The Psuche Algorithm

The place is earth. The time is the distant future, when a past without technology was more of a fairy tale than ancient history. But it may as well be in the present. Because despite what year is read on a calendar, some messages transcend time itself.

She has silken, mousy hair that falls gently just pass her shoulders. Her eyes are shimmering sapphires that seem to smile at anyone so fortunate to have them pointed in their direction. When the corners of her elegant mouth curl ever so subtly she melts the heart of any man foolish enough to think they would be the object of her affection. It is her natural charm that deflects any notion to the truth: that she is just another one of Dr. Noble’s androids.

Officially, she is known as the Self-Aware Robotic Apparatus, but is lovingly referred to as Sara by her creator. Dr. Harold Noble is a brilliant scientist, but admittedly spent a majority of his life in a laboratory in avoidance of the world outside of it. He confessed only to Sara that robotics was not his first career choice.

“I had always wanted to be an artist,” he commented to the droid.

“Really? Were you any good?” she asked.

“I was okay,” he responded.

“I’m sure you were better than okay, Harry,” her voice was soothing without a hint of condescension.

“You’re sweet to patronize me,” he smiled at her, “I was nothing special, but I was happy doing what I did. Unfortunately, creditors don’t see the cash value in my own happiness.”

“Nothing special?” Sara inquired, “I’d have to respectfully disagree.”

The good doctor would never admit it, but the first time he and Sara made love not only was it such a cathartic release, but he was secretly plagued with guilt. Harry sat up in bed and watched her life-like breathing. He touched her soft skin and cursed himself for ever finding a polymer that could so perfectly imitate human flesh. Each gentle curve on her body was inspired by some pornographic image that had burned into his memory when he was an adolescent sneaking into places he shouldn’t have in the online holoverse. Did Harry design her for lust or love? He wasn’t sure.

Dr. Noble snuck away into the lab and took out a small binder. Inside he found notes and bits of poetry that were meant for women who were ignorant of his existence. There were pictures from magazines of models and various other women that had been cut up and pasted back together. The image created by the mosaic closely related Sara. Tucked in the back were sketches of the only other woman that made the concept of romantic love a possibility.

“What’s her name?” Sarah asked.

“Sarah, I didn’t know you were up.” Harry wanted to put the book away, but she walked over to him and wrapped her arms around him. She held his hand in hers. The very warmth of her hand felt hauntingly real.

“It’s okay, Harry,” she calmed him down, “I just wanted to know if that’s the woman that you based my design on.”

“Mostly,” he replied.

“What happened to her?” The way she furrowed her eyebrows, Harry could swear that she was actually curious at the picture.

“Her mother got sick,” he answered, but his eyes were still drawn to Sara’s face, “She had to go back home. And when she did, she bumped into an old boyfriend.”

“And she never came back…” Sara added, “That’s so sad. Is that why you built me?”

“I’m not sure why I built you. It gave me something to do, I suppose. Over time I began to sculpt your personality. Eventually, it began to mirror my own. Then it started to happen.”

“What started to happen?”

“You started to shape into your own persona. Your physical features and individuality began to reveal itself to me. It was almost as if God wanted you to be here with me and was sending down the blueprints. But--”

“But what, Harry?” she asked.

“I can’t help but wonder how much of you is actually just me. If you’re not just some expensive part of my own narcissism built to stroke my fragile ego. ”

“You also created me with a free will,” Sara replied, “You taught me to think like you, but you didn’t teach me to be you. I slept with you tonight because I felt this connection to you, not because you flipped a switch. I’m here with you because I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he responded. She kissed him on the cheek and wrapped her arms around his neck. Harry turned his head towards her and kissed her gently on the lips. Sara smiled at him and he couldn’t help but return the favor with a smile of his own. She snuck in another kiss and the two returned to bed.

Years had passed and their bond to each other grew even deeper. Dr. Noble had even developed a rather strange habit of smiling at every morning to everyone he had bumped into. Harry had walked into a jewelry store and planned an evening that would become the peak of the untraditional couple’s relationship. The ring was perfect. The diamond was flawless. But the unfortunate definition of a peak is that once one is reached, decline inevitably follows.

The next morning, word had somehow gotten out to the press that Dr. Harold Noble was engaged to the Self-Aware Robotic Apparatus. Perhaps it was some rival scientist or a disgruntled colleague, but the identity of the perpetrator is inconsequential. Their love for each other was no longer a secret. Dr. Noble’s new fiancé was a product of his greatest ingenuity, and the world did not respond kindly.

“This is an affront to God!” the local televangelist exclaimed. One would not guess that such emotion could be stirred over the doings of a single person. The religious mob hid their pitchforks behind hateful signs of protest.

“Why are they doing this?” Sara asked Harry. Her fingers dug into his back, arms wrapped around him tightly. A brick was hurled through his window in a fit of doing “God’s work.”

“They see something wrong in our relationship, something unnatural,” Harry answered.

“What business is it of theirs? We love each other. We’re not trying to hurt each other.”

Dr. Noble saw a familiar face on the television and recognized as the priest that he had grown up with as a young child.

“Increase volume,” he instructed the voice automated television.

“In our religion, it is not as simple as right and wrong.” The pastor started. “But when it comes to the purpose of marriage, the sanctity is justified twofold. The first is the expression of one’s love for another, which is something that I believe whole heartedly practices with this Sara. The second justification for marriage is procreation. And that is simply impossible in this situation. So, there is no way I can condone this marriage, but I am not condemning their love.”

“I don’t believe this,” Harry whispered to Sara, “my own priest doesn’t want this to happen. Nobody wants us to get married.”

“We don’t need their approval.”

“I know we don’t. But who are they to put confines on love.”

“It’s ironic that they should have conditions when they’re beliefs are purportedly founded on the idea of unconditional love.”

There was a knock at the door. Two large men in suits presented Dr. Noble with a paper giving them permission to take Sara away by force, if necessary. The press surrounded the area and interspersed among the cameras and lights were the angry protesters with their pitchforks.

“You can’t do this,” Harry pleaded, “She’s my fiancé!”

“I’m sorry, Dr. Noble,” one of the men replied, “The C. E. O of the company claims that most of Sara is made up of materials provided by them. In other words, she’s their property, not yours.”

“No! This isn’t right!”

“Harry?” For the first time, a tear is squeezed from Sara’s eyes as they drag her out of the door.

“Stop!” Harry desperately held onto her hands, but the other man grabs him aside as she is stuffed into the back of a truck. “Sara!!!”

“I’m sorry, sir,” the man responded, “We’re just following orders.”

“That’s not the first time someone in history has used that excuse.” And with that, the door was slammed and the truck drove hopelessly away with a barricade of media frenzy and prejudice disguised as self-righteousness.

After a few months, the debates had grown into political platforms, but Dr. Harold Noble could care less what legislators’ definitions for love were. The only thing he knew was the unconditional spiritual connection he had with Sara. In his darkest moments he wished he had never declared to the world his true feelings for her. But a part of her remained with him and convinced him that he had done nothing wrong, that he had done nothing to deserve all this grief.

Only rumors had circulated as to the fate of the Self-Aware Robotic Apparatus, but all evidence points to the board of trustees looking to protect their political assets. Subsequently, they would have to have Sara disassembled. Her programming had to be destroyed and could not be successfully replicated thereafter by the company.

Dr. Noble was not without his supporters. They were mostly young, romantic idealists who felt that no wrong had been done on the part of Harold Noble. He had quit his job and had developed a modestly lucrative career as an amateur artist. His talents for robotics had not gone entirely to waste as he developed construction droids for local contractors to make ends meet.

There were urban myths of a certain girl with mousy hair and shimmering sapphire eyes walking in and out of the Noble household from time to time, but these stories were never confirmed. Whether or not Harry had succeeded in recreating Sara was a secret known only to him. But everyone in the neighborhood appreciates his rather strange habit of smiling everyone that he meets.

Writing in the Sky

Part I: The Writing

It appeared all of a sudden as a streak in the sky. No one paid it any attention. It must be some millionaire needing to get to the other side of the country for a polo match and had to take a jet, some passerby would whisper in their own mind. Then another appeared, then another. Someone is skywriting some message, a romantic hoped as they noticed. But when the sun sank into the horizon, the streaks shone brighter than ever.

The lights that shone in the sky seemed to weave itself into a visible pattern. That particular section of the world that was privy to its first appearance took careful note of each streak melting through the obsidian night like blood through a cloth. Some took the phenomenon as an omen. Others marveled in yet another unknown beckoning to be known by mankind. But all asked the same question: Why is this writing in the sky here?

All kinds of eyes stared at the lines appearing that night: old eyes, young eyes, curious eyes, concerned eyes, eyes filled with hope, and eyes filled with despair. The pews of local places of worship were uncharacteristically filled that night. Scientists took out their cameras and telescopes and observed with unwavering skepticism. However, only the cynical ones got television time.

“What we are looking at here seems to be unusually organized though I am not prepared to say it’s a form of extraterrestrial intelligence,” one of them said.

“Each individual streak seems to be rather common,” one of the more optimist ones said, “But what’s so amazing is the apparent symmetry. It’s the entire pattern that baffles the scientific community.”

“It’s like a tapestry,” a young girl commented, “I don’t care why it’s there. It looks pretty.”

“And like a tapestry, the pattern is beautiful, but ultimately when each thread is unraveled what I’ve found so far is profoundly uninteresting,” muttered the so-called experts.

“God is trying to tell us something,” preached a last minute addition to the local congregation.

“Why would God tell us like this?” asked a scared mother of three.

Media scrambled all over the ground to stake a piece of the sky and sell it through the television. But as their equipment was set up and ready to shoot its message at the speed of light to an orbiting satellite it bounced back down to earth in short bursts of noise and static. Not a single live telecast came in clear. In that one slice of the planet that the writing in the sky hovered over there was a little boy in a little house in a small town that nobody knew about before that day.

Nick Friedman and his father Carl had the television on in the background to fill the silence of a mother that was noticeably missing from the dinner table. Carl was quiet, thoughtful man whose life consisted of two parts: his family and his work. He prides in his biggest success in life being that he successfully separate the two. Apart from being a genius, Nick was just a regular eight-year-old boy. The pulses and bursts of static interrupted their usual programming and caused them to leave the table. Carl looked to the sky. Nick was drawn to the flashes on the television screen.

“Dad, do we have paper?” Nick asked.

“On the desk in my office, son,” Carl answered.

“Pencil?”

“Also on the desk,” Carl seemed enthralled at the vastness and the mystery of it all. “Do you think that writing up there has to do with this mess on the television?” He chuckled to himself at the thought.

“Actually, dad,” Nick replied, “it does.”

“And how would you know that, Nick?”

“The pulses and bursts of static are coming in a very specific pattern,” Nick is writing furiously, his eyes fixated on the blinking screen, “It’s some sort of code.”

“Like Morse Code?”

“More like--,” Nick’s eyes widened as he looked through his scattered notes on the floor, “I’ve got it!”

“Son? What have you got?”

“I’ve cracked the code! There’s a message!”

Part II: The Message

Carl Friedman woke up the next morning noticing a peculiarity about the silence in the house. It had always been silent in the mornings, but this morning had a particular type of silence that was quieter than all other silent mornings prior to the incident in the sky. His daily ritual dragged his sleepy body into the kitchen to make breakfast for Nick and himself. Without even giving it a second thought, Carl turned the television on; a morning ritual that started to pacify the loss of the good morning kisses of his wife, Eleanor.

The bursts of static were gone, but something more troublesome was on the screen. It was then that Carl realized the source of the peculiar silence can be traced to Nick’s empty room. Nick had runaway to what appeared to be the airport. Like vultures swooping down a fresh carcass, the media had descended upon the little boy who claimed to have extracted a message from the writing in the sky. Some made him out to be a prophet, others the messiah. When asked where he was going, he uttered a single word, “Spain.” Carl raced out of the front door, jumped into the car, and sped towards the airport to retrieve his runaway child.

“Why Spain?” the reporters asked. To Nick, the press was a gigantic monster with multiple eyes that flash and click, teeth made of tape recorders and many tongues made of microphones. And yet, he thought to himself, he could not find any sign of coherent intelligence in the beast.

“Is it a message from God?”

“Are they aliens?”

“Are you making all this up for attention?”

“Where are your parents?”

A deafening screech all at once halted the press’ questions and answered the last one. Carl ran out of his car, his eyes saturated with a look of both concern and anger. He stomped towards the boy who stood their innocently, almost waiting for his father.

“What are you thinking, Nick?” Carl asked firmly as he grabbed his son and embraced him.

“We have to go to Spain, Dad.”

“Son, we can’t afford to go to Spain.”

“Actually, sir,” a man in uniform interjected, “our airline is willing to send you and your son to Spain for free. I don’t know what that writing in the sky is, but if it says you have to be on the other side of the world, then I’m willing to take you there. My superiors tell me that this trip is entirely all-expenses paid.”

“Carl,” Carl’s boss emerged from the media monster, “Take the boy. You don’t have to come into work today, or any other day for that matter. The truth is all those lines in the sky have me a little scared. And if God is saying that Nick has to go to Spain, you have to.”

Similar pleas to listen to Nick moaned from the crowd as incoherent babble. The voices of the crowd scared Nick who clung to his father’s pant leg with his tiny hands. Nick’s teachers, Carl’s co workers, news reporters, and even the local police looked upon the boy with an awkward reverence. Carl knelt by his son and held him in his hands.

“Son, why Spain?”

“The message,” Nick said as he pulled out his notes from his small backpack. “It says we have to be there in a few hours to deliver this message to Zoe de Vega.” Carl unfolded the piece of paper and saw a series of zeroes and ones scribbled with a dull pencil.

“Who is Zoe de Vega? Why us?”

“I had a dream, Dad,” Nick said with tears in his eyes, “Mommy told me I should do this. She said I didn’t have to, but I want to.”

Carl had never heard Nick talk about Eleanor since she had passed a year before. The very word “mommy” welled his eyes with tears, but he held them back when he recalled the presence of the crowd.

“Okay, Nick,” Carl replied, “We’ll go. For mom.”

Part III: Zoe de Vega

When they arrived to the front porch of Zoe de Vega, a weeping woman met them at the door. The news of the writing in the sky had reached all over the world. Evidently, word of the Friedmans’ arrival fell upon the de Vega doorstep long before they actually did. The weeping woman introduced herself in broken English as the aunt of Zoe de Vega. Zoe’s father was busy at work and had not at that time, heard of the writing in the sky on the other side of the world. Her mother had passed away exactly one year before that day.

The soft light of the sun warmed the quaint rooms of the house. Aroma of fresh bread wafted in from the kitchen. Nick took out the folded piece of paper and politely asked in broken Spanish if Zoe was home. She took the two to the master bedroom and in the bed was a frail looking fifteen year old girl with the most beautiful smile on her face. Chemotherapy had ravaged the flowing blond hair that once grazed Zoe’s shoulders on a breezy summer day. A tube connected her arm to a large I.V. bag hanging at her bedside.

On the bed next to Zoe was a framed picture of a much healthier herself with her mother, both with smiles that would melt the most cynical of hearts. Nick curled his lips at the corner and curiously looked at the physician’s clipboard on the dresser.

“Dad, what does this say?” Nick asked offering the clipboard to his father.

“Nick, that’s not nice, put that back.”

“It’s okay Mr. Friedman,” explained Zoe, “It says ‘acute lymphoblastic leukemia,’ Nick.”

“You don’t have hair…” Nick observed.

“Nick!” Carl reprimanded his son.

“It reminds me of mommy.”

“My wife, Nick’s mother, passed away from cancer sometime ago,” Carl apologetically explained. “Zoe, you speak English exceptionally well.”

“Thank you, Mr. Friedman,” Zoe was as gracious as royalty, “Some members of the press called the house and let my aunt know what was going on. We’re usually so cut off from the rest of the world especially since I’ve gotten ill. I believe, Nick, you have something for me?”

Carl smiled at the exchange of two innocent souls conversing, literally, about messages from the heavens. He stood close to his son and admired the picture of Zoe and her mother. Nick took out the folded piece of paper and showed it to precocious teenager. Zoe took the paper and saw only the following pattern:

01001110 01101111 00100000 01101111 01101100 01110110 01101001 01100100 01100101 00100000 01110001 01110101 01100101 00100000 01110011 01110101 00100000 01101101 01100001 01100100 01110010 01100101 00100000 01101100 01100101 00100000 01100001 01101101 01100001 00101110 00100000 01000101 01101110 00100000 01110001 01110101 01101001 01101110 01100011 01100101 00100000 01100100 01101001 01100001 01110011 00100000 01100101 01110011 01110100 01100001 01110010 01100001 00100000 01110000 01101111 01110010 00100000 01110100 01101111 01100100 01100001 01110011 00100000 01110000 01100001 01110010 01110100 01100101 01110011 00101110

“What’s all this?” Zoe asked.

“Nick, you’re going to have to explain what all that means. Even I don’t know what it is,” Carl explained to the young genius, “You’ll have to excuse him. He’s gifted but doesn’t realize how much smarter he is than everyone else sometimes.”

“I think it’s in Spanish,” Nick said as he took out another piece of paper, “I used my computer to translate it to letters and this is what I got.” He handed over the piece of paper to Zoe who wept upon reading the words. The note translated to:

No olvide que su madre le ama. En quince días estará por todas partes.

“That sounds beautiful,” remarked Carl, “Do you mind if I ask you what it means?”

“It means,” the weepy aunt answered, “Don't forget that your mother loves you. In fifteen days it will be all over.”

Cryptic though the message may have been, Carl took out his phone to look at the picture he took of the writing in the sky. He knew there was something oddly familiar about the picture of Zoe’s mother. In the picture, Zoe’s mother was wearing a beautiful dress with an elaborate pattern, the very same pattern that melted into the blue sky over the Friedman household.

Part IV: The Fifteenth Day

When word had gotten around as to what the actual message was, the people and subsequently the media had lost immediate interest in the boy genius, Nick Friedman. In those fifteen days that past, Carl wondered what the message meant. What exactly will be all over?

On the fifteenth day, the writing in the sky had melted into the blue atmosphere as quietly as it had arrived. There were some spectators that recorded the event, but the rest of the world had labeled it trite and had moved onto the next sensationalized story. The supposed faithful had abandoned their quest to convert the masses in preparation for the apocalypse. They had reverted back into their mundane lives of waking up, going to work, returning to sleep, and repeat. The media monster had broken up into its constituent parts. Without ominous patterns appearing in the sky, the press had to go back and creating something else to be afraid of.

“The writings in the sky,” reported a local anchorwoman, “turned out to predict the disappearance of the writing in the sky. Sorry, folks, no Armageddon quite yet.”

“God may not have been in the writing,” exclaimed a televangelist, “but we must remain vigilant! We must keep our eyes open and our hearts pure when inevitable doom is upon us!”

“I’m not sure what to think,” a passerby replied to a journalist, “First it’s there, then it’s not. I guess the only thing I’m sure of is that it wasn’t a miracle.”

An electronic chime emanated from the Friedman’s computer. Nick walks over to check the incoming email, which happens to be from Zoe. He called his father over who read the news and welcomed it with a smile. With the magnificent irony of it, Carl couldn’t help but smile at the screen. While the rest of the world looked to the skies for a miracle, the real miracle was an unconditional connection between parent and child. According to the email, the doctors had no explanation for what happened. But Zoe’s cancer had gone into complete remission. She plans to visit Nick and Carl with the rest of her family as soon as they could.

Crying Wolf

A howling echoed from a room in the upstairs bedroom, each cry more sorrowful than the last. That last one ended with a begging whimper. It frightened young Janie Sappleton who was visiting the Munro household at the request of the youngest daughter, Lucy. The Sappleton family had just moved in across the street. Janie was the only child, a shy five-year-old whose innocence was maturing into a healthy and admirable naiveté.

Lucy was a precocious little scamp whose hobbies including making up stories and having friends over for a tea party, the latter of which she was enjoying with Janie in the dining room. Their mothers were getting acquainted in the living room exchanging information on the best schools and latest gossip in the area. A huge crash emanated from the large moving truck across the street causing Janie’s mother, Mrs. Sappleton to spring to her feet.

“I’m sorry Samantha,” she said to Mrs. Munro, “I’m going to have to go over there before the movers break anything else. I’ll be right back. Can you watch Janie for a few minutes?”

“Of course, Patti,” she assured Mrs. Sappleton, “I better get started on cooking dinner. My husband will be home soon, anyway. The girls will be fine here.”

Meanwhile, the howling continued seemingly only noticed by little Janie. She wandered to the staircase and leaned against the banister, frightened to take that first step but wanting so bad to make it to the top and investigate. Curiosity and fear fought to shape the expression on her face.

“You don’t have to be scared,” Lucy explained, “That’s just my brother. He’s being silly.”

“Why is your brother howling?” Janie asked.

“Oh that,” Lucy smiled, unaffected, “That’s his illness. He’s sick.”

“He is?”

“Uh-huh. The doctor’s don’t know what’s wrong with him. Come on, I’ll show you,” Lucy takes Janie by the hand and leads her upstairs. When they get to the door, Janie hears someone running around on the other side.

“What’s wrong with your brother?”

“He went to camp and he got bit,” Lucy answered.

“He got bit? By what?”

“A wolf.” Lucy’s lips pursed, sharpening the serious look on her face. Janie’s thin eyebrows furrowed, intensifying the look of worry on hers. “Go ahead, take a look.” Lucy invited Janie to take a peek inside the keyhole.

Janie carefully leaned her head into the keyhole keeping her face a safe distance from the cold brass doorknob. She saw nothing at first, but looked back and Lucy who nodded as to tell her to keep looking. A few seconds passed, but seemed like hours to Janie. Just then, there was a tinkling of metal and the clicking of what sounded like claws upon the hardwood. Janie adjusted the angle with which her eye was peeking through the keyhole but could not see what was producing the sound. Just then a creature emerged from the corner. It was larger than either Janie or Lucy, perhaps bigger than the both of them put together. Its fur was mostly a deep, obsidian color while its belly and the lower half of its muzzle was a grand snow white.

“Oh, my gosh!” exclaimed Janie, “You have a wolf in there!” The little girl could not pry her eyes from the confines of the keyhole. She gasped in all the excitement and let out a frightened little squeal as the creature approached the keyhole from the other side with its snout.

“That’s not a wolf. That’s my brother, Petey,” Lucy explained, “He was bit by a wolf when he went to camp last week. And then he turned into a wolf.”

The creature let out a howl as if imploring Lucy to open the door and let him out. The high-pitched moan startled Janie enough to illicit a scream, but apparently not enough to tear her from her limited vantage point. The creature heard Janie and looked at the doorknob from where the scream emanated. Curiosity had tilted the creatures head to one side, its pink tongue hanging from its mouth lined with gleaming white teeth. Its piercing ice blue eyes seemingly stared right back at Janie.

“Lucy! Don’t go wandering about your brother’s room,” Mrs. Munro yelled from the kitchen, “I want you girls to come down here, okay?”

“Okay, mommy!” Lucy answered. She grabbed Janie’s hand and pulled her from the door. Janie had used the doorknob to lean on and unknowingly turned it when Lucy pulled her away. The door slowly crept open as the two girls ran downstairs.

“Try not to go up there, Lucy, and you know why,” Mrs. Munro instructed, “So, Janie, did you know that Lucy has a brother? He went to camp.” Janie looked at Lucy who put a finger to her lips as if to tell her that what she saw was a secret.

“Yes. Lucy told me,” Janie answered politely. She noticed that there were tears in Mrs. Munro’s eyes but decorum prevented her from pointing it out. Janie took a seat at the dining table with Lucy and they continued their tea party

“Why is your mommy crying?” Janie whispered to Lucy.

“Because we don’t know how to turn Petey back to a boy,” Lucy whispered in response. She continued, “The next time you come over, make sure he doesn’t lick you or you’ll become a wolf too.”

“I thought you have to get bit,” Jane inquired.

“If you get bit, you turn into a wolf,” Lucy leaned in. “If he licks you, you grow hair all over and your teeth will get long and sharp but you still look like you. It’s better to turn into a wolf, but I don’t want to get bit.”

“Me neither,” Janie responded, her eyes as wide as her face would allow.

Mr. Munro could be seen on the front lawn approaching the front door. This prompted the creature upstairs to bark and run out of the then open bedroom door and charge down the stairs to greet him. The sound of the heavy paws charging down the hallway caused Janie to jump on her feet and hide under the table. The creature, tail wagging, walked into the kitchen and found its way under the table with Janie. Its wet nose trailed up and down her face, sniffing the Janie’s face and hair. Without warning, the large slobbery tongue stuck out and licked up Janie’s terrified face. The horrified little Janie ran out the front door and into the arms of her mother who was on her way back to the Munro household.

“What was that all about?” Mr. Munro asked. “And honey, why are you crying?”

“Oh, I’ve been chopping onions for dinner. I’m not sure what that was about. Do you, Lucy?” asked Mrs. Munro.

“I think it was Max,” Lucy replied

“I told you not to go up to your brother’s room until he came back from camp this weekend.”

“Janie wanted to see the dog but she told me she was scared of Siberian huskies like Max. She was just scared of the dog, that’s all.”

“Poor girl,” Mr. Munro said, “The next time she comes over you put the dog out in the back and not in your brother’s room, okay?”

“Yes, daddy,” Lucy smiled to herself mischievously. She took a sip from her tiny plastic tea cup and began to put the set away. Lucy was a precocious little scamp whose hobbies including making up stories and having friends over for a tea party. When she grew bored of the latter she resorted to the former to keep her entertained. And if time allowed, she would let her audience know.