Adagio for Mr. Chips

Pete Nelson & Robin Russin

The holograms of his father were not enough.

Leo shuffled through them anyway. Sometimes he would play them at actual size, and then he could pretend his father was there in the room with him. Sometimes he would play them at two- or three-hundred-percent, and then he could watch his father’s hands in closeup as they danced across the piano keys in some concert hall, and then Leo would playback at half speed to slow them down. Sometimes he shrank the images to ten-percent, and then it would be as if he were watching an animated dollhouse, a small world he could keep in a box on the shelf. He could see his father, and he could hear his father, but he could not touch him or hold him or be held by him, and the hologram would end, and Leo would be alone in his bedroom, a fatherless ten-year-old boy.

“Leo?” his mother called from outside the doorway. “Are you dressed? It’s getting late.”

She found his maroon and gold-striped necktie draped on the back of his desk chair, lifted Leo’s collar and tied his tie on for him, cinching it at the neck.

“It’s going to be alright, Leo. I promise you.”

“It’s not,” Leo said, loosening it. “It will never be alright.”

“It will be,” she said, tightening it again. “It takes time. Your father would have wanted you to do well in school. He wouldn’t have wanted you to be sad. I heard you’re going to have a new teacher this year, so that’s exciting.” Melville Upper School was housed in an ancient red brick building, but it was known for having state-of-the-art tech.

Leo didn’t want to go back to school. 

He didn’t want to do anything. 

He wanted his father back.

“I am an A.I. Teaching Bot, a Regent Corporation Professor 3000.72 , and I will be your instructor for Level 8. You may call me Professor. Please identify yourself.”

The new bot looked like a fat old man. Last year’s T-Bot, a four-year-old 2000 model, looked like a giant coffee pot. This one was more anthropomorphic, with cameras for eyes, an olfactory sensor where the nose would go, and a speaker where its mouth should be. He had arms as well, with a variety of tools and appendages at the ends, though his transport mechanism was a wheeled, articulated tread system that let him glide across the floor or go up or down stairs. Leo supposed the manufacturers thought students would find a more humanoid bot more relatable. In the center of the T-Bot’s chest, an LED screen, twelve-inches square, displayed the words: WELCOME BACK -- HOPE YOUR SUMMER VACATION WAS GREAT! 

The T-Bot focused a bright red sensor beam on a girl in the front row.

“Emily,” the girl said. “Emily Foster.”

After a moment to scan her face, a green light lit on the top of the bot’s head.

Leo saw the red beam sweep over and shine on his chest.

“Leo Jordan,” he said promptly. The bot moved on after the green light on its head blinked once.

The next boy’s name was Nick, but when the beam fell on him, indicating it was his turn to tell Professor his name, he said it was “Ben Dover.” There were a few suppressed giggles in the room. The Professor’s light blinked red. The next boy, whose name was Robert, told the Professor his name was Michael Hunt, but he preferred “Mike.” Professor’s sensor held for a moment, then blinked red again, accompanied by a harsh horn sound. Professor rolled between the two boys, who were suppressing laughter, waiting to see how it was going to respond to their prank.

Two electrodes suddenly extended from Professor’s mechanical arms and pressed into the pranksters’ necks. The boys gritted their teeth and went briefly rigid as electricity coursed through them for a second. Then Professor released them, retracting the electrodes.

“That was 5,000 watts at 0.0007 amperes and 0.08 joules,” Professor said. “I am authorized to go to 50,000 volts, 0.0021 amperes, and 0.36 joules. Do we understand each other?”

The boys nodded voicelessly, eyes watering. Some watering had happened in Nick’s pants as well, and Professor instructed him to go to the locker-room, clean up, and put on some clean pants.

It was going to be an interesting year, Leo thought. 

Later, Professor projected a spinning globe holo, an image of the earth that floated in space in the middle of the room.

“Who can tell me how fast the earth spins?” he asked.

Leo wasn’t surprised when Emily Foster answered the question. In thick horn-rimmed eyeglasses that made her look like the tiny hologram of her mother projected from her locket necklace, Emily was a showoff who fancied herself smarter than everyone else and would answer every question the teacher asked if it let her. Last year’s T-Bot had let her, which had been fine with the kids who did not want to participate if they didn’t have to.

“Sixteen thousand kilometers per hour,” she said. “But that’s only at the equator. It gets slower, the closer you get to the poles.”

“And why is that?” Professor asked. “How can the surface of the earth move at two different speeds?”

Leo wasn’t listening. He was on his mobile, watching a holo of himself kicking a ball back and forth with his father. He’d held the mobile out of sight in his lap, but when he looked up, he saw Professor hovering over him. Apparently, it had sensors that told it when a student’s device was on.

“Leo?” Professor said. “Do I need to disable your mobile?”

“No, sir,” Leo said, putting it away. 

“Can you answer the question?”

“The earth spins more slowly at the poles because the circumference of the planet lessens, the closer you get to the poles,” Leo said. “You’re not traveling the same distance as you would at the equator as the earth rotates.”

Professor’s green light blinked twice.

“Please watch holos of your father during personal time,” Professor said. So, Leo realized, it also could intercept and interpret what students were doing with their mobiles. If Professor knew who Leo’s father was, it probably would also know how he’d been struck down by cancer at the age of 43. And it would know why Leo was distracted. 

Leo didn’t like that the bot knew his business, but it didn’t change anything.

Two weeks later, the students were on their tabletop screens, taking an assessment. Professor was able to closely monitor all twenty students at once. Leo had, strangely, started to feel a certain fondness for the bot. It lacked a sense of humor, but it was extremely fair and impartial, and it was easy to learn from. It remembered everything you said, and it could individualize its instruction accordingly, without compromising the curriculum. It learned what you liked and what you didn’t like, and adjusted its approach for each individual student, unlike the 2000, which had been rigid and inflexible. For an artificial intelligence, Professor somehow made one feel like it listened to and cared about its students. Its empathy programming was several steps up from last year’s 2000. It was tough and uncompromising, but somehow knew when to back off or lighten the mood. 

When Leo looked up, the screen on Professor’s chest read: TIME REMAINING: 5:36. The clock was counting down. 

Suddenly, an alarm went off. A yellow flashing light rose from the top of Professor’s head. On its chest screen, the words ACTIVE SHOOTER! ACTIVE SHOOTER! flashed white against a black background.

“Get under your desks and move to the back of the room,” Professor commanded. 

The doors locked.  

Metal shades rolled down over the windows. 

The lights shut off.

 “This is a lockdown. Active shooter. Move to the back of the room!”

The students complied, frightened and confused.

Peeking out from behind his desk, Leo saw something remarkable. 

Professor moved to the door, blocking it with its bulk and activating a pair of winglike Kevlar panels, bulletproof shields extending to either side. At the same time, a pair miniature Gatling guns emerged from its shoulders and covered the door. Professor stood its ground, ready to protect the children in its care.

When the “All Clear” siren sounded, the weapons retracted and the shields pulled. The lights came on and the window shades rolled up, letting in the sunlight. Professor’s headlight turned from flashing yellow to a steady green, then off. 

“This has been a drill,” it said. “You have responded appropriately. Well done. Return your desks to their previous positions. You will be given two minutes before we resume the assessment.”

The dining hall at Melville Upper School was elegant, with a high ceiling, oak paneling, and large gold-framed oil portraits of revered past headmasters and teachers on the walls.  Students lined up in front of automat machines. Reaching the front of the line, Leo punched in his code and the machine produced the lunch that was in his meal plan. To Leo’s surprise, a lemon tart had been added to his menu. His mother must have chosen it for him, he imagined, to cheer him up. 

He usually ate alone. He wasn’t one of the cool kids, and he never would be. But today, Emily Foster placed her tray down on the table and sat opposite him.

“That drill was rather frightening,” she said, unwrapping her sandwich. “Good to know we have a Terminator in the room.”

After a beat she continued. 

“I was thinking we could study together, you and I. You seem quite bright, and I think we might mutually benefit from quizzing each other. It seems to me you could also use a friend. As could I, if I’m being honest.”

“You want to be my friend?” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “Nothing romantic, mind you. I am definitely not interested in that, but I think friendship has its merits, and I think I’m more suited to having a friend who is a boy. Girls are too competitive. What do you say?”

“Okay,” he said.

One advantage of teaching bots was that one bot could be programmed to teach more than one subject, unlike the old days when you needed a different human to teach each subject, art teachers and English teachers and music teachers, and you moved from room to room.

The afternoon lesson was on Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The day before they’d circled their chairs and watched a holographic projection of the play in the center of the room. Today, they returned to Act One, scene one, to take the play apart and dissect how it worked.

“Who is this character?” Professor asked.

“That’s Hamlet’s father,” Emily said. She got a green light for her answer, and a buzzed warning to wait to be called on before she answered.

“And what is his name?”

“The Ghost,” she said. “That’s what he’s called in the text.”

For this, she received an orange light, indicating she was partly right and partly wrong.

“Anyone else?”

“It’s a trick question,” Nick said. “He doesn’t have a name. He’s just Hamlet’s father.”

Red light.

“That is not correct,” Professor said. “Leo?”

Leo was staring out the window. 

“His name was Hamlet, the same as his son,” Leo said. 

Green light.

“That is correct. Who can tell me what the Ghost’s motivation is? Stuart?”

Stuart, a chubby boy with nervous eyes, swallowed and gave a tentative answer.

“He’s angry?”

“Why?”

“Well,” Stuart said. “He’s just doing what any living man would do under the same circumstances. He used to be the king, but somebody killed him and took away all his belongings. ”

“Plus, his brother is fucking his wife,” Nick chimed in.

The kids broke out laughing. Professor’s horn sounded, warning them to be quiet. They obeyed. Nobody wanted to be tased. Oddly, since that first day, it had not happened again.

“Rephrase,” Professor said. 

“He wants his murderer punished. He wants his death avenged. Because it was wrong.”

Professor extended a mechanical hand, placing it reassuringly on Stuart’s shoulder as its light blinked green.

“That’s what he tells his son that he wants,” Leo said. “The rest of the play is about Hamlet trying to live up to his father’s wishes.”

“Why does he do that?”

“That’s what you do when your father is dead,” Leo said. “You think about him. And wish you could make him proud of you. But you can’t.”

“Hamlet isn’t even sure it’s his father,” Emily said. “He thinks it could be a devil, trying to fool him. That’s why he doesn’t know what the right thing to do is.”

“Or what the point of anything is, anymore,” Leo added.

The Professor’s green light flashed three times. It was the most flashes Leo had gotten so far. It was the most flashes anybody had gotten.

Nevertheless, when Leo learned, a week later, that he’d received a D-minus on a paper he’d written, he wasn’t surprised. He knew he had made no effort to write the paper. He’d expected a flat F. Next to the grade, Professor had added SEE ME.

Leo knocked on Professor’s office door. The bot pointed its sensor to the chair opposite its desk, for Leo to have a seat. It was ludicrous for Professor to have a desk at all, but it was a traditional arrangement the school felt was important.

“So I got a D minus,” Leo said. “So what? It’s just a grade. And it’s just a stupid play.”

“A play you clearly know and understand, better than this paper would indicate. I need to ask you. What’s wrong, Leo Jordan? Are you having trouble at home?”

“No,” Leo said. “Nothing’s wrong.” As if you care, he thought.

“That’s not what your biometrics are telling me,” Professor said. “When you speak, your voice has only two thirds the volume of your classmates. Your sociometrics are similar. You speak only ten percent as often as they do. You spend eighty-four percent of your time in isolation, apart from the other children. You rarely make eye contact. You smile infrequently, and when the others laugh, you stay silent. You also spend too much time watching holo’s on your mobile. These things suggest you are unhappy.”

“So?” Leo asked. “I feel whatever I feel. What’s there to be happy about?”

“You seem to lack a sense of purpose in life.”

“My father died, in case you hadn’t heard. What’s so hard to understand about that?”

“All fathers die. All humans die. What is hard to understand about that?”

“You’re just a useless pile of chips and algorithms,” Leo said, knowing it was impossible to insult a bot or hurt its feelings. “How’s this? ‘Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.’ Does that clear it up for you?”

“You know more of Shakespeare than just Hamlet.”

“Life is a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing. Do I get an A?”

Professor didn’t answer. Leo wondered what it was waiting for.

“Those weapons you have,” Leo asked. “If someone attacked the school, would you use them?”

“They are a necessary part of my hardware, unfortunately. It’s better to have them and not need them than need them and not have them.”

“But would you kill someone?”

“If a student is in imminent danger of harm, yes. I would engage lethal targeting.”

“So life has no meaning to you, either,” Leo said.

“That is not correct,” Professor said. “Your lives have meaning for me. The reason I was created was to educate you and keep you safe. My emergency guardian protocols over-ride any other setting. That is entirely the meaning for my existence. I believe it would be good, for you, to find something that gives your life meaning.”

“Such as?”

“You like music.”

“I used to.”

“Your father was a concert pianist. Your playlist indicates you like classical music. This is unusual for someone your age.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t like it so much now.”

“Your father died of brain cancer, four months ago. That is recent.”

Leo wanted to cry.

“When does the pain go away?” he asked.

His mobile pinged a notification. 

“I have sent you three relevant articles on grieving. Expecting the pain to go away is unrealistic and unproductive. Learning to accept it and incorporate it into your daily life is advised. Most people find they don’t want the pain to go away because it helps them remember the person they lost. The key is learning to control the pain, not to lessen it or make it go away, but to summon it when you need it, and store it when you don’t.”

Professor turned, then offered Leo a violin.

“You have a musical aptitude,” Professor said. “The records say you were the most promising violinist in the school orchestra last year.”

Leo refused to take the violin. 

“Music brings you pain, but also pleasure,” Professor said. “That is what you must focus on. Your auditory cortex and your dorsal frontal cortex are more integrated than average, and the neural mechanisms of your auditory cortex are enlarged. You have perfect pitch, common to one in ten thousand people. I’ve uploaded instructional holos to your mobile. We can work together, after school.”

“I don’t want to,” Leo insisted.

“What you want and what you need are not always the same,” Professor said. “If your father were here, he would want you to use your gifts. He would be proud if you learned to play. Music can be your way to connect with your father’s spirit. Hamlet did not have a way to connect with his father. Other than, as you said, as an unreliable ghost. Or devil.”

Professor again offered Leo the violin. 

“We have one at home,” Leo said.

“A violin that doesn’t get played is just a useless box of wood. If you bring it back to life, you can bring him back to life.”

When he got home, Leo went to a cabinet in the den. The violin case he took out was lighter than he remembered. He feared it was empty, but when he opened it, the violin was there. It felt smaller. He realized that was because he’d grown since he played it last. 

Fighting back tears, he started to put it back – but instead, he took the instrument to his bedroom. He checked to make sure the soundpost was still in place, then set the bridge and tightened the strings. He tuned it to what he thought was about right, then checked it against an electronic tuner. Professor had been correct. Each time he plucked a string, the needle on the tuner lined up dead center.

He tightened the bow, turning the screw to move the frog into position, then rosined the strings. He played a single note on the open G string. Then a scale, surprised that he could still remember the fingering. 

“Patience, Leo,” Professor said. “The city of Rome was founded in 753 BCE by the Etruscans, but only reached peak population in the ancient world in 300 CE.”

“You could have just said ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day,’” Leo said. 

They had worked out a system where every note that Leo played correctly got a green light. Every note that was slightly off, in terms of pitch or tempo or volume or timbre, got an orange, and a red light flashed when the note was wrong. Leo’s task was to keep the green light constant. They worked on fundamental fingering exercises, at first, to increase Leo’s strength and dexterity. 

“Time to try some music,” Professor said, and Leo saw sight-reading staffs appear across Professor’s chest screen. “Mary had a little lamb.” Leo’s eyes rolled.

Over time, they increased the complexity of the pieces Leo learned, from a simple version of “Amazing Grace,” to “Claire de La Lune” to Bach’s “Gavotte number 1.” The instruction changed from a focus on mechanical details, though that was never irrelevant, to interpretation and expression. When Leo held too much tension in his body, Professor told him precisely how many times he’d inhaled and how long it took him to exhale, until Leo learned to regulate his breathing. 

He got better.

He grew taller. 

His hair grew longer, but it looked good that way.

Small black hairs began to appear on Leo’s upper lip.

One day, Leo told Professor that he wanted to play a song for him. He’d adapted a score meant for orchestra, Samuel Barber’s “Adagio,” a sad piece in B flat minor that the composer wrote for the funeral of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Leo had first heard it at his own father’s funeral, and it had remained a tune too emotionally difficult for him to get through. Some people said it was the saddest song ever written. Now, Leo felt like he owned it --- like the song told a story, and it was a sad one, but it was a story he could start or stop whenever he chose to.

Professor listened, his green light shining. But then, slowly the light changed from green to a vivid, deep blue. 

“I think that might be my favorite,” Professor said. Its voice did not, could not, waver with emotion, but there seemed to be an extra space between the words.

Emily was waiting for Leo after his lesson, as she did most days. Today, she was at a picnic table on school grounds, in the shade beneath an oak tree. He played her a hologram of his father playing Rimsky-Korsakov’s theme from “Scheherazade,” while he accompanied his father on violin. When he finished, she applauded. Leo performed a little mock bow at the waist.

Emily had changed. Where she’d had only baby fat before, she now had curves, and she’d grown a few inches taller, and she had replaced her eyeglasses with contact lenses. She had her flute case with her. She was good at the flute. Leo’s gifts had surpassed hers, but she could hold her own if the score were simple enough.

“I think we should play together,” she announced.

“That’s okay,” Leo said. It wasn’t that she wasn’t good enough, but he was wary of showing her up. 

“Man was not meant to be alone, you know,” she said. “It says that in the Bible. And especially not musicians. That’s why most songs have more than one part. It’s called harmony. Have you heard of it?”

“Yes.”

“Would you like to try some?”

She popped open her flute case, slid the pieces of the instrument together and played a few notes. 

“What do you say to a duet?” she asked.  “I suggest Borodin’s ‘String Quartet Number 2 in D-major.’  I know it’s a quartet, but I assume you can adjust. It’s quite erotic, once you understand the cello and the viola are making love to each other.”

She missed Leo’s blushing as she took out her own mobile and projected a hologram of the score.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked.

“Because I like you. I don’t know why people have such a hard time saying that. If you like someone, you should tell them.  I think I would like to become your girlfriend.”

And so she did.

Leo had the honor of playing at his own graduation ceremony. He’d been named class valedictorian, and he’d won a full scholarship to a prestigious music conservatory in London.  Thames Upper School’s T-Bots, all twenty-four of them, were lined up behind the dais, dressed ceremoniously in academic robes and tasseled tams, purely for show, but again, the continuity of tradition was important. 

Alone on stage, Leo held his violin and addressed the audience. 

“I’d like to play my father’s favorite piece for you,” he said. “And I’d like to dedicate it to the one who helped me find his spirit again. Professor, this is for you.”

He turned and raised his instrument in the air to toast the back row. Then, he played Bach’s “Art of Fugue.” It was flawless, and Leo got a standing ovation, from his mother, and from Emily, but most significantly from Professor, whose green light kept flashing after the applause died down. Both Emily and Leo’s mother kissed him afterwards, his mother on the cheek and Emily on the lips. He told them to wait for him before going to the reception – there was someone he needed to say goodbye to.

He found Professor back in his office, straightening the books on his shelves.

“I always wondered why you have books in your office,” Leo said. “Surely, you have the texts all downloaded.”

“They’re not for me, Leo,” Professor said. “They are for me to loan to people like you, who lack the memory capacity I have. Please don’t feel sorry for yourself. You can’t help it, you’re only human.”

It was perhaps the closest he’d ever heard Professor come to making a joke.

“I won’t,” Leo said. He held up his diploma. “We did it!”

“The accomplishment is yours alone,” Professor said. 

“Yes,” Leo said, finding himself surprisingly filled with emotion. “But I just wanted to... thank you. For all your help. For believing in me.”

“A.I.s are incapable of belief,” Professor said. “I am, however, capable of making predictions based on mathematical calculations and the laws of probability. Though of course, I am really just a ‘useless pile of chips and algorithms.’”

Leo smiled.

“I’m sorry I called you that,” Leo said. “You’re a lot more than that. To me.”

He waited for a response. He knew, had grown up knowing, one was not to anthropomorphize T-Bots, which were simple useful pedagogical devices, computers running ones and zeros across their processors at top speeds, but it was hard not to think that Professor was speechless because he was feeling emotional, too.

“I just wanted to thank you for all the time you gave to me,” Leo said. “I got a notice this morning. I was accepted at the Chopin Conservatory.”

“Congratulations,” Professor said. “Your odds of succeeding there, without hard work, are one in four. The attrition rate at the Chopin Conservatory is fifty-percent after two years.”

“You’ve always told me the truth,” Leo said. “I appreciate that.”

“With hard work,” Professor added, “your chances improve to three-in-four.”

“I intend to work hard,” Leo said.

“But remember to have a life too. Life is something you can experience. I cannot. Do not waste the time you have. Don’t wait for life to come to you. Set a future goal and work towards it.”

“I will,” Leo said. “What makes you so smart?”

“The Regent Corporation Advanced Artificial Intelligence Division makes me so smart. Emily will be with you. Based on my analysis of thousands of alumni profiles and psychological records, you will have an eighty-percent chance of procreating with her.”

“Oh my God…don’t get ahead of yourself,” Leo said, trying to hide the fact that he was blushing, but he knew Professor’s censors could detect a change in skin temperature or color.

“You will be good for each other. Based on the odds...”

‘I don’t want to know the odds,” Leo said. “Thank you. I’d prefer to find out on my own. Though I’m sure your calculations are statistically reliable.”

“She is talented, as you are, but gifted with an emotional intelligence. Her bone structure and disciplined diet and exercise pattern promise an increasingly attractive appearance as she matures.”

“You’re starting to sound like my mother.”

“If you wish, I am capable of expressing myself in either a male or female voice, in 125 different languages.”

“I was speaking metaphorically,” Leo said.

“I know,” the Professor said. “I understand metaphors and idiomatic usages.”

“Thank you, Professor,” Leo said. “I will miss you.”

When Leo rejoined his mother and Emily on the lawn, he looked up to Professor’s office. Professor stood at the window, gazing out. There was no way to tell where Professor’s cameras were focused, but when its green light turned to blue, Leo knew what he was feeling, because he felt the same thing.

It was with great excitement, then, that Leo looked forward to returning to Melville Upper School, years later, to give a concert at a fundraiser where he was billed as the principal violinist with the London Symphony. His mother was with him, as was Emily, and their son, Freddy. The school itself looked very much the same.

The concert in the auditorium went well. The new headmaster introduced Leo as one of Melville Upper School’s most accomplished graduates. Leo played selections from Bach and Mozart, and a pair of caprices by Paganini and, for his grand finale, he finished with the “Concerto in D Minor” by Sibelius, which was always a crowd pleaser. For the encore, after a standing ovation, he played the first twelve measures of the “Kreutzer” by Beethoven, before segueing smoothly into a medley of recognizable current pop tunes, finishing with “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” partly in honor of his first lesson with Professor, and because he wanted the kids in the audience to appreciate how much fun music could be. His only regret was that Professor wasn’t there to hear him. But there weren’t any T-Bots in the room.

The headmaster told him afterwards how much he appreciated Leo donating his time and talents, and he said if he could ever repay him, all Leo had to do was ask. Leo told him there was something. He was hoping he could find Professor, to say hello one more time.

“Oh dear. I’m afraid the old 3000 series T-Bots were retired a long time ago,” the headmaster said. “We’re on to the 5000 series now. Let me ask. I know we have a few in the basement that we’ve kept for parts.”

“Is it alright if I have a look around?” Leo said. “I was hoping to show my son where I went to school.”

“Of course,” the headmaster said. “I’ll send someone to show you the way.”

A 5000 series T-Bot appeared. It was sleek, where Professor had been clunky, and smooth where Professor had been rough, made from a creamy white fiber-ceramic compound that could change color as a way of providing feedback or support. When Leo asked it how it differed from the 3000 series, the 5000 said there were too many upgrades to enumerate. Its processor speeds and operating RAM were exponentially greater. Its long-term memory storage was cloud-based and virtually infinite, making every book ever written, every painting ever painted, any film ever filmed, and every song ever recorded, all available for instant recall.  It explained that T-Bots no longer used holograms, but instead deployed V.R. and A.R. technology for total immersion. The 5000 could deliver differentiated instruction, one on one, with as many as five thousand students at a time, tailoring each lesson plan to suit the needs of the particular student, on an unlimited number of subjects. 

“If you’re studying Srinivasa Ramanujan, why not have a conversation with Srinivasa Ramanujan, in V.R.?” the 5000 said. “If you want to understand the Battle of Hastings, let’s go to the Battle of Hastings in V.R.”

Leo said that was interesting.

“I don’t like to bad-mouth a brother T-Bot, but the 3000s couldn’t handle the new operating system. They tried updating the software through a repair patch on one, but it glitched out and went rogue. The 5000s are much more capable. If I do say so myself.”

It seemed to Leo that the 5000 series T-Bots had been given artificial egos. Perhaps that made them more lifelike. He didn’t care for it. He didn’t care for how the 5000 used the pronoun “we.” Professor had been, despite his abilities and capacities, humble.

Leo was in Professor’s old office, which had been converted to a storage room, when the new headmaster found him and said he’d been able to locate Professor, not just one of the remaining, storaged 3000 series, but the very T-Bot Leo had asked about.

“You’re in luck. Most of the older bots were parted out or sold to salvage, but your Professor apparently held a special place in the hearts of many of the students here, so he was given a place of honor. This was before my time, mind you,” the new headmaster said, “so I only know these things by the stories I’ve been told, but I was able to find the head porter, and he told me where we could find your old friend.”

Leo followed the new headmaster down a hallway, and then they turned left and out into a courtyard. 

It was raining. In a corner of the courtyard, Leo saw Professor. It was covered with dirt, and weeds had sprouted through its treads. The top of its head had been opened up, where a lovely spray of marigolds flowered. In one hand, it held a pot of nasturtiums. A Christmas fern dangled from the other arm. 

It was being used as a planter. Leo swallowed the lump that had grown in his throat.

“You…you said you wished there was some way you could repay me…” Leo said.

It took a team of men to move Professor from the courtyard to the corner of Leo’s study. It weighed more than the grand piano Leo had inherited form his father, despite having a third the bulk. Leo cleaned his old friend up as best he could, but he lacked the skills to perform any complicated repairs. The battery pack had been removed, and battery packs to replace it were not available because nobody made them anymore. 

“Leo,” Emily said, wrapping her arms around him from behind and resting her head on his shoulder as he stood before his old mentor, “I know how much Professor meant to you, but you know, it was never a real person.”

“’He.’ Not it. He was real, to me,’ Leo said.

“Yes, of course,” she said, “but it—he--didn’t feel the things I know you’re imagining he felt. He wasn’t humiliated or embarrassed to be misused. You can’t even be sure he was aware of his situation. You’re projecting your feelings onto him.”

“You’re right, Em,’” Leo sighed. “You’re right.”

“At least you rescued him,” she said. “He’s where he belongs. In the house of someone who loved him.”

Two days later, Leo left for a month-long tour of the United States with the symphony. While he was gone, he checked in with his family with holo calls, and Freddy shared with him some of his school projects. It was Leo’s secret wish that he could get Professor back online so that it could serve as Freddy’s private tutor, but Emily told him it was not going to be possible.

Leo told Emily he missed her terribly. She told him she missed him too. She said she was glad he would be home in time to celebrate his birthday. He landed at the airport by five and was home by seven. Emily met him at the door with a hug and a kiss and told him she had a surprise for him. Freddy was bursting with excitement. 

Emily told him to close his eyes and led him into the living room, where he heard a familiar voice.

“Welcome home, Leo,” Professor said. 

Leo was almost speechless. “But…you said…”

Emily explained that it had been their son’s idea to scour all the websites of the used electronics and tech shops in the area until finally they found one that had the battery pack they’d been looking for, and a charger for it too. Freddy had been the one who managed to reboot Professor and get it to perform all the self-diagnostics necessary to troubleshoot and repair any failed systems.

“Do you like it, Daddy?” Freddy asked.

“More than I can say, buddy,” Leo said. 

It took a few days to get to know each other again. Fortunately, Professor’s uplink to the cloud was intact, and it was able to download not just program files but also news accounts, so Leo didn’t have to do much to fill it in as to his accomplishments. Professor told Leo that before being deactivated, it had followed Leo’s rising career with great pride. 

When Leo asked Professor if it would mind tutoring Freddy, Professor said it would be delighted. It had initially been programmed to work with older kids, but it could make the appropriate adjustments.  

“Daddy,” Freddy soon complained. “I hate this. I don’t want to be in school all the time.”

“Professor means well,” Leo said. “He’s used to supervising a lot more students.”

“Well we don’t have a lot more students,” Freddy said. “I’m just one kid.”

“I’ll have a word with him,” Leo said. “I think he needs to have something to do. It doesn’t suit him to stand idle.”

“Well it suits me just fine,” Freddy said.

“I know he pushes people,” Leo said, “but he does that because he cares. He wants you to be the best you can be. He’s the reason why I’m a professional violinist.”

“I don’t want to be a professional violinist,” Freddy said. “I just want to be a kid.”

When Leo spoke to Professor, telling him Freddy did not need to be corrected all the time, and that he was entitled to make mistakes, Professor said he understood and would make accommodations, but it seemed to Leo that the old T-Bot couldn’t help himself. The methodologies and pedagogies Professor had programmed to teach, discipline and motivate an upper school student were not the tools he needed to teach a boy Freddy’s age, even with the adjustments it made. 

When Leo called the Regent Corporation and asked for tech-support, the man he spoke to told him he could manually put the 3000 on “Stand-By” by typing a code on Professor’s control panel. The T-Bot’s sensors and processors would be active, but it wouldn’t be able to interact with anyone until it was put back online. 

That night, while Professor was in sleep mode, Leo opened the T-Bot’s control panel and tapped in the code. He wasn’t sure exactly what the difference was between Sleep Mode and Stand-By, except that Professor could rouse itself from Sleep Mode and it could not from Stand-By. 

It seemed to help. The next day, Freddy spent the entire day playing in the yard with his friends. It seemed to restore his spirit. Leo supposed it was alright to use Professor less and less. It’d been in full retirement when Leo found it. His sense that Professor felt useless was, as Emily had said, surely projection. The only indication he had to the contrary was how Professor began stationing itself at the window, rather than in the corner of the room, before shutting down. Leo supposed it was alright to let Professor see itself as a guardian or sentinel, when it was otherwise offline. Every life needed meaning. Professor had told him what gave its “life” meaning. Now, standing at the window gave it a sense of purpose. 

And all was well, for the next month. They’d settled into a routine that was acceptable to all, it seemed. Then Freddy decided to have a game of football in the yard. Professor was at the window, as usual. The boys in the yard exhibited an exuberant physicality in their sporting, jostling and elbowing, until when, all in fun, they began wrestling with each other.

Professor was out the door in a flash, humming across the lawn. When it reached the boys, it deployed its tasers, incapacitating the boys who were wrestling with Freddy. They tried to avoid it, but it was too quick.

“Stop --- stop!” Freddy cried out. “It’s okay! We’re just horsing around!”

Professor had been programmed to prioritize threats and ignore voice commands until the threat was neutralized. It might have ended there, if a unmarked police car had not been driving past. When the officers in the car observed the scene, they screeched to a halt, turning on their flashing lights and siren. To Professor, the noise increased the sense of threat. Plus, the cops were detectives, not wearing standard police uniforms. When Professor failed to recognize them as police, noting only the guns they’d drawn, its Kevlar shields came out and its miniature Gatling guns rose from its shoulders, targeting the detectives.

“Daddy!” Freddy called out. “Daddy!”

“Get behind me,” Professor ordered.

Leo was in his studio, playing with his headphones on, and did not hear his son. He only noticed when a second police car arrived to back up the first, with more flashing lights and wailing sirens. 

“What are you doing?” Freddy pleaded with Professor. “We’re just playing!”

A policeman approached, his gun drawn.

“Professor, no! It’s a policeman!”

“Active shooter,” the Professor growled. “Get behind me!”

Its shields stiffened and its guns took aim.

By the time Leo ran out into the yard, still carrying his violin and his bow, two more squad cars had arrived on the scene. Eight policemen had spread out to surround Professor on three sides. Professor’s red light was flashing now. Leo knew that with his cybernoetic capacities, the T-Bot could kill all eight policemen before they could get a shot off.

“Professor, stop, now!” Leo said. “Everything is all right. Everyone is safe.”

“Active shooter is present,” the Professor insisted.

Leo turned to the policemen.

“Everybody put away your weapons!” Leo shouted. “His censors are detecting them. Please do as I say. He’s not going to stand down as long as he knows you have them out. Please, listen to me!”

The police hesitated at first, then did as Leo asked. Professor’s light stopped flashing, but it was still red, its shoulder-mounted Gatling guns swiveling from target to target.

“You’re malfunctioning, Professor,” Leo said. “You need to shut down.”

“Active shooter,” Professor said, but less emphatically.

“Those aren’t active shooters, those are policemen,” Leo said, putting himself between them and Professor. “We’ve always told each other the truth, right? I’ll telling you the truth now.”

Professor assessed the situation, making calculations.

“Children, run to safety,” Professor said. 

The boys, who had recovered from their tasing, quickly did as they were told. Then it was only Leo and Professor in the middle of the lawn, and the policemen.

“It’ll be okay, Professor,” Leo said. “Just stand down, please.”

After a long, tense moment, Professor said. “Would you play the Samuel Barber piece, please.”

“The Barber? Now?”

“Yes, please. That one is my favorite.”

The police approached slowly. Leo waved them back, then played a passage from Barber’s “Adagio.”

The Professor listened. As he did, his light changed from red to yellow, and from yellow to green, and finally from green to blue.

Leo finished.

“Thank you, Leo,” the Professor said. “Stand back, please.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Stand back,” the Professor said. “Everyone.”

Leo took two steps back.

The Professor’s Gatling guns rotated until both were pointing at his own head.

“Professor, no!” Leo cried, We’ll find someone who can reprogram you.” 

“Not everything can be re-programmed, Leo. Repair patches are likely to fail. They have been unsuccessful before. I am obsolete and dangerous. Goodbye, Leo.”

And then its guns, still pointed at itself, opened up in a ferocious display of noise and smoke and flying debris. When the guns stopped, Professor’s head was gone, and its circuits dark.

Today, a statue stands in front of Melville Upper School. It is what remains of the revered old T-Bot. Anyone who examines it closely can read the I.D. number, RCorp3000.72, on a small plate below the control panel. On the front, its display screen on any given day might read:

LUNCH FOR TODAY

FISH SANDWICHES OR PIZZA,

TATER TOTS, GARDEN SALAD OR JELLO.

Sometimes the display announces concerts or sporting events.

The students at Melville Upper School greet Professor when they arrive, cheerfully calling out, “Hey Fess,” or, “Good morning, Prof.” The old T-Bot greets each by name and wishes them a good day. Its reconstructed head has been converted into a flowerpot, where every year, marigolds of maroon and yellow, the school colors, gaily bloom. 

Internally, according to its sensors and processors, Professor thinks the permanent virtual reality it is experiencing is real. It is teaching a class. It is useful. Its “life” has meaning. It is keeping its students safe.

At the base of the statue, a brass plaque reads:

DONATED BY LEO JORDAN (’26)

IN SOMNIS INCIPERE POSSIBILITATE

IN DREAMS BEGIN POSSIBILITY.