Chapter 5 - The intruder
Plymouth, Ma
December 20th 2111
Two days earlier
The humming of the house robot made her jump. Damn it! She thought.
The accursed tin can came and went without bothering to knock. Evidently, its programmer had decided that good manners were not a useful requirement for a house robot. She knew it could not help it, but it never failed to aggravate her all the same.
Her instructions had been clear: under no circumstance was the robot allowed to interrupt her, especially when she was working in the cellar laboratory, so, it could only attract her attention by staying there and make annoying noises. It announced: “There is an incoming message onthe Net.”
“This means trouble.” she thought. Only two people knew her computer address, one of them a Psychic that used
