Page 39 of Chaos Theory

THIRTY-SEVEN

MAEVE

I pace the floor, talking to myself out loud. ‘Think, Maeve. Think .’

Kobi is stretched out on the bed in the Farmers’ guest room. His legs are badly damaged, but his torso, arms and head are intact – on the outside at least. The wheelchair lies crumpled in the corner. I’ve sent Shane to get my tools and Kobi’s portable sleep pod from the car.

I could – should – call Josh right now. But I can’t face it.

It’s too hard to explain, and besides, he’d want a full status report and I can’t give him that right now.

But maybe I can get Kobi stable, systematically assess what damage has been done.

Josh showed me Kobi’s brain, cushioned inside his torso.

There’s a chance the damage is mainly to his exterior.

There’s a gentle tapping at the door. I open it, expecting Shane, but it’s Matthew and Lizzie. I push the door back to a crack, blocking their view of the room and its patient.

‘We want to help,’ says Lizzie in a small voice. She clutches a bright blue stuffed monkey to her chest. It’s wearing a space suit.

I glance at Kobi, then crouch down to look her in the eye. I’m starting to get an idea. ‘Thank you. You can bring me any of your old toys you don’t play with any more. Especially anything with moving parts.’

‘What else do you need?’ asks Matthew.

I stand up. ‘A tour of your tool shed, please.’

5:30pm

A knock at the door. I wipe my hands on my borrowed overalls, push my plastic goggles up onto the top of my head and open the door a smidge. Shane is holding a mug with a dark liquid inside. I recognise the smell instantly.

‘How did you…?’ I begin.

‘Had to drive to the next town. They’ve a big supermarket.’

I accept the peppermint tea with gratitude. ‘You’re an angel.’

‘How’s the patient?’ He peeks over my shoulder in the doorway.

‘He’s still in sleep mode, doing a full recharge. So we won’t really know if he’s fully functional until he wakes up, but’ – I open the door fully – ‘come in and see for yourself. We made some changes to his body.’

Matthew is packing away his tools in the corner of the room. ‘I better go and check in on Lizzie,’ he says. ‘I’ll leave ye to it. Come and find me when you’ve news.’

Shane walks over to Kobi, propped up in his portable sleep pod in the middle of the room. Kobi’s upper half looks the same, just a little dulled and grimy.

‘Um, where are his legs?’ he asks.

I point to the corner of the room, where Kobi’s legs are standing somewhat awkwardly by themselves, like a wallflower at a disco.

‘They’ve been nothing but trouble since day one,’ I say brightly. ‘They had to go. I’ve gone old-school instead.’

I point to Kobi’s lower half, which now looks pleasingly steampunk, with a hint of patriotism.

His lower section is hard green plastic with vertical leather strips at intervals, giving a green-and-black-stripes effect.

It’s amazing the uses you can find for an old lawnmower.

Attached on either side are two large wheels.

‘Are those parts from the wheelchair?’ Shane asks.

I nod. ‘And…’ I open one of the leather strips to reveal a series of smaller, hidden wheels within, of varying sizes and colours, including several shades of pink. Lizzie’s old roller skates are about to get a new lease of life.

The last two hours have been frenetic. Seeing that toy space monkey reminded me that all the trouble started when Kobi tried to walk on the other-worldly Burren rocks.

My dad loved cycling. ‘Four wheels good, two wheels better,’ he used to say.

I talked to Matthew about my idea, and between us we were able to come up with a plan.

Matthew said it was ‘recycling at its best’.

I’m not sure what Josh will say, but I couldn’t just leave Kobi immobilised, with neither legs nor wheelchair. It didn’t seem right.

‘I know it looks a bit weird,’ I say with a smile. ‘Kobi really came into himself in that chair somehow. And boy, did he move fast when he needed to. So I reckoned he might like to retain that speed advantage. And also, to have a reminder of what he did.’

I open a little panel on the side of Kobi’s torso.

‘Look, I’ll show you how it works. So, the large wheels will be slightly raised up most of the time, just adding some extra balance – you know, like stabilisers on a bike.

But then, if he needs to go really fast, he can activate this function here to mechanically pop the wheels down to the ground, and boom – he can bomb along really fast. We’ve added a gentle braking mechanism – here – and an emergency stop. Really, he’s almost half bicycle now.’

‘Maeve, have you just reinvented the wheel?’ Shane laughs. ‘This is amazing.’

He circles Kobi, and when he gets back to his starting point, he suddenly lifts me up by the hips and does a half-turn with me, placing me down lightly. ‘You’re amazing,’ he says, facing me.

I laugh too. ‘Put me down!’ I say, even though I’m already down. ‘But do you think he’ll like it?’

‘I think he’ll love it!’ His hands are still on my hips .

I look up at him and we lock eyes. We’re standing very close to each other.

My breathing gets shallow. Adrenaline is still buzzing through me.

My overall suddenly feels too warm. I want to unzip it, but my limbs are so heavy that I can’t seem to move a muscle.

I can’t remember what I was about to say.

Kobi emits a mild electrical sound. I break away from Shane, clear my throat. ‘Let’s not jinx it. Let’s see how he is when he wakes up, after a full battery charge.’

‘Maeve,’ he says. ‘Why can’t we just?—’

But I cut him off. ‘Thanks so much for the tea.’ I get the cup from the dresser and sit on the edge of the bed. ‘It could be a while until he wakes up.’

‘I’ll wait with you.’ His tone is flat.

‘Sure,’ I say.

He sits on the floor at my feet, cross-legged. I know he wants something from me, something I can’t give him. He leans his back against the bed. His Nikes have mud on them.

‘Sorry about your shoes,’ I say. ‘Farm life.’

‘I don’t care about the shoes.’

I hold my breath, then exhale. A memory is coming to me.

‘Let me tell you a funny story about shoes.’

‘Okay.’

‘From when I was a kid.’

‘Okay.’

‘Well, pre-teen years. I was around twelve. We were living in Chicago. I’d already lived in London and Boston.

And a couple of places in Ireland. So anyway, I had this friend called Sacha.

We were in different schools, but we only lived a block away from each other.

We met at the local chess club. Yes, I know, I was a bit of a nerd.

We were the only girls in the club, and pretty soon we were inseparable. ’

I smile at the memory. ‘We had so much in common. We discovered that we had the same shoe size and our birthdays were both in July. One time, we pretended to be each other for a day. We swapped clothes and gave our parents quite the surprise when we went home to each other’s houses at the end of the day.

‘Anyway, our birthdays were coming up, and it was my idea that we’d ask our parents for the same pair of Converse but get one pair in black and one in white.

“To really know someone, you have to walk in their shoes,” I told Sacha.

I was so wise! And I was the one who insisted that we each wear one black shoe and one white one.

Our mothers thought it was dumb, but they tolerated it.

‘Until one day my dad announced that we were moving again. A great opportunity had come up in South Africa for work. A couple of weeks before we were due to leave, Sacha asked me for her white shoe back. She was crying. The new school term was starting soon. Said her mom was determined she wasn’t going to turn up at school looking like a weirdo.

‘So I said okay, but I didn’t give the shoe back.

I avoided Sacha for the next two weeks, ignoring messages and refusing to leave my room when she called to the house.

My mam went ape, but I refused to give up the shoe.

I just couldn’t do it. I ended up hiding it in a crawl space under the house.

What were they gonna do? Leave me behind when they went to Cape Town?

‘The last message I ever got from Sacha said that she’d been grounded. She begged me to come over, said she would forgive me, we could forget about the shoe and just say goodbye properly. But I didn’t. I left Chicago without saying goodbye to her.’

‘And without the shoe?’ says Shane.

‘And without the shoe.’

‘I see.’

‘Yeah.’

‘You said this was a funny story.’

‘Sorry. I thought it was going to be a funny shoe-in-a-crawl-space story. I had forgotten about the other parts. Until now.’

My eyes are wet. My chest feels heavy. There have been so many goodbyes, so many new beginnings. Maybe I do push people away. But I’ve been doing it so long, I no longer know if it’s to protect myself, or just the habit of a lifetime .

Shane reaches behind him, pats my leg gently without looking at me. ‘It must have been hard, moving around so much.’

‘Dad said we were lucky.’

‘Even so.’

I’m glad he can’t see my face. I stay still, trying to even out my breath.

There’s a faint zing from Kobi’s sleep pod, indicating that he’s fully charged. I jump off the bed. Shane scrambles to his feet.

I stand beside Kobi, fiddle with the buttons on his control panel.

‘Hey,’ I say softly. ‘Can you hear me?’

His eyes flicker to life. He moves his head in the direction of my voice. ‘Greetings, Maeve. I can see and hear you. It is a pleasure to do both.’

‘Woo-hoo!’ I yelp and throw my arms around him. It’s awkward, but I don’t even care.

‘Yes!’ Shane cheers. ‘Go on!’

‘Maeve, Shane, please be calm,’ says Kobi. ‘What did I miss?’

‘Not much.’ I can’t stop smiling.

My phone pings, and so does Shane’s. ‘Hang on.’

I pick it up. A message from Matthew, with a link:

Thought you might like to see this! News travels fast around here.

‘Did you get this too?’ I ask Shane.

‘Think so.’

‘My battery’s almost dead. Can we open it on your phone?’

I go to him, stand close beside him. The top of my head just about reaches to his shoulder. In some ways, we fit together perfectly.

Shane holds his phone out in front of the two of us, opens the messaging app. Before he taps the first message, from Matthew, I catch a glimpse of the next message on the list. The sender is Sandra Smith. The message appears to consist of three emojis:

My stomach drops. That could mean anything , I tell myself quickly .

And anyway, I don’t care. I’m not even surprised.

A carousel of responses spins in my mind as Shane clicks the link from Matthew.

It brings us to what looks like a local news website.

A headline reads, ‘ Robot Saves Child in Dramatic Cliff Incident’.

I read the subhead and skim the first few paragraphs as Shane scrolls.

Local girl Lizzie Farmer (5) was today saved from harm by a humanoid robot in a dramatic incident at the Cliffs of Moher… near-fatal… last-minute dash… robot on wheels… local family… relief and joy… unprecedented scenes…

A video is embedded in the story. Shane clicks on it.

Ninety seconds of footage from the car park at the cliffs.

It looks like it was filmed on a dashboard camera; there’s no sound.

It shows the SUV reversing and the moment of the collision with Kobi in the chair.

Then a crowd gathering while I kneel beside Kobi on the ground.

‘Oh no,’ I say. ‘Josh is going to kill me. He specifically asked me to keep a low profile for Kobi while we were here.’

Shane scrolls back to the top of the page.

‘Ah, it’ll be grand. While I’m sure The Clare People has its fans, it’s not exactly The New York Times now, is it?’