.
“What do we do with this one, Mr Todd?” I ask my boss.
“What did he do?” he replies.
“He punched someone, but they were being homophobic to his sister”, I summarised what I had seen on my screen.
“Hmm. Just make him trip on the way home or something. Not too extreme.”
“Okay.” I tap the trip button on my screen and then return to the screen where I watch the boy. I watched him until he went home and noticed that, strangely, he didn’t trip like I programmed.
“Uhm, Mr Todd?” I call him back over. “I programmed him to trip on his way home, but when I watched him, he didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?”
“Trip.”
“Hmm,” he says again. “Can you make him trip again, and this time I’ll watch?”
“Yeah, sure.” I program him to trip up the stairs of his house, and I make sure Mr Todd can see. I click off the programming screen, and we watch him walk up the stairs—normally. He doesn’t trip.
“Hmm. Can you make it so he failed a class or something so his mother yells at him?”
“Yep.” I go back to the programming screen for the third time and change his math grade from a B to an F. I, yet again, go back to the screen with the boy on it. We hear a voice from somewhere off-camera; it sounds like it’s coming from downstairs in his house.
“Elliot!”
“That must be his mother, sir” I say as I watch the boy, Elliot, go downstairs to meet his mother. We watch the woman closely, wondering what she is going to say.
“What do you want for dinner? We have…” Mr Todd and I sigh as Elliot’s mother lists what they could have for dinner.
“Hmm,” says, you guessed it, Mr Todd. “Something’s definitely wrong.”
“How do we fix it?” I ask.
“I… don’t know.”
“You don’t know? Sir-” I start to say before he cuts me off.
“Listen, what was your name again?” How could he have forgotten my name? I’ve been employee of the month every month for at least half a year now.
“Michael, sir”, I respond, a bit offended.
“Okay, listen, Mike. It’s all right if I call you Mike, right?” Mr Todd asks.
“Yeah, that’s cool.”
“Good. Now, Mike, I don’t know everything. Actually, never mind. I think I might know how to fix this.”
“Okay, what do I do?”
Mr Todd hesitates. “I want you to go down there” he eventually says.
“Go down there, sir?” No one’s been down there since before Mr Todd started working here, which is at least a decade.
“Yes, go down there, become his friend, and figure out why this is happening.”
“Okay. Quick question: how do I get down there?” I ask.
“Do you drive to work?”
“No, I catch public transport.” I can’t afford a car. Yet.
“Hmm. Okay. You’re going to catch the 421, get off at Leighton, then get on the 735 for about 10 minutes, then when you get off, you should be at the start of his street.” I write down what buses to catch and where to get off in my phone, so I don’t forget.
“Alright, thanks. I’ll leave in the morning.”
“Good idea,” Mr Todd says. “You’ll need to pack.” That’s exactly what I was thinking.
Usually, I catch the 733 to work. This morning, though, I was on the 735. It’s the exact same, except obviously for the destinations. The journey to Leighton Street was quite long, but to Elliot’s street, it was only 10 minutes, like Mr Todd said it would be. Once I get off the bus, I sit down at the stop and check my phone. 8.00am. He should be here soon. It’s Monday, and he catches the bus to school. After a couple minutes, I think I see Elliot walking to the bus stop. He sits down next to me, his headphones on. I look at him properly. It’s definitely Elliot. I realise I’ve been looking at him for a bit too long, a second too late, because he takes his headphones off and says, “Why are you staring at me?”
“Oh, sorry. You just look like someone I know.” It’s not a complete lie. He actually looks a bit like Mr. Todd, but more good-looking.
“Hmm. Well, I don’t think I know you. I’m Elliot.” I knew it was him.
“I love that name!” I say because I do.
“Thanks! What’s your name?” Elliot asks.
“Michael, It’s so basic.”
“No, I really like the name Michael. Do you go by Mike?”
“Sure, you can call me whatever you want.” Maybe I will go by Mike.
“Cools. Are you also getting the 735 to school?”
“Nah, not anymore. I graduated last year.” Another half lie. I did graduate last year.
“Oh. So, you’re… nineteen?”
“Yeah.” I started working for the Karma Police as soon as I graduated. “How old are you?”
“Seventeen. So, where you going, then?”
“Oh, just to work. There’s the bus.” The bus comes up the hill and picks us up. Elliot sits next to me. We exchange phone numbers and talk for a while until it’s time for him to get off.
“Well, I’ll see you tomorrow?” Elliot says hopefully.
“Yeah, alright. See you.” He gets off the bus. What am I supposed to do now? I’ll just go home, I suppose, and wait until he gets back from school.
Finally, it should be time for him to get out of school. I get on the bus at the stop before the school’s and, hopefully, he gets on the same bus as me. He does, which is good, and he sits next to me.
“Oh, hey! Didn’t expect to see you again today!” Elliot says.
“Hi! Is it weird if I ask how school was?”
“No, no, it was okay, you know. Just an average day. How was your day?”
“Yeah, it was alright.” I literally just went home and did nothing.
“Hmm.”
“You sound a lot like my boss when you say that.” He does; it’s so weird.
“Do I?”
“Yeah, he says ‘Hmm’ a lot.”
“Oh, I don’t have a dad, so…” How does he not have a father?
“You don’t?”
“Nah, he left us just after I was born.”
“Oh, my God, that’s so heartless, just leaving you like that.”
“I know. It’s okay, though; my mother can look after me.”
“Hmm.” We look at each other and laugh.
When I get home, Mr Todd calls me.
“Found anything interesting?” Straight to the point, as always.
“Not really, just that his dad ran away when he was really young.” I suppose that’s interesting.
“Oh.”
“Are you okay, sir?”
“Yeah, just… can you find out his mother’s name?”
“Yeah, okay.” I don’t know why he needs to know his mother’s name, but oh well. I hang up the phone.
I wait at Elliot’s bus stop again. I wait for a couple of minutes again before I see him.
“Hey, Mike!” Elliot says as he sits next to me.
“Oh, hey!”
“How’s it going?”
“Not great, honestly.” I’m going to see if I can go to his house to meet his mother.
“Oh, do you need anything? Wanna come over after school?”
“Yeah, that’d be great. Thank you so much.” Well. That was easy.
“Anytime!”
After Elliot finishes school, we go to his house. His mother, Wendy, is a lovely woman, and his sister, Faye, is also nice.
“So, Mike, Elliot says you graduated last year?” Wendy says it like Elliot’s been talking about me to her.
“Yeah, I did.”
“So, you’re… nineteen?”
“Turned in April.”
“Oh, not too long ago, then!”
“Yeah.”
“Hmm. So, what would you like for dinner? We have-” This conversation is feeling familiar.
“I really don’t mind. Sorry for interrupting, but you can make anything.”
“Okay. You two can go do whatever you want, now. I’ll leave you alone.”
“Thank you.”
Elliot leads me up to his room.
“Are you feeling better?” He asks me.
“Yes, actually. I think I needed to wait it out, hah!” I take out my phone and quickly text Mr Todd, saying that his mother’s name is Wendy. “Sorry about that. Just, uh, had to tell my mother I was feeling better now.”
“You’re all good.”
I ended up staying for dinner and leaving just after.
“Of course it’s Wendy. Of course.” Mr Todd angrily paces around the room after I get back from Elliot’s house.
“Sir? What are you talking about?” I ask, although I realise I know the answer. “You’re Elliot’s father.” I say quietly. Of course. That must be why he wasn’t doing what I programmed him to do earlier.
“Yeah. I mean, I must be.”
“What do I do now, sir?”
“Go back to work.”
“But, sir, I can’t just leave him.”
“No, you mustn’t ever see him again; and I won’t see him either.”
It feels wrong, just abandoning Elliot and ignoring his texts. I wish I could explain everything to him, but Mr Todd’s right. I continue going to work and not responding to Elliot. I still watch him, though, on the screens. Not when Mr Todd’s watching, of course. He seems depressed. Was I really that important to him? I knew him less than three days but still, he’s crying over me. I suppose, eventually, he’ll be all right. I hope.
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