She will totally love me now, Roy thinks, punching his palm with his fist, they will all have to love me. He stands behind the dusty red curtain that extends up over him and out of sight. End of eighth grade, about to enter the bigtime. Kids in costumes practice steps or run lines around him in the wings. Roy hovers over his box like a bodyguard protecting a celebrity.

After Mackenzie Connelly approached him outside chess club a few weeks ago, “Hi Roy,” she had said casually, catching him off guard, flipping her magnificent tawny hair over her shoulder, he had been upping his engineering game considerably.

“Uh, hi,” Roy had burped more than spoken in response. So stupid. How did she even know his name? A girl like Mackenzie didn’t talk to dorks like Roy. She had everything: looks, personality, good college prospects. She was down with the cool kids, but she seemed to transcend all middle school hierarchies by virtue of being nice.

Onstage, Sonia Hutchinson is playing a penny whistle like it’s 1983. Someone in the audience trips over a thick cable duct taped to the floor running right through the center row. The kids stomp over it and kick at it, oblivious.

Backstage, band teacher Linda Altchaler wields her clipboard and points her pen to a pack of ponytailed girls in lycra, signaling for them to stand by. Poor Sonia is in band and Altchaler’s encouraging faces make it clear just how badly she is butchering “Greensleeves.”

Finally, Sonia concludes, and the whole room sighs with relief as she slinks off stage in defeat. Next is Vicki Dixon, who does a tone-deaf Tic-Toc rendition of a Taylor Swift song. The PA seems to cut out, cough, and pop back in, accompanied by a barely detectable flicker of the auditorium lights. Vicki blinks but recovers in time to complete the last chorus with a piercing nasal wail. This generates a little energy in the audience with some hooting and one of her friends shouting, “Slay, Queen!” right as she finishes. She takes a deep bow and bounds off the stage.

Terrible. No originality, Roy mutters inwardly. So predictable. Not at all like the bull’s eye at the center of his target, the sweet cream at the top of his yogurt cup, the valedictorian of his private thoughts. If he could score Mackenzie Connolly’s attention, the whole school would have to stop hating him.

Mrs. Altchaler puts her clipboard into her armpit so she can clap as she approaches the mic. “Next up, we have Roy Blakewell and his friend, Ray!” She points her pen at him and exits.

“He has friends?” someone in the front row whispers loudly. A giggle passes through the theater.

Roy takes a breath, and carries two chairs on stage, one regular sized, and one small one, like from a kinder class. There is a long, awkward moment while he walks off stage and brings back a cardboard box about two-and-a-half feet tall. He feels small in his blue checked shirt and new Vans as he puts the box down next to the little chair. Audible rustling and the squeaking of the old industrial metal seats betray boredom.

Roy looks out at his fellow students and his eye picks Mackenzie out of a packed house. Fourth row right at the end, center aisle with a look of benign expectation on her face.

Roy begins speaking, “When we think of robots, we think of something from the future, like in sci-fi stories. But robots have actually been around for a long time, they have shaped our daily life…”

“We know you are a robot, dude,” someone in front quips. There is snickering.

Steve McDaniel, the shop teacher that no one likes, barks, “Pipe down.”

Roy continues, “Technology has advanced so rapidly that very soon, all of us will have full-service robots instead of smart phones. I started experimenting with building my own, and so I’d like to introduce you to him.”

He looks down at the box. “I’d like to introduce you to him,” he says louder.

The box shudders, lifts, and topples revealing a figure with Roy’s odd dark brown bowl cut and an identical blue checked shirt. Roy had to buy baby-sized Vans on Amazon at the last minute to match his. He knew his mom wouldn’t notice.

“Meet Ray.”

Roy’s classmates look up from their phones and gasp as Ray climbs into the tiny chair.

“Hi Ray.” Roy says.

“Hi, Roy.”

They are seated now, inclined toward each other like they are familiar.

“Ray,” Roy asks a little too loudly into the mic, “tell us about some of the things you can do.”

Ray’s features make a sanguine shape. He turns this expression toward the audience and opens his doll hands, “I can make multiple calculations at once. For example, I can count the number of people in the audience and run all kinds of analysis while I talk to you.”

“How many people are in the audience?” A hush settles in the room.

“Three hundred seventeen, including the adults.” Ray smiles. “I can do basic tasks like empty a wastebasket or fold and put away laundry. I can tell jokes and listen to your troubles. I am designed to solve problems.”

Roy nods, feels himself relax, his confidence growing. Mackenzie’s eyebrows are elevated, he notices. She’s sitting very upright. Good signs.

Mrs. Altchaler and Mr. McDaniel on the other hand, exchange confused looks across the expanse. Altchaler squints down at her clipboard as though it can give her an explanation.

“This is a joke, right,” mutters McDaniel under his breath. “It’s programmed. Has to be?”

“What about connected digital tools, Ray? What kind of capability do you have there?”

“I’m glad you asked. I can connect to the Internet using basic Wi-fi, but I’m also outfitted with an aggregate algorithm, so I can run up to twelve different browsers simultaneously–”

The idea that the school’s pariah has done something extraordinary is probably threatening to the many vicious eighth grade boys that enjoy grinding Roy’s face into the dirt on the softball field. Mean laughter courses through the students. Roy has overestimated their ability to grasp the implications. That’s okay, he thinks. I can make you regret it.

Then something incredible happens.

“Knock it off!” Mackenzie shout whispers, with a castigating look at her fellow students before returning her attention to Roy.

She just actually defended him. For a fleeting moment, it’s like they are the only people in the room. She gives him a little nod as if to say, please continue. He has her. Now to really turn up the volume. Roy turns to Ray and nods.

 Ray hops off his chair in a surprisingly fluid manner. “I can do other things. To demonstrate: I just hacked Mr. McDaniel’s Starbucks app and ordered everyone in this room a coffee.”

A string of wind chimes, bleeps, honks, sonar, and other sounds fills the air for a moment. Kids look at their phones and exclaim as they receive notifications good for one Starbucks coffee.

“What?” McDaniel blithers as he looks at his phone. “$951? Are you freaking kidding me?”

“Ray,” Roy chides his little likeness playfully, “that’s not funny.”

“It wasn’t meant to be funny, Roy, but I get your meaning. I can easily reverse the charges.” McDaniel is lost in his phone, vibrating with fury, doubtless trying to access his bank account.

“I’m curious, Ray, how did you get the Starbucks credit to all the people in the audience?” He genuinely wants to know.

“Oh, that was easy, I used facial recognition cross-referenced with social media and the school’s contact records so I could instantaneously email everyone.”

Roy realizes this is a breach, but it’s also fucking cool. Besides, aren’t emails more or less public facing? He glances out again at Mackenzie. Is she impressed? She seems to be concentrating. Hard to tell.

“Okay Ray, what about helping me improve my chess game, or my chances of getting into a good college?” He recognizes the need to change the narrative, like all the books about startups describe.

“Oh, that’s just the beginning.” Ray points at a face in the front row. “Public records tell me that your parents just filed for divorce.” Then, to the next face: “And based on your consumer data, I can guess with a high degree of accuracy that you just started your menstrual cycle.” Both faces crumple in the dark before bursting into tears.

Talent show contestants shuffle with unease backstage. Altchaler looks alarmed and gestures at Roy to wrap it up.

Ray prattles on: “Based on real-time statistics, I can estimate that 14% of the girls in this room have eating disorders, and 42% of boys have accessed PornHub.” There is a rumble of embarrassment.

Roy goes slightly gray. He’s looking at Makenzie, whose face is now deep inside a frown, her arms folded over her chest.

“But perhaps my most impressive feature is state-of-the-art infrasound –”

“Ray, no.” This last trick will not go over well. It will not make anyone laugh. It was a sick idea.

Altchaler is creeping out from the side stage now, gesturing violently at Roy and out in the audience, McDaniel stumbles over the gnarl of frayed cables on his way toward the stage.

This is not how it is supposed to go, thinks Roy, a wrenching frustration twisting his groin.

The animatron, Roy’s perfect miniature of himself, opens his mouth but no sound comes out.

“Don’t, Ray. I changed my mind!” Roy pleads.

For a moment, it seems that Ray’s most powerful capability isn’t working. Roy studies his classmates in the murky half-light of the theater. The teachers ascend the stage on either side, and Mr. McDaniel is now towering over Roy bellowing when he stops mid-sentence and his khakis go dark below his belt. Everyone freezes with the knowledge that the shop teacher just wet his pants.

A handful of kids dart for the bathrooms, but the building was constructed in 1927, a time when kids weren’t allowed to use the bathroom that much, so there is only a single toilet for each gender. After the first boy and first girl make it to the doors and lock themselves inside, the kids outside promptly piss themselves right there on the floor. The rest of the students are pinned to their seats watching in shock, squeezing their legs together in vain.

Roy himself feels his own midsection go watery. He realizes now all the technicalities he couldn’t test with this particular feature, namely that he is too close to the signal. Now he deeply regrets that he decided to go with the 7 hertz experiment. Part of him was just curious if he could do it and thought would be funny to make his classmates uncomfortable for a split second. But the other, more hateful part wanted a secret weapon, something that he could do if the whole thing went sideways and he didn’t get what he wanted. A sound too low for the human ear to hear. A sound that vibrates vital organs, disrupts brains, and spasms the bowels.

Ray wasn’t supposed to activate it unless he received Roy’s signal. Ray isn’t following his protocols, and this is problematic. It also appears that the signal’s effects are far more powerful than Roy anticipated.

As if in confirmation, a girl in the front row leans over and throws up. The teachers on the stage all genuflect in pain. Mr. McDaniel is rolling around in a pool of his own pee. No one in their chairs dares to move. Every single one of them has soiled themselves.

What Roy doesn’t know, and Ray has no way of predicting, is that at this moment,

a power surge in the decrepit theater releases a high-voltage charge though the cables with the puddles of hot urine acting as conduits to the metal chairs, electrocuting Roy’s classmates in their seats.

Screams rip through the air as sudden pops and puffs of smoke accompany the smell of burning hair. Roy feels his own bowels release, but it’s like he’s already empty.

The kids in the audience shake as if doing some kind of hideous new dance, unable to stop. Horrible shrieks ricochet off the cavernous walls. Sparks fly out of a nearby breaker box. Bodies not yet out of childhood hit the floor, all singed flesh and excrement.

Roy is appalled. He was supposed to be discovered as a genius, not wanted for mass murder.

A figure in the fourth row collapses into the aisle, spilling a mass of tawny hair.

Roy turns to Ray and growls, “You killed them. You weren’t supposed to hurt anyone.”

 Ray’s mouth is still open, joining the frequency of the PA to emit the infrasonic tone.

“MAKE IT STOP,” screams Roy over the silent noise.

The teachers are doubled over in agony on the stage in an absurd reenactment of every death scene from every theatrical production performed here since 1927.

Ray closes his mouth. Wails permeate the room. It reeks like a septic tank on fire.

“Something went wrong,” Ray says with something resembling thoughtfulness. “I could not anticipate the conditions.”

Roy surveys the adults around him, then his classmates reduced to stinking carcasses on the auditorium floor. Linda Altchaler moans and rolls over.

“Shall I call an ambulance?” Ray asks with almost adorable innocence.

“Roy, what have you done?” Altchaler is gasping like a beached fish as she sits up.

Ray’s height brings him roughly eye level with Roy’s teacher. “He won.”

Miranda Culp is an author, editor, and owner of Amatoria Fine Art Books in Sacramento. In her past lives, she sang jazz in New Orleans, worked at a photo lab, and took a lot of guff as a script PA for Dick Clark. Her past publications include a collection of dirty short stories she co-authored with Jef Delman called The Canon of Aphrodisia, 2023, and a local history book called Becoming the City of Citrus Heights, 2022. She's currently working on a novel about Sacramento.