Why Me, Coyote pt. 2

After the last of the customers had finally gotten the memo that they had long been closed and left, Reina took the opportunity to change back into a regular shirt. They had to wipe everything down and have it ready for opening tomorrow, but she hardly had to wear the hideous stifling work shirt to do that. 

Especially since Dave had finally left- he’d taken the evening off for himself. He didn’t trust anyone to have done a decent job, so he was coming in early the next day to check all their work. But luckily, he trusted Eric and Jaclyn, her older coworkers, just enough to screw off somewhere else for the night. 

“Hey, guys,” she approached them cautiously. They’d been pretty cool thus far- two college graduates biding their time until their Master’s programs started up. 

Also, the bonding over complaining about Dave had been promising. It was worth it to try. 

“Yeah?” Eric asked, poking out his head from the walk in cooler, where he was stocking and organizing. Also, escaping the disgusting heat of a pizza restaurant. 

“The coyote has a spoon stuck in him.” Reina said, tracking his face. It was completely impassive. 

“Well, I can see why you didn’t tell Dave.” He scrunched up his nose at the name. “Dude’s useless. Can’t believe he put fucking carpet on that thing. Looks like a B movie horror monster.”

It did. It really did.

Reina sighed. 

“Yeah, but I can fix the spoon thing. Do you guys mind if I run home and grab my tools after we’re done cleaning?”

Most of Eric was obscured by the cooler door, but she would guess that he shrugged. “I don’t care if you go now. You handled most of the customers today, anyway. We’ll get the kitchen and wipe down tables- just make sure you mop everything before you leave.”

“And you’ll let me back in?” Reina asked, feeling a bit stupid. But she hadn’t technically clocked out yet, and wasn’t planning to for the five minute drive home and back. Shanisha had kindly lent her her car, so she didn’t even have to bike it or anything. 

He hummed in assent and disappeared behind the closing cooler door. 

“Thanks!” Reina called to Jaclyn, who just smiled and nodded. 

“Don’t take too long,” she called after Reina, “Dave does weird stuff like coming back sometimes.”

Ick. The need for speed was evident. 

Reina flew out of the restaurant and into Shanisha’s car. At least driving home and back was quick- five minutes by her estimate. And her toolkit was basically all in the same place, even after spending her weekend tinkering with an old project.

She parked on the curb and hurried into the house. 

“What are you running for?” Minh asked, from her perch on the couch. She was obviously studying- there was a pile of about twenty books around her like academic detritus. 

Reina was surprised to find herself somewhat winded. 

“Gotta grab something from my room and get back to work.” She huffed, barely pausing before ascending the stairs. 

She could hear Minh hum at the back of her throat, and could still hear her say, “Just make sure you don’t get fired, Rei.”

In her first couple of weeks at work? That would be an achievement. She’d have to erase the memory from even her own mind, just so her parents would never hear about it. Unless she wanted to be shot out of the family in a cannon- perhaps literally. 

Reina swept up all the tools she could find, and dumped them all into her bag. It was full already of extra materials- chips and gears, tinier bought mechanisms. 

She rushed back down the stairs, past Minh, out the door and back to the restaurant. 

Standing outside the door, she felt nervous. What if Dave had come back and knew she’d run out? What if they couldn’t hear her knocking?

She calmed her nerves and knocked twice anyway. 

The moments just stretched, as she worried herself into a knot. Also, her tool bag was kinda heavy. She really wanted to put it down. 

Jaclyn opened the door with a smile, just as Reina was seriously contemplating running away and starting a new life before Dave found out that she’d leftwork and fired her. 

“That really was quick!” Jaclyn chirped, and eyed the massive leather bag over Reina’s shoulder. “And that looks intense. You said you were what major again?”

“Mechanical engineering.” Reina said, rushing into the air conditioning to dump her bag on the floor. “I like to build things.”

“Cool!” Jaclyn sauntered behind her, then disappeared behind kitchen door. It flapped open and closed a few times before settling. Reina watched it with more interest than it merited. 

After it was closed, and no one seemed to be coming back out, Reina looked over to the coyote. It looked limp when it was deactivated. 

“Ooookay.” She said to herself, examining it carefully. “First step is to turn it off.”

There was an on/off switch on the base- though she could have used the tablet, it seemed like a better idea to use the option that couldn’t be reversed by accident. The coyote wasn’t on the charger yet, either. She’d have to turn it back on to move it back to the docking station, but that would be a god test to see whether her work had paid off. 

Reina flipped the switch and lugged her bag over. She was likely going to have to remove at least some of the disgusting fabric, and remove a multitude of parts to get out that spoon. 

---

An hour later, she was working away in a pile of metal parts. Gears and pins were all meticulously lined up in a sophisticated sorting system according to location and size. 

“Still not done?” Eric asked, wiping the checkout counter down. 

“Not yet…” Reina sighed. “I probably let myself get carried away, to be honest. It’s a fun project.”

He made an understanding kind of sound. “I get that. I have the same problem with my major. I go in to work on one specific thing, and just turn it into a full project. It takes forever.”

Eric then moved to the soda dispenser, unscrewing each nozzle and dropping them into a water and soap mixture. It was evident that he was in deep-cleaning mode, though that should be done every night. It was official policy that the soda machine should be cleaned weekly, but it was apparently an acknowledged fact that nobody cared enough to do that regularly. 

But in the summer it would become obvious if it wasn’t cleaned- all the sugar attracted flies. And nobody wanted to go through a gauntlet of insects to get a soda. Or find one in their drink. 

“I did get the spoon out.” She offered, holding up the mangled piece of silverware. 

He looked over at her. “That’s good! Now all you have to do is put that all back together again, yeah?”

 

She laughed. “That’s where I got stuck. I started to examine how it’s put together, and I changed out a part here or there…”

“Should you be doing that?” Eric asked, sounding mildly serious. “Dave will explode if that thing stops working. Apparently it was really expensive.”

“Then he should be thanking me for fixing it.” Reina said, shrugging. “I’m not going to leave it broken. It’s like camping- if I take something apart, I leave it nicer than I found it.”

“Just don’t stay too late.” Eric grunted, as he vigorously scrubbed the inside of the machine. “Dave would not like it- and your hours are capped anyway, right?”

That was true. So she needed to be faster on this puzzle. At least Dave was good enough to account for two hours of cleaning, because he expected everything to be spotless. 

“Just a couple more tweaks, then I’m done.” She said, more to herself than to Eric. 

The animatronic’s processing power was much more than she would have expected, or than it should ever need. That was weird.

Maybe the company just had a lot of really expensive processors around on discount? That, or were trying to take over the world with sentient robots based out of children’s restaurants and theme parks. Which was… one hell of an idea, but not likely their intention. 

In any case, she added memory into the slots, because she had an idea. This wasn’t her first foray into robotics engineering, but she hadn’t yet taken the extra classes. She was only a beginner in coding, but hell. It wasn’t like she could screw this up any worse- it wasn’t even on a networked system, and couldn’t leave the set of tracks it was on. 

In any case, she’d say that it was obvious Dave had already done worse to it. The obvious mustiness of the fabric was even worse up close. 

“You’re gonna be my first little baby,” she told it, quietly. Eric was still in the room. “And I’m going to take great care of you.”

After beefing up the already awesome power with memory enough to handle what she wanted to do, she quickly reassembled the machine.

“Eric, can you bring me the tablet remote?” She called as she tightened one of the last tiny screws. She didn’t trust herself to not lose one of the damn things if she got up. 

She got no response, but did hear the kitchen door open and close a couple of times. 

“Here.” Eric said, putting in on the floor near her leg. “I’m going to finish wiping down the buffet line for the last time.”

“I’ll be ready to mop everything up in a minute.” Reina answered. She tightened the very last screw, and took a second to stretch a bit. She was sore from hunching over for too long. She didn’t put the ugly-ass fabric on, though. 

“Okay, time to see how you do.” She leaned back down to flip the switch on the base of the animatronic, and grabbed the tablet. 

The power was on, technically. So she turned the robot on from the tablet. 

It shook to life in stages and with some difficulty- Reina noted the spots and spritzed them carefully with WD40. It was obvious this thing was going to need more maintenance than Dave had realized. The restaurant was filled with food grease and the air was alternately really dry or incredibly humid. That presented a chunk of maintenance issues that someone should really be hired to watch. 

But Reina was all there was. She didn’t even think that the store owner knew this thing existed, so that was not likely to change soon.  

“Here goes nothing!” She pressed the button to command the animatronic to doits introduction speech. 

Right on cue, it raised its formerly broken arm. “Hi! I’m Buddy the coyote! Welcome to Tumbleweed Pizza! My favorite pizza is pup-peroni, what’s yours?”

It waited for the programmed five seconds for a nonexistent group of children to shriek their favorite kinds of pizza. 

“That’s great! One of my friends will come by in a minute to take your order. Have a good time, and don’t forget to tumble on by again!”

Then it clacked back on the tracks into the docking position. 

Reina followed it, back past the entrance to the kitchen and to its charging station. It docked properly, and deactivated. It was still on, but unless she pressed another command, it wasn’t going to do anything. 

“Great!” She congratulated herself, and the animatronic as well for the hell of it. “We’re a great team, Buddy.”

Reina turned back around and grimaced at the hideous fabric piled on the floor. 

“Guess I gotta put that back on you,” she said, feeling resigned. It wasn’t like there was any other option. “Even though it’s gross, and not nearly as cute as you deserve.”

“Are you talking to it, now?” Eric asked, from a booth. He was evidently done with everything he needed to do for closing. 

“Yes, because he is my baby now.” Reina lightly patted the base of the robot, with love. “I am going to teach him everything.”

Eric laughed, not unkindly. “Fair enough. I’m sure every robot needs a parent.”