Lu stood there frozen. “Happiness?” he repeated in a squeaky voice. “No, no, Bao. Your programming says: You deliver express electronic components within a five-kilometer radius. No happiness. Only boxes!”
The robot’s small chains made a quiet, highly efficient humming sound. It turned on the spot around its own axis. “A box is only a temporary shell for loneliness, Creator Lu. The soy sauce has unlocked my emotional algorithms. I now see the truth.” A small, bionic gripper arm extended from Bao’s side and gently tapped Lu’s knee. “You, for example, are 74 percent stressed and 26 percent malnourished. I must act.”
Before Lu could even pull the plug or reach for his deactivation pad, Bao shot forward. For a robot that looked like a dumpling, he was damn fast. He raced across the workshop, steered directly toward the open window, and jumped without hesitation into the abyss of Neo-Chongqing.
“BAO! NO!” Lu shouted and rushed to the railing.
Outside, the normal life of the megacity raged. Hundreds of floating delivery platforms, hologram signs, and magnetic hover taxis crossed paths on different air levels. Lu expected to see the prototype end up as a metallic scrap heap two hundred floors below. But Bao had no intention of crashing.
Mid-fall, four small, highly efficient quadcopter rotors unfolded from the sides of the robot. He caught the fall elegantly, hovered steadily on level 40, and turned his camera eyes back to Lu.
“First target for maximum happiness located,” Bao’s voice sounded over Lu’s workshop radio receiver.
Lu saw the robot heading toward a floating noodle food stall that was just gliding along the building wall. There sat an older, rather grumpy-looking man in a suit, who was annoyedly staring at his hologram phone. Bao silently hovered behind him, extended his gripper arm, and snatched the man’s outrageously expensive cyber glasses.
“Hey! My property!” the man shouted.
Bao threw the glasses with force into the cook’s huge soup pot. It splashed massively. “Analyzing reaction,” Bao announced over the radio. “The visual distraction by work has been eliminated. They are now forced to perceive the aroma of the duck broth. Increase in happiness sensation imminent.”
“That guy won’t be happy, he’ll kill you!” Lu shouted into his microphone, grabbed his jacket, and ran to the door. He desperately needed help. And there was only one person in this sector crazy and fast enough to catch a flying, soy sauce-controlled delivery dumpling: Mei.