RoboNomics

Chapter 1

How late am I? Only a minute or maybe two. But my students are already rowdy. The sounds of child laughter, boasting, and prattling gossip leak into the beige cinder block hallway. I trot towards my classroom. An entire universe of social interactions bursts from the room as I enter it for the last time.

I've never been late. In the seven years I've worked at Crescent Street Public School, there hasn't been a single class who has had to wait for me. I take up my position at the classroom door every morning as third graders file past me. Usually the thought of standing in front of my kids and teaching them gives me secret knots in my stomach. But today my belly is flipping. Silence falls as I walk up the center aisle that separates the minuscule desks from each other. I look straight ahead, trying to focus on the flat screen mounted behind my desk. I can't look right at them. Not now. The gems of their small, bright eyes glint at me: onyx and emerald and beryl and amber.

I brush my black bangs out of my eyes. I turn to my desk and look at it. I poke at its built-in screen. I push my bangs back again and feel my blood pressure spike. After all I've done, I think. The hours after the final bell rings, helping with maintenance of the school network. I take a deep breath and think about how I can begin. How I can tell my class I'm leaving them.

I look up. Twenty-four eight year olds look back, caught mid-doodle, mid-note, mid-scratch of cheap finish off desk. They prod at math games on the computer monitors buried within the particle board desks.

"Miss? Ms. Anderson?" Natalie calls from the front row. Her tight black curls bounce as her ebony hand flicks at the end of an arm extended to its maximum length above her head. "Are we going over geography homework from yesterday?" Her keen eyes lock on mine. Usually I am thankful for her enthusiasm. The way it sucks up dead air and unanswerable questions.

I look past her as I try to steady the nausea that rolls through my body. The thin InvisiScreen televisions hanging on the walls display colorful artwork made by my students. How long have I uploaded student projects to those monitors? My entire short career. Outside, late September sun breaks through the white, overcast sky. It throws the shadows made by the vertical blinds against the electronic displays. The bite of fluorescent lights fade in the sun.

"I won't be taking up any more homework with you, boys and girls." I look back at them. A surprised, joyful mutter of "what" comes from more than one corner of the classroom.

I clear bile from my throat. "In fact," I explain as I brush bangs out of my eyes. "I won't be doing any schoolwork with you anymore." At this admission I hear the echo of a hissing "yes" from the back of the rows of desks. Probably Ajay, one of my challenges whose mother sends him to school each day with a half-liter of cola in his lunch bag. Wincing, I charge on. No time to rebuke him now.

"I'm sorry I couldn't let you know before. But I'm no longer your teacher. Beginning today, you'll have a new teacher."

#

What I don't tell my class is that I can stay in my classroom if I want. When I arrive at school that morning, I throw my lunch bag in the staffroom fridge like I have every day for the past seven years. I'm on my way to my classroom, distracted by thoughts of the lessons I have to upload. That's when I smile absently at Vice Principal Chen in the hallway. I still have my rain jacket on and it's dripping from the morning rain. I shake my umbrella out on the gray rubber-backed rug that spans the length of the speckled hallway tile.

"Andrea!" He smiles at me. "Would you mind meeting Principal Goodman and I in her office in a minute?"

"Oh, sure." I'm not suspicious of the simple request.

I've always liked my Principal. She has blond hair tied back in a ponytail and square shoulders. The curves of her buxom figure are reined in by a tight pantsuit. She cares about the students of Crescent Street Public before parental concerns, district demands, and even teachers. Her hands are plump with short, dainty fingers. They are folded on her desk. The peeled back wood veneer exposes glue-and-sawdust boards beneath. I can't take my eyes off her hands on the old desk as she explains that I am being replaced.

"It's not as if we're firing you," she says.

"Isn't it?" I ask fiercely and look her in the face at last.

She smiles. "No, not at all. We just need you to take a different role to help facilitate the project. If it's successful, you'll be invaluable during the transition."

"Transition to what?"

Goodman starts to answer but Chen cuts in. He leans with one slim hip on Goodman's desk. He folds his arms as he looks down at me. I sit before them in an old wooden chair that's cracked and wobbling.

"Look, it's happening at every school. One classroom for the pilot project. They meant to start the first day this year. But delays--"

"We thought it was going to be postponed indefinitely," finishes Goodman.

"Yes, exactly," says Chen. "We didn't mean to spring this on you. It was out of our control." I can't decipher what he thinks as he considers me. "Given your skills and background, we thought you'd be perfect for the project."

I nod obediently as if I am back in teacher's college. "So you want me to help?"

"Yes," Goodman says, her mouth pressed flat across her face in an ugly grin. She's patronizing me. It's not as though it's never happened to me before. Actually, it happens so often that usually I don't even register its occurrence. And I know why it happens to me. I've known for many years how I appear to other people. The baby blues, the childish chubby cheeks that belie the depth of my adult intelligence. And if that weren't enough to make me apparently innocuous, I've always had the habit of making myself small and scarce. Sitting in the back of class in high school, barely uttering a word. As long as I wasn't acting out, the teacher didn't know I was writing a note to my best friend Johnny Yee instead of doing an essay on Hamlet.

It's a lesson that has served me well in adulthood. Not being noticed has its perks. I am freer than other people in a crowd. It's a tactic that I use with the other teachers at Crescent Street. I don't get in anyone's way. I don't draw attention to myself. And so I'm largely able to run my classroom the way I want. But the major drawback of keeping quiet for the sake of the status quo is that my colleagues assume I am shy and not very smart.

Today, I can't be quiet. "You want me to help this thing, this machine teach my students?" Goodman's smile falls as I respond. "You want me to help it do my job? And I just get to what? Sit by and wait for it to break down?" They are silent, Chen's eyelids pulled open to their limit. "And the pay?"

Goodman presses her lips together so tightly that they disappear for a moment. "We have a new contract you'd have to sign. As your role would be...different."

"You'd essentially be making sure that the project runs smoothly," Chen continues. "We're not sure how effective the Unit will be and how it will affect the learning process. We'd like you to keep an eye on the Unit, watching for any deficiencies or errors and fixing them, if you can, when they happen."

"What you're describing is a technician position." I can hear my voice rise steeply. "Do you have any idea how much schooling I have?" Chen opens his mouth and puts up his hands. "Do you know how much it costs to become a teacher? And now you want me to go back onto a contract? Back to the beginning?" He steps towards me, his hands about to land on my shoulders.

"No," I say as I rise and back towards Goodman's office door.

"Andrea," he says. "We still need your help."

"Forget it," I say as I rush from the room. There's a couple kids sitting in the outer office, waiting to be seen by the principal. An android with a screen curving across its head sits at the school secretary's desk. On the screen is a cartoonish, pixelated face that smiles stupidly. I clench my jaw as the machine blinks at me. Its back-lit smile morphs into a frown as its programming responds to my facial expression. I hurry past it. I can't let it see me cry.

It's in the staff bathroom moments after I walk out that I second guess myself. My knuckles turn white as I clutch the cool ceramic sink and stare at myself in the mirror. My face has gone sallow. There are dark lines delineating my eye sockets.

"Come on, Andrea," I tell my reflection as I hear the school bell ring. "Get it together." But as the hallway outside the bathroom door fills with shouts and child laughter, I think about my knee jerk decision and slip deeper into the feeling of being hung-over. The hall gradually becomes still and silent. I will myself to vomit. Then everything will be fine and I'll be able to think about what I've just done. I gag, but the nausea doesn't go away.