Page 25 of Chaos Theory
‘You’re unbelievable!’ But it’s not really Shane’s fault. I know that. Kobi is my responsibility.
‘Wait, maybe he just ran out of juice?’ says Shane. ‘He kept talking about that, remember?’
But his battery display indicates he still has a few hours of charge left.Oh, Kobi. Why didn’t I listen to you? Why did I listen to Shane instead?I have so many regrets but can’t process them because of the avalanche of consequences barrelling through my mind.What if Kobi is kaput? What will JP think? What will Josh say? What will Ron Tron do?I try to imagine JP explaining this to Ron. ‘Yes, that’s right, Ron. We brought yourmultimillion-dollarrobot to the pub. It’s the way we do things around here.’ Obviously I’ll be fired. Maybe Shane will be fired too. Maybe Ron will try to sue Go Ireland. Or JP. Or me.
I’m spiralling. I slap myself in the face.
‘Hey!’ says Shane.
‘I need tothink!’I hear how desperate I sound. I take a deep breath. ‘Let’s get him back to the office. I’m going to have to call Josh.’
We get a cab back to the office. I leave a voice note for Josh, asking him to meet me here. I don’t go into detail, but I do say that it’s an emergency, that Kobi had a ‘liquid encounter’ and is currently unresponsive.
Shane has keys to the building because he’s been working in the gift shop all week. We bundle Kobi into the Liffey Room, prop him up in the middle of the space.
I snatch a Blue Roll from a shelf, start wiping down Kobi’s surfaces. I call up Kobi’s documentation on my phone, search for every word I can think of related to moisture. Zero results. This obviously isn’t a scenario Josh had anticipated.
I crouch down in front of the forlorn figure of my robot colleague. What would Kobi say if he could speak right now? He’d probably tell me to focus on finding a solution. I wish Josh was here, but I also dread what he’ll say. Is there any way in hell I could fix this before he gets here?
I exhale and stand up. Try to muster up some confidence. ‘Shane, I am going to try to fixKobi.’
‘Great! Let me help you. This happened to me recently actually – my phone fell into the toilet.’
‘Do you think that’s what happened?’ I clasp my mouth in horror. ‘Kobi fell into a toilet or…was he pushed?’
‘No, no! At least, I don’t think so. I just meant I was able to dry out my phone that time. Maybe the same technique will work now.’ He whips out his phone.
‘I think Kobi is a bit more sophisticated than a smartphone, Shane,’ I say. ‘He’s not just here for your entertainment.’
Shane sits on the floor, cross-legged. He speaks in a quiet voice, his words a little slurry. ‘The irony is, things seemed to be going quite well, up until…’
I tune him out. I circle Kobi, looking for answers. A surgeon trying to save a car crash victim, but it’s their first day on the job.Think.
‘That time when your phone got wet – how did you fix it?’ Kobi is a machine, after all. And I have no better ideas right now.
‘I’m trying to remember what I did,’ he says from the floor. ‘Let me look it up.’ He messes around with his phone while I continue pressing Kobi’s buttons uselessly. ‘Okay, I found something.’
‘What does it say?’
‘Gimme a second, I’m skimming it here. Let’s see. It says “act fast”.’
I make a growling sound in response.
‘Okay, eh, step one – turn off the device. Well, then, it’s good that he’s off already, isn’t it? It says to leave it turned off for at least forty-eight hours. So maybe you should stop pressing buttons?’
I release my breath, run my fingers through my hair for something to do. When I went to the bathroom in Phelan’s, I shook out my hair and covertly took off my bra, thinking that maybe I could relax for the rest of the evening. I hope Shane won’t remark on my appearance.
‘Okay. What’s next?’
‘Step two – remove the battery. Do you know how to do that?’
I have a vague memory of a diagram from Kobi’s documentation.And Module 1 of the MIT course, which I started last night, covered battery maintenance.
‘Um, I’ll give it a go. I’ll need tools though. Let me look in Kobi’s maintenance kit.’
I retrieve a black holdall from the shelf next to Kobi’s sleep pod and rifle through it. ‘I hope the battery’s not in an awkward spot.’
I hold up a small screwdriver and address the patient. ‘Kobi, I’ll try and be gentle. I don’t want to damage anything else while I’m getting it out.’
