Free Fuzzy by Tom Angleberger

himself trying to pacify Flanders and motion to Nina to put on a helmet to review Fuzzy’s recent movements at the same time. It wasn’t working.
    â€œI’m sure Fuzzy would never interfere with, uh, #CUGGING.”
    â€œWe call it UpGrading, Jones. And the robot is interfering! Frankly, I don’t understand how your robot is getting all these violations. I thought he had been programmed to follow school rules.”
    â€œWell, not exactly . . .” Jones was rubbing his forehead. Major headaches ahead.
    â€œWhat? I’m certain that was part of our original agreement,” continued Kit Flanders, now thoroughly heated up. “Every student and staff member in every public school in the country signs the discipline policy, but you thought your robot didn’t need to agree to the rules?”
    â€œWe didn’t think it was necessary to actually program—”
    â€œWell, Jones,” Flanders snarled in a sarcastic voice, “I would say it is necessary, if your super-duper robot can’t even get to class without disrupting our educational environment.”
    â€œIf you could just give us a moment to review— Oof!” said Jones, trying to put on a helmet while still talking on the phone.
    Meanwhile, Flanders went on and on. The upshot was that Jones finally agreed to reprogram Fuzzy to follow every school rule . . .
    . . . and to obey exactly every instruction given by the school’s administrative operating system, also known as Barbara.

6.3
HALLWAY B
    Fuzzy hesitated outside the control center. His enhanced hearing had picked up Dr. Jones’s agitated voice.
Humans certainly seem to spend a lot of their time yelling
, he thought.
    Fuzzy didn’t hear another voice, so he made the correct assumption that Jones was on the telephone. He didn’t even have to make a decision to eavesdrop, his voice recognition subroutine had already kicked in. “All right, all right,” he heard Jones saying. “We’ll reprogram him.”
    Fuzzy did not like this. At all.
    He analyzed the meaning of what Jones was saying. He considered possible outcomes of being reprogrammed.He assigned the different outcomes either positive or negative rankings. The negatives won by a mile.
    That was the logical side of him. The fuzzy logic part of him simply didn’t like the idea of being reprogrammed. His whole purpose was to reprogram himself, not to be reprogrammed by someone else.
    So, what should he do?
    He didn’t want to go see Jones.
    He didn’t see anything positive in tracking down Simeon.
    And he knew he wasn’t supposed to go to Max’s class.
    What he really wanted, he realized, was to be somewhere where there was no yelling, no insane computerized vice principal, no reprogrammings.
    He wanted to be alone.
    So he decided to take a walk.

7.1
ROBOT INTEGRATION PROGRAM HQ
    He simply walked out the door. Nobody stopped him, not even the soldiers assigned to protect him.
    They followed him while their captain called Nina for orders.
    â€œLieutenant Colonel! Foxtrot leaving building, approaching perimeter. Advise.” The soldiers didn’t like calling him “Fuzzy.” They had picked “Foxtrot,” which is the military call sign for the letter
F
, which Nina pointed out was at least as silly as “Fuzzy.”
    â€œYeah. We see that. Let him go,” said Nina, watching a monitor. “We’re curious to see what he does. Follow him with two vehicles. But give him a big buffer. Let him get into a tiny bit of trouble if he needs to.”
    â€œColonel Ryder isn’t going to—”
    â€œI don’t care about Colonel Ryder right now!” yelled Jones. “Just follow the robot!”
    Nina gave him a look.
    â€œYou have my orders, Captain!” she commanded. “Get moving.”
    â€œYes, ma’am!”
    Then she turned to Jones with a raised eyebrow.
    â€œSo now you