track me down by four thirty tomorrow and we will get started. If not, that’s fine, it’s your choice, goodbye and good luck,” Lucia said, standing and striding out of the office like she did this kind of thing every day.
I walked back to class, still trying to work out what just happened. I had until four thirty tomorrow to find her, if I wanted to accept her offer. When I got home, I ran straight inside and searched the web.
Lucia Machado
46,624,922 results
Wow.
The first result was her Wikipedia page, which said she certainly wasn’t nobody.
PhD in physics
Invented the Orbital Capacitor
Cofounder and ex-CEO of Atoki Incorporated
Founder of the Machado Foundation
Has lived in Barcelona, Rio de Janeiro, Nairobi, Sydney, Edinburgh, Austin, Shenzhen
Retired
The photo was a few years old, but her eyes beamed the same “you’d better take me seriously” look that I had seen earlier today. I kept reading for another hour.
Wow. This is someone I want on my side. Maybe she’d even give me a fighting chance to not look like a complete idiot.
I need to track her down. But how? There are no contact details on the paper. She said I had to find her before four thirty tomorrow—now I had twenty-three hours.
This is a test. I have to find her fast.
> T-Minus Seventeen
I didn’t find Lucia fast.
Ten hours of searching every corner of the web later, and I had nothing. Well, actually, I had a ton more confirmation that Lucia was amazing. But she was also a very private person who was difficult to reach. I submitted a “contact us” form on the website of her foundation, but that was going to be too slow.
I had messaged Mrs. D’Silva but despite knowing of Lucia, she didn’t have any idea how to contact her.
I was running out of things to search for. My eyes felt heavy, like big, warm blankets.
“AZ…AZ…time to wake up…”
My dad’s voice. I lifted my head off a hard, lumpy pillow. It turned out to be the keyboard on my computer. I could feel the imprint of keys across my face.
Well, it’s only Dad.
“You were so cute, I got a photo,” Dad said with a smile.
I slowly pried open my eyes to see my dad’s phone with a photo of me with my face squished and my hair all over the place.
“Please, please, please delete that,” I said.
“I won’t share it. Maybe just with your grandparents. What were you working on?”
Rubbing my eyes, I looked up at the screen. It showed a news article about Lucia and in the comments section was my name and the following garble:
Ffjlalfjkflkjffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff
Ergggggggggg, what have I done?
Then, I noticed a response below my comment.
Interesting.
Lucia Machado
“Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no no no no no,” I yelled, my hands on my cheeks.
“What? Is everything ok? Can I help?” said Dad, dropping to his knees, looking at the screen and squinting in confusion.
“No. I just need to fix this. I need to do something,” I said, pushing my dad gently toward the door. Amidst more of my protests, he slowly retreated and left the room.
Lucia had responded. She’d seen this comment. Was that reaching out? Was that connecting with her? I’m not sure a garbled, forehead-written comment counted. But it was something.
Straightening up and taking a deep breath, I started typing:
Lucia, I wrote that with my head when I fell asleep. Sorry. Will you still help me?
No, that won’t work. The Lucia I had just been studying wouldn’t want that.
Delete.
I want to take you up on your offer. Let’s get started.
Hmmm, could be stronger. What did she say yesterday? What were her conditions of working with me?
Delete…
I will listen, I will work hard, I will never give up. Let’s get started.
Enter. Blip. Published.
I held my breath. I let it go.
Just because Lucia had commented once, didn’t mean she was also at her computer, sitting there, waiting for a reply to see what—
Blip.
Reply from Lucia Machado:
Good. But you still have to track me down.
Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow.
I started typing. Ok, thanks, but how do I track you…
Blip.
Both replies from Lucia were gone. She’d deleted them. Of course, it wasn’t going to be that easy.
8:12 a.m. Eight hours and eighteen minutes to find her. But how? I could ask Mr. Jabari, the librarian at school who seemed to know everything. School. School! It was a school day.
I don’t have eight hours. I have eighteen minutes to get to school and then ninety minutes after school. Today just got harder.
An hour later, after running while eating two boiled eggs my dad had insisted I take, I was sitting in Computer Science. Mrs. D’Silva had allowed me to do a “special research project” instead of the normal schoolwork, but still I was no closer.
On my way to math, a gaggle of “cappuccino”-infused gossip stalked my periphery, but I turned on my laser focus and ignored it all. I sat forlorn in my chair and decided to actually do some math. Maybe I needed to think about something else. Leave it to my powerful subconscious.
It turned out that my subconscious was about as useful as my conscious. It was lunchtime and I had no new information, no new ideas, and fewer than four hours to go. I took off to the library.
“Mr. Jabari, do you happen to know anything about a woman named Lucia Machado?” I asked as innocently as possible at the library front desk.
“Good afternoon, AZ,” said Mr. Jabari, our wonderfully friendly and constantly encouraging librarian, with his tractor-beam eye contact. “Good to see you again. I was assuming that you would be in here more often, given the big challenge you are facing. Though I thought your questions would be more about ‘how to build a robot that doesn’t crash,’ not questions about local celebrities.”
“Welllllll, she actually offered to help me, and I need to track her down as some kind of test. I was kind of hoping to find out where she lives or works…do you happen to know…either of those…maybe?” I stammered, pushing my limited influencing skills.
Mr. Jabari smiled widely and knowingly back at me. “That is great news. She would indeed be an asset. But I’m afraid Miss Machado is as private as she is brilliant. She doesn’t have a mansion, despite her wealth, though I believe she has a house up in the hills. Which one though, I couldn’t guess. As for work, she is retired.”
My shoulders sunk from hope to despair. Come on, give me a break here.
“Though I have seen her around town since she moved here a few years ago. At the supermarket, at the theatre, in the park, at that Italian café…”
The cafe!
“Ok, thanks very much,” I said quickly and turned to go. Seeing the hurt look on Mr. Jabari’s face, I turned back and said, “And I’ll be back shortly for that book you mentioned about robots.”
Smiling again, he reached behind him and revealed a stack of about twelve books. “No need, I have collected some together for you.”
“Um, yes, thanks for that,” I said, sizing up the pile.
As the door to the library closed behind me, the end-of-lunch bell rang. I decided not to skip school. I’d go to the café straight afterward and hope Lucia was there.
Three o’clock. When the final bell rang, a victorious, barbarian horde of teenagers advanced through the hallways. I balanced the books as I was pinballed out into the real world. Awkwardly speed waddling, I made it to the café in eight minutes.
I looked to the table where Lucia had been on the day of the great robot-waiter collision, but she wasn’t there. I scanned inside and outside, but no luck. I stood outside trying to think of another solution, but all I could feel was more stress.
A waiter came out of the door carrying a tray of drinks and food. He looked at me, gasped, and then heaved a sigh of relief. “No crazy robot today, signora?” he asked, walking past and skillfully whisking orders to customers.
Oh, he must be the cappuccino-in-the-pants guy.
“Um, hi, yes, no, no robot here today. That thing is in a bin somewhere, destined for recycling,” I tried my best to smile away the nightmare. “I’m sorry about the other day.”
“Si, si, all fine,” he said, quickly stepping back inside.
3:20 p.m. Time was running out and I was running out of ideas. I was desperate, so I followed the waiter inside and found him preparing another tray of coffees.
“Um, yes, again, very sorry about that. I was wondering, that lady who was at the front table that day, with the laptop covered in stickers…”
“Ohhhh, you mean one of our best customers who ended up with a face full of cake? You mean that lady?”
“Yes, well, um, yes, her. Is there any chance you know where she lives?”
“Yes, of course. Let me get you her address straight away,” he said.
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My eyes lit up, then collapsed just as fast when I realized he was being sarcastic.
“Do you perhaps want to throw more cake at her?” he said.
“No, no, no, not at all. Um, in fact I would like to apologize to her, too. If possible. If that’s ok?”
“Well. We don’t give out customer home addresses to dangerous strangers. Sorry, you’ll just have to live with the guilt. So sorry,” he said, giving me a wide berth again.
Nooo. I can’t be this close to some serious help and fall short.
“Erggggggggg,” I said, loudly enough that a number of customers looked up at me. “Sorry.”
I’d been saying that a lot lately.
One man’s gaze lingered for a few seconds longer, until he returned to his laptop covered in stickers.
Lucia had a laptop like that. So what? A lot of people did. But I was running out of time and had run out of ideas. What did I have to lose? I walked up to the man’s table. “Hi, um, this might sound a bit strange, but do you, um, happen to know someone named Lucia Machado?”
He flipped shut his laptop and looked at me. Then he gestured to the empty chair opposite him and I sat down. He was an older adult with a kind-looking face. “Why do you ask?”
“Well, um, well, you see, I built a robot that knocked over that waiter and dropped some cake on Lucia’s head…”
The man nodded with a half-grin.
“Then she came to my school and offered to help me in this robot competition that I’ve entered. I’ve decided I want her help. I mean, I obviously need it, since my first robot is in the scrap heap. I’m trying to find out where she lives.”
“If you already met her, why do you need to know where she lives?”
“Well, you see, um, she sort of told me I had to track her down.”
“Ha, that’s the kind of thing Lucia does. Yes, I know her. My name is Dasan, I’ve worked with her in the past. Let me ask you, are you sure you want her help? She can do amazing things, but she’s no walk in the park. She’s tough as nails. Which I’m guessing you’ve already worked out?”
She's Building a Robot Page 2
