Greek: Best Frenemies (8 page)

“I was kind of not listening to you enough,” Casey admitted. “So, do you have to get back to Rusty?”

“He can explode without me for a change,” Cappie said and put his phone away, even if it kept buzzing with new messages. “And his knowledge of Greek philosophy is minimal. Dale's the real source, but he's at class.”

“Greek philosophy?” Ashleigh perked up. “I took it as a freshman! I thought it would look good, as a ZBZ pledge. Turns out they're not even like, remotely related, except for the letters. But I got an A!”

“Really?”

“Socrates was executed for impiety, Plato was called that because he had a big head and
platon
meant broad and Aristotle wrote that women had fewer teeth than men. And also, they all had beards. What do you need?”

“Beyond physical descriptions and inaccurate medical research? I need to submit the proposal for a paper, and that's due in twenty minutes, and the paper's due on Monday. Not, I would add, because of my notorious procrastinating, but because it's a last-minute, prevent-me-from-failing paper. What do you know about Aristotle's opinions on things other than dentistry? Because I might not get far with ‘Aristotle and Robots.'”

“That's the name of your paper?” Casey asked.

“It's a bit more sophisticated than that, but the TA tends to see through things like this. And also does not award you any points for buying one of those neat plastic folders to hold the paper. Did you know those things cost a dollar-fifty now?” He smiled at Casey rolling her eyes. “Seriously though, I am not the slacker idiot I'm made out to be.”

“I never said you were an idiot,” Casey replied. “Or thought it. You're just too good at joking about things that are really important.”

Ashleigh, it turned out, was eager to help, and Cappie passed her the proposal. This led to a full twenty minutes of conversation, a lot of which was circular reasoning, but Ashleigh held her own against someone in an advanced philosophy class to
a point that Casey actually felt kind of dumb, sitting there and not being helpful. Grammatical errors she could find. Name all of the five elements that existence was composed of according to Aristotle, not so much. Fortunately for Cappie, that was the subject of Ashleigh's term paper all those semesters ago.

“The robot is made of earth, arguably, which falls, and water is made of water, which rises, so if you put the robot in water it would sink, because it would go down and the water would go up.”

“Which is not correct.”

“Right, because Aristotle didn't know about gravity. But as far as Aristotle knew, it was correct.”

They had to wrap in time for Cappie to get to class, at which point Ashleigh was tapped out and also interested in the blueberry muffins that were just put out, so Casey avoided making a comment about muffins and offered to walk Cappie to class.

“Sorry for talking over your head, if that's what we were doing,” Cappie said, holding her hand as they walked. It was bright and sunny, as it was every day at CRU, the magical campus of good weather in Ohio. “Assuming you're not, you know, secretly holding back on me.”

“When it comes to Greek philosophy, no. And besides, you've been talking over my head a lot, but that's just because I was ducking. To take the metaphor way too far,” Casey said and looked up at him. “I should have listened to you. I don't even know where this Abby thing came from. She's just so eager and Rebecca's so…not. But as you guys have both said, why should I expect her to be? I should know my Little Sister better.”

“Which you're learning to do, which is way more important
than two-thousand-year-old incorrect assumptions about the behavior of mass in water. That mass being robots, if I can swing it. It sounds smart, but it's book smart. That's the easy part of life.”

“To you, maybe.”

“Hey, who's almost flunking philosophy? And I can't believe I'm using that to defend myself, but I am. You're smart. You just want what's best for the house, and Rebecca can be kind of hard to deal with some of the time.”

“She is a woman of mystery.”

“Yeah, and the point is, you're going to figure her out. So get to it, Inspector Cartwright. I have a snotty TA to impress.” They stopped in front of the entrance to the lecture hall. “Kiss for good luck?”

“Do I need a reason?” she asked and kissed him.

 

Cappie did not find the teaching assistant in the office. Instead, Professor Izmaylov was hunched over the cheap, unstable desk in the cramped office, somewhat literally buried in paperwork, or at least papers. It was considerably more high tech than his office, with more anime action figures on the shelves. “Alex is sick. I'm filling in,” he said, motioning for Cappie to sit down on the only available seat, a rolling desk chair that squeaked when it moved. “Please try to look more disappointed about that. He is my son.”

“Sorry, I thought—”

“He's tough, but he's fair. And new at teaching,” the professor said. “We don't all have a natural candor.” He held out his hand and Cappie put the proposal in it, which was in a plastic folder even if it wasn't necessary and university professors were less likely to be dazzled than high-school teachers. Professor
Izmaylov adjusted his glasses and read it quickly. It wasn't particularly long, just an opening paragraph and an outline. “You haven't said anything I don't already know, but there isn't a lot of chance of that happening. Especially about Aristotle.” He handed the proposal back to Cappie. “Aristotle's views on animism aren't enough for a paper. He rejected it. So even a reasoning robot isn't human, even if only humans can reason. It's not a solid syllogism. What is it with your generation and robots? Nobody's been able to make one that can go up stairs. The allure of something that can be defeated by having a hiding place on the second floor escapes me. Computers are much more interesting.”

“Computers aren't trying to go anywhere.”

The professor looked at the edge of the desk, which was shaky at best. There was a closed laptop on it. “Alex's computer seems intent on toppling over as soon as I'm not looking.”

“But that involves gravity, which Aristotle didn't understand.”

He grimaced. “No, he didn't. You know quite a good deal about Greek philosophers, Mr. Cappie. Putting these ideas to paper seems to be your issue. Unfortunately, it's a basic requirement for the class.”

“Aristotle thought true philosophy was in experience. That's why he did so much field work in ecology.”

The professor looked up, interested. “A point often missed by armchair philosophers, though usually their chairs have better supports than this one. Why, are you building a robot?”

“It so happens, I am. And the rest of Kappa Tau.”

“I am quite mistaken about the nature of your fraternity. I thought it was known for other things, like destruction of police property.”

“The Omega Chis were there, too, but they bailed.”

“Then they fail to understand the meaning of the word
fraternity
, but they have a better understanding of politics and government—something Aristotle did not excel at, much as he might have tried.”

“He bailed on Athens after he was charged with impiety.”

“Yes, bring that up, why don't you,” the professor said, with no particular malice, more amusement in his voice. “On the other hand I don't see the Omega Chis building a robot and trying to get philosophy credits for it. They're hosting some sort of beauty contest instead. This is what I get for bothering to read the campus paper.”

“The sweetheart competition.” Cappie knew Professor Izmaylov was the kind of person who liked to chat, at least with him. Cappie was a chatty sort of guy so it didn't bother him, especially when his grades were hurting and the professor potentially stood between him and graduation. “They pick a girl from one of the sororities as their favorite.”

“Youth is fleeting, and therefore worthy of celebration, otherwise we might miss it entirely. It's a shame we make such fools of ourselves while doing it. And you're engaged in this contest in some fashion?”

“My girlfriend is a ZBZ and they have their candidate and…they're obsessing about it. So, peripherally, yes. Which is not to say I don't plan to spend every waking moment of my time working on this paper.”

“You should if you want it done by Monday morning. Which is when
I
want it done,” the professor said. “I'll give you my tentative permission to write about your robot, Mr. Cappie, but focus on how it relates to the four causes and
don't spend too much time with animism. Plastic and wires don't have a soul, not in Aristotle's opinion and not in mine. But I'm intrigued by the novelty of it, I confess. I'm old. New and shiny things delight me. Do a very good job of
that
and we'll see about your grade average. Now if you'll excuse me, I have papers to grade before those terribly addictive soap operas come back on the television and I shamelessly let my brain cells die.”

 

Cappie returned to the Kappa Tau house to find it more of a mess than it normally was, and that was saying something. In addition to the usual food and beer detritus, it appeared as if Home Depot had come by and dumped spare parts into the living room by way of conveyer belt. Cappie had to climb over things he couldn't recognize but seemed to be devices for plumbing before he made it to the backyard, where Rusty and the pledges were working hard on two remarkably manlike robots, even if they were made of tubing and wiring covered by boxes. Beaver was off in the corner, painting some of the smaller packing boxes blue, along with a lot of their lawn in the process.

“Things look…good.” Cappie looked around. “Sort of.” When Rusty finally picked his head up from the other side of the hastily constructed ring, he had two black eyes and an ice pack strapped to his head. “Spitter, you know these robots are supposed to hit
each other,
right?”

“They're supposed to,” Rusty said, looking sort of sad about it, but he was putting on a brave face for the pledges. He had certainly been through worse, physically, during his own rush period. “Are we insured?”

“Wow, there's a question I didn't want to be asked. For
your life? What kind of guy do you take me for? H. H. Holmes?”

“Who?”

“The guy who murdered like a ton of people during the Chicago World's Fair. The Onion Av Club said
The Devil in the White City
was one of the best nonfiction books of the last decade. And book clubs are notorious chick parties, if you're ever looking for one.”

“And there's no cover,” Anthony Hopkins pointed out. “What? I liked
Snow Falling on Cedars
anyway. Which is what we read.”

“So what does this have to do with insurance?”

Cappie continued. “One of the things Holmes did in, like, the 1890s was to take out insurance polices on all of the women he married and their family members, then he killed them, claimed they had moved to Europe and kept their stuff. Which I would never do to you no matter how bad our beer money fund was, even if you were actually planning on moving to Europe and this was just insurance fraud.” He watched Rusty wince. “Okay, let's get off the topic of murdering Spitter for the insurance money, though I will leave the topic open when we're discussing Omega Chis.”

“Who are not Calvin.”

“Who are not Spitter's friend.”

“Yeah, because I meant
house
insurance.” Rusty was exasperated, or maybe he was just in pain. “Because, there's an issue with a window which may or may not have been intact, like, half an hour ago.”

Cappie couldn't see any windows in arm's reach of the battle bots. “Are we making fighting robots or a slow-pitch softball
league? And to answer your question, no one will insure us, something which should not come as a huge surprise.”

The pledge Anthony Hopkins snapped something off, and one of the robot arms went flying, narrowly missing Cappie and landing in the uninflated inflatable pool normally used for mud wrestling.

“Sorry,” the pledge squeaked.

“For the record, there's no life insurance policy on me that in any way benefits the house,” Cappie said. “In fact, I don't know if there's any life insurance policy on me. My parents don't trust giant corporations or the government. So, maybe we can do something about the aim?”

Dale entered from indoors, where he had gone to collect a juice box. “Hey, Cappie.” He sucked on his drink with gusto. “How did the meeting with the TA go?”

“It was with Professor Izmaylov, who is for some reason going easy on me. If writing a fifteen-page paper on robotics and Aristotle is ‘going easy.'”

“The robotics part should be easy.”

Another part went flying, this time not of anyone's meddling as far as they could tell. What should have been a chest component popped out and hit the other robot's headpiece, which was a box, and knocked the whole thing over.

“And he's down! Anyone want to count?” Cappie said with feigned enthusiasm. “What did you say about the robot part being easy?”

“Maybe we should install the controls by radio command,” Rusty said. “You know, for distance.”

“So we can be in some kind of bomb shelter when these things go at each other and take out the rest of the lawn?” Pickles asked. “I vote yes.”

“Which, thank you for your efforts, Beaver, is not supposed to be blue,” Cappie said. “Anthony Hopkins, get him some newspaper.”

The others went to their various tasks, and Rusty approached Cappie as Dale sorted the equipment. “I'm sorry for destroying the house.”

“Spitter, one window does not a destroyed house make. Rome—and a set of robots—wasn't built in a day. And speaking of days, if you could finish by Monday, that would really help me out.”