3.2 CAFETERIA
As they made their way from history class to the cafeteria, Fuzzy walked steadily, with no trace of his troubles from the day before. He seemed just like any other kid. Krysti, in fact, seemed to have accepted him as just one of the gang and was chattering away as usual.
"Did you see Mr. Xu's face?" she asked. "He was buggin' big-time."
"Buggin' … big … time … ?" said Biggs. "Fuzzy here probably thinks you're speaking Norwegian or something."
"Actually," said Fuzzy. "I understand both the Norwegian language and the slang terms that Krysti is using. "'Buggin' big-time' is a combination of two popular colloquial phrases from the late twentieth century: 'bugging' meaning to lose control of one's emotions and 'big-time' meaning 'very much so.'"
"Whoa! Thanks, Fuzz!" said Krysti, and she threw her arm around him like they were best friends. "You're cooler than you look! Speaking of which, I think I'm going to draw your picture during lunch."
"You should have him fighting a monster like a movie robot," suggested Biggs.
"Fuzzy versus Godzilla!" yelled Simeon.
Max was annoyed.
She hoped that once they sat down for lunch she'd finally have a chance to really talk to Fuzzy. But almost as soon as they walked into the cafeteria, he started slowing down. Max guided him over to their table, and then he just sort of sat there. He wouldn't answer anyone's questions, and he hardly moved.
"I bet his batteries ran down," said Biggs.
"No way, bro. They last for 55.3 hours without recharging," said Simeon with that know-it-all tone of his that really drove Max nuts.
"Fuzzy, I wanted you to pose, dude," said Krysti, holding up her sketchbook.
But Fuzzy still just sat there.
Then Dr. Jones and a couple of technicians with a motorized cart showed up.
Max panicked. What had she done wrong?
"I'm sorry, Dr. Jones! I don't know what happened."
"It's not your fault, Max," said Jones. "I should have anticipated this. I just forgot how crazy school cafeterias are."
"'Crazy'?" said Krysti. "It's totally boring."
"It may be boring to you," said Dr. Jones, "but I can barely hear myself think in here. There must be two hundred kids talking at once. In fact, look at this …"
He held out a book-size qScreen showing hundreds of lines of computer code on its LCD screen.
"Make that two hundred and fifty-seven," said Jones.
The code looked like gibberish to most of the kids, but now Max knew what to look for.
SpeechRecog(stream(254))
SpeechRecog(stream(255))
SpeechRecog(stream(256))
SpeechRecog(stream(257))
"Smoke!" she said. "He was trying to understand everything everybody in the whole cafeteria was saying at the same time."
"We'll take him back to the room for a reboot for now," said Jones. "And then we'll either have to turn off his voice recognition when he comes in here or figure out some way for him to listen to just one person at a time."
The technicians loaded Fuzzy onto the cart and wheeled him away.
Dr. Jones stayed long enough to say to Max, "You gonna help us again tomorrow?"
"You mean, I can? I thought you'd be mad that I let him freeze up again!"
"No, no," assured Jones. "You did a great job with him, Max. And we could definitely use your help again tomorrow …"
"You got it!"
