The Boy Who Fell from the Sky by Jule Owen (read more books .TXT) 📖

want to debate how to run the session?”

“I think it would be in the spirit of the exercise,” Alison says.

“Okay. How do you want to run the session, Erling?”

“Erlang. It shouldn’t be a debate between you and me. Why don’t you ask some of the other people here?” 

Arkam glares at Mathew, but he says to the room, “Suggestions?”

Kaleb says, “Why don’t we brainstorm high-level ideas all together first? That way we’ll use the big group to bounce ideas off each other. Then we build a shortlist of the best five and afterwards we split into teams to build high-level proposals we pitch to each other. We vote for the best, and then we make a plan, divide the work, and split into teams to complete.”

“Sounds complicated. Any other suggestions?” Arkam says. 

There are no other suggestions. 

“Not sure what the point of this was,” Arkam says testily. 

Mathew says to those around the table, “Simple show of hands. Those for Arkam’s approach?” 

Five hands tentatively rise, including Arkam’s and that of his best friend, Oliver Thyer. 

“Those for Merryfield’s?”

Ten hands go up, including Mathew’s. 

“Merryfield’s method has it, I think.” 

“This is stupid,” Arkam says. “My idea was clearly better. You just voted against it because you like Merryfield better.”

“Are you for real?” Alison asks Arkam. 

Mathew catches Alison’s eye and, trying not to smile, turns to ask Merryfield, “Do you want to run the brainstorming session?”

“I . . .” Merryfield is flustered. “Okay. . . .” He stands awkwardly and walks in front of the Canvas, grabbing the digital pen in the clip at the side. He swipes to get a clean whiteboard. “I think we should start by listing any and all thoughts. There are no silly ideas. I’ll write them down. What kind of robot could we build?”

“Cyborg,” Alison says.

“Great,” Arkam sneers. “How appropriate.”

Thyer guffaws. 

“There are no stupid ideas,” Merryfield says, scribbling “Cyborg.” 

“Some of us have implanted e-Pins. We all have medibots, making us forms of cyborg. It’s not impossible,” Alison says. 

“I agree, Alison,” Arkam says, straight-faced. “There’s a lot of evidence of cyborgs, even in this room.” He glares at Thyer. “Oli, stop sniggering,” he says. “Gai made a good point.”

“Exoskeleton?” 

“Great idea,” Merryfield says, capturing it. “There are different variants.”

“For paraplegics.” 

“For soldiers and policemen.”

“For VR games.”

“Base jumping.”

Merryfield scribbles them all down. “What else?”

“Helperbots. HomeAngels, carers for the sick.”

“Guide dogs.”

“Sniffer dogs.”

“Bomb disposal robots.”

“Military drones that defuse bombs.”

“Space walkers to fix broken parts on space stations. Mars and moon rovers to identify Helium 3 deposits.”

“Exoplanet explorers.”

Mathew says, “There’s small stuff. Insectibots. Pollinators. Beebots. Spybots.”

“Cyborg spy rats.”

“Or mice. They’re smaller.”

“Cockroaches.”

“Animated morphing intelligent goop that moves between gaps in walls.”

“Cool. I like it.”

“So do I.”

“This is getting stupider by the minute,” Arkam says. “How are we going to make ‘goop’?” 

“Kitchen cleaners are intelligent goop – they can’t be hard to make. Our medibots are built with intelligent viruses, right? There’s nothing in the scope here concerning sticking to machine parts. Why should we stick to things we have all done before?” Mathew says. 

“Because we’re good at them,” says Arkam.

“And what will we learn?”

“You think you’re here to learn?” Arkam is smiling at Mathew. He shakes his head. “I thought you were supposed to be smart.” 

Merryfield says, “At this stage we should pool all our ideas and not discuss how we’re going to do them. Anything else?”

“We haven’t got soldierbots.”

“Okay, what next?” Arkam says. “We need five ideas.” 

Merryfield splits the Canvas screen so their ideas are on the left and there is a blank screen on the right. “We need a framework to narrow them. Any suggestions?”

“How long will they take?”

Merryfield writes, “Time.”

“Do we have the materials?”

“Is it possible to make the materials? Or get them easily?”

“Do we have the knowledge?” Arkam says.

“How easy would it be to learn?”

“Is it fun?” 

“Is it useful?”

Merryfield creates a grid reading, “Time, Materials, Knowledge, Fun, and Useful” at the top. He draws lines down and across. The computer immediately interprets what he wants to do and creates a table. 

“Let’s go through the list, shall we? Let’s score them. One is most positive, five is most negative. Lowest score wins. How feasible is an exoskeleton?”

“It would probably take us a while, because it’s fairly complex.”

“It depends on how ambitious we are. I think it’s not beyond us to build something supporting muscle power in legs, for instance. It also scores pretty high on usefulness.”

“Shall we list the different types of exoskeleton for scoring?”

“We’ve only got today, you know,” Arkam says. 

“You’re right, Arkam,” Merryfield says. “Let’s limit this session to half an hour.” 

“If this session is half an hour, how long is the next stage? And the one after?”

Merryfield gapes mutely at Arkam. 

Arkam turns to Mathew. “You’re quiet, Erling. Have you left us for the duration?” Mathew is doing something on his Paper. “Are you able to spare some time to join us and offer some time-management tips?”

Mathew says, “Just a moment.” He finishes something and then smiles at Arkam. 

Arkam is watching him. Mathew points to the Canvas screen. “Accept, will you, Merryfield?” Mathew says as a dialog box pops up with a message saying, “A friend is trying to share your screen. Accept. Deny.” Mathew says, “Move the new window to the left where you have the score chart.” 

“You’ve made a neater version of Merryfield’s chart. Well done!” Arkam says with sarcastic enthusiasm. 

“Look at your Papers. I’ve sent you a voting app. It contains all of Merryfield’s options. You have to go through line by line and score each option. The average accumulated scores will appear on the Canvas as you vote.” Mathew turns to Arkam. “Quicker and more democratic.” 

Arkam snorts, but he unscrolls his Paper and opens the app. The voting is done in a few minutes. They have five candidates. The lower body exoskeleton for paraplegics, the guide dog, the spybot, the moon rover, and the military drone.

“Now what, Mr Organiser?” Arkam says. “Shall we split into teams and discuss?”

Merryfield either doesn’t detect the sarcasm or chooses to ignore it. Mathew decides Merryfield is a better person than he is. “Yes. Great idea, Arkam. Let’s split into five teams of three, based on where we’re sitting.”

“I’d like to do the spybot,” Mathew says. 

“Does that work for you? Are you happy to work with Erlang?” Arkam asks the two people sitting next to Mathew. They nod.

“We’re the moon rover,” Alison says after a whispered conference with the two nearest her. 

“As we’re staking claims, we’re the military drone,” Arkam says. 

Jane Wilson, who is sitting next to Arkam, says, “I want to work on the exoskeleton.” 

“I’ll swap with you,” Oliver Thyer says. 

“Guide dog,” another student says.

“Good,” says Merryfield. “Half an hour from now, we report. You need high-level designs, plans for execution, and a pitch. We’ll meet, hear the pitches, and vote anonymously, Mathew, if you don’t mind creating another voting app?”

“Not at all.” 

“The winning team will lead the project and allocate work. We break for lunch at 12:30. We’ll spend the afternoon building the robot.”

They split into their teams and scatter around the room, taking their chairs. 

Mathew is with Wyatt Yerby and Lydia Dowd. He gets an extra chair and snaps his Paper to the back of it. 

“Any ideas?” Wyatt asks. 

“We base our spybot on a pre-existing model. We’ll download plans from the Nexus and adapt them. It will save a lot of time,” Mathew says.

“Shouldn’t we be worried we might plagiarise something?” Lydia says. 

“None of these ideas are particularly original. What do they expect us to do in a day?” Wyatt says. 

They both look at Mathew, who says, “I think you’re both right. We need to offer an original spin on an existing idea.”

“Fantastic. But what?” 

“What if we use something not meant to spy for spying?” Mathew asks. 

“Like what?” Wyatt says. 

“What small robot is used for practical purposes?” says Lydia.

“Medibots?” Wyatt suggests. 

“I love the idea, but we’ll probably not get it past the practicality committee,” Lydia says. 

Mathew says, “There’s beebots.”

“Erm . . .” Wyatt frowns.

Mathew persists, “Crop pollinators. What farmers use these days instead of bees.” 

“Okay . . .” 

“They’re small enough to squeeze through keyholes and walk under doors. There are also thousands of free templates on the Nexus. We download one of these and use plans for a more conventional spybot to add recording capabilities to the beebot.” 

“It’s very simple,” Lydia says.

“And that’s a problem because . . . ?”

“Seven votes for the drone. Ha!” Arkam says, his eyes shining in triumph, gazing directly at Mathew as he speaks. “Seven votes wins it.”

All morning Arkam has been the head of the practicality committee. When Mathew questions the feasibility of building a drone plane with operational arms able to grasp and lift in one afternoon, everyone believes Arkam when he says, “I would not champion an idea I don’t believe would work.”

Mathew knows this is a lie. Arkam simply doesn’t want the afternoon going on the way of the morning, with other people taking control. With his idea selected, it means he will spend the afternoon telling others what to do with perfect legitimacy.

“Why don’t you work on the arms?” Arkam says to Mathew, as he allocates work after lunch.

“I’ve no idea how to build arms on a perfectly aerodynamic object without ruining the aerodynamics. The arms will destabilise the front of the plane. I told you so earlier when I said this project won’t work.”

“So negative!” Arkam says. “We need total commitment here. We need to work together. I don’t want you poisoning the atmosphere and demoralising the rest of the team. Buck up.” 

They are asked to leave at 5:30. School security comes to tell them a fleet of Aegis cars is waiting to take them home. 

Mathew hasn’t managed to make aerodynamic arms for the drone. 

“Let’s hope they grade us on our teamwork and leadership skills, rather than productivity, hey, Erling?” Arkam says, catching Mathew as he takes the stairs towards the exit. He puts his hand on Mathew’s arm, stops him, and turns him slightly, bending his head to look him in the eye. “I thought as much,” he says. “Why are your eyes blue, Erling? You’re not Caucasian.”

Mathew shakes him off, saying. “They aren’t. My Lenzes are.”

“Are you still wearing Lenzes? I’ve moved on to X-eyte Wear. The natural look is more in now, you know. Changing your eye colour is a bit suspect.” Mathew doesn’t say anything. It takes a moment, and then it clicks for Arkam. “They weren’t bought for you, were they? They belonged to your dad.”

Mathew sighs. “What do you care?”

“Touchy. Very touchy. Your father was Soren Erlang, wasn’t he? The Soren Erlang.”

“Why? And what do you mean, the Soren Erlang?”

Arkam shrugs. “No reason. Just curious.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look it up, Erling. Look it up.”

“Look it up where?”

But Arkam doesn’t respond. Mathew watches him skip down the last few steps and across the lobby. 

Bastard, he thinks. 

The journey in the car to the river is punctuated by blocked roads and detours. 

Someone throws a bottle at