The Good for Nothings [EXCERPT]

Chapter Three

"Have you ever noticed," Elio asked me, "that when Evelina gets really angry her eyes bug out like a fish?"

"Yeah, you should tell her. I'm sure she would find that incredibly attractive. Not offensive at all."

"I thought the same thing!"

"That's sarcasm, Elio." We turned the corner on the fourth floor and headed up the ramp to level five. The house was a converted apartment complex, each level separated by spiraling ramps of glowing white moonstone. But despite its grandeur, calling the house a home was a stretch. Even though my family filled its halls, we all agreed that the house was just a place to stash our stuff.

"I understand sarcasm quite well, thank you very much," Elio said as we reached the top floor. "You programmed it into my hard drive when you were twelve. I'm a pro now."

"Thank the skies for that. Could you imagine how bored I would be otherwise?"

We entered my bedroom, the only room up here. Elio and I had christened it "The Nest" years ago, considering we were as far above ground as anyone could get in this house. Three of the four walls were made of glass, showcasing the jagged Condor skyline and the winking lights of the manufacturing district that stretched out around us.

My bedroom was about as tidy as the rest of the house. Wires and gears littered the workbench wedged beside my bed. The lamp on my desk illuminated a stack of blueprints for potential gadgets that I'd yet to find time to make, along with a half-built X-ray sensor for Elio that shocked me every time I tried to touch it.

I chucked the broken phaser and the visual enhancer onto the workbench, where they landed on top of the remnants of last night's dinner—fried jellyfish from Condor's central marketplace. Only then did I notice the cuts dotting my hands from falling at the treasury. I'd have to clean them, and then they could join the dozens of scars on my palms and fingertips. An unfortunate side effect of playing with so much metal and wires. Every once in a while, things decided they wanted to catch fire.

"I think the phaser needs a new molecular generator," I said, digging a screwdriver into the control panel and prying it open. "I definitely don't have enough money to buy one. Do you think we could steal—?" I looked over my shoulder. "Elio?"

Saturn's rings, not again.

Roo had called Elio's beeping at the treasury a malfunction. But the twitching he was doing now—frozen mid-step in the doorway—was the real problem. If the universe was a fair place, then I could say that this was the first time Elio had glitched. But it wasn't. And he had glitched too many times over the last few months for me to count.

"Hang on. I got you, I got you." I maneuvered his body, which felt as heavy as a sack of bricks, across the room and deposited him on my bed. While he lay motionless, I stumbled over to my desk and ripped open one of the drawers, dumping out a tangled pile of wires. A few screws and a stray bolt rolled across my path, but I kicked them under the bed, diving for a thick purple cord, frayed at the edges from years of use.

One end of the cord plugged into the side of my computer, while the other popped into the charging port at the base of Elio's neck.

I picked at an old scar on my palm while the computer ran a diagnostic test, feeling the contents of my stomach swirl up into the back of my throat as I watched a hologram of Elio's body spin above the screen. A red light pulsed over his head. Same as always. The source of his glitching—and the reason for my current money problems—was hidden deep inside Elio's robotic brain.

I hated thinking about it, because thinking about it made me nauseous, but his memory core was depleting even faster than usual. The computer pinged with his test results. Only 79 percent functioning. Last week it was functioning at 87 percent. The week before: 91 percent.