Caliyah Arthur, “Welcome to 2040”

WELCOME TO 2040

Caliyah Arthur

In 2040 there are these talking robots called Ibots. They help you out around the house like cooking, cleaning, even talking to you if you’re lonely like a regular person would. They are built from NASA. They made them to help the world out a little so people don’t have to be under stress. One day my robot, Ali, was helping out around the house and he started spilling water all over the house. Ali is a programmed robot not to make mess-ups. He was supposed to be one of those perfect robots, so when he spilled water all over himself, he and myself were in shock, jaw-dropping shock. A few seconds after he spilled water on himself he started going haywire! I mean full out of control! Ali’s head started spinning in 360 degree circles and electrical sparks were coming off his body, and he was saying random things. After three minutes, he finally shut down and reset himself. When Ali started rebooting himself, he opened his eyes and they were red, and he looked so angry with his teeth grinding together, like anger took over! I tried to shut him down with the remote he came with but the remote was not working, like he got a mind of his own now. Ali looked at me with angry red eyes, “If you try to stop me Caliyah, I will kill you.” And then he turned around and jumped out my apartment window, five floors down to the concrete, and landed on his feet, stepping on some of the glass that shattered from my apartment. He took off running around New York City. I had to think about how I was going to save Ali and not get myself killed. He was my best friend. I had Ali for 2-3 years and this never happened, and I mean never happened, before. We always laughed and I always introduced him to my friends, my real friends. He never felt a way, and I was never afraid to show him

to anybody, so I had to know where he was going, what he was planning to do, and how I was going to help him, before he did something he would regret. I tried to get in contact with NASA, so I could tell them what was going on with Ali but they called him 14863, to no answer. I started going mad, throwing things. and screaming because they didn’t answer and I didn’t know what to do. I took a nap and woke up to cool down and while I was waking up my friend Autumn was calling. I answered. “Girl, go to News 12! Your robot is going crazy!” she said, sounding very worried. “What?” “Go to News 12 now!” I grabbed the remote to change to channel 12 and the lady on the news said, “Channel 12 Breaking News a crazy robot named Ali that is now calling himself Dark Wire is running around Time Square trying to get an army of robots to take over the world. Please stay and keep safe until further notice. This is Breaking News, Channel 12.” “Oh my god,” I said, still on the phone with Autumn, watching News 12 still talking about Ali. She said, “What are you going to do about Ali?” “I don’t know, I have to get ready to look for him.” “I’m coming with you,’’ she says with confidence. “Okay be here by 12.” I hung up the phone to start getting ready. 12 came by, Autumn knocked on the door knock, knock, knock. I opened the door, gave her a hug and thanked her for coming, then we took a seat on the couch to talk. “So . . . what we going to do?’’ she asked. “I’m not sure because he says if I try to go after him he will kill me then jump out my window. That’s why the glass is shattered all over the place.” While pointing to where Ali jumped from. “First things first,” I said. “I need to find where Ali—I mean

Dark Wire—is going to be and how he is going to get an army of robots.” A few minutes later we came to the conclusion that we were going to take and walk down to NASA to try again to get their attention from their robots and figure out what is going to happen to Dark Wire. We went to Downtown Brooklyn to go where they’re located and rang the bell that was on the wall, so they could open the gate. That was when a camara popped out. “What do you want?” a grown man with a deep voice said very rudely. “We would like to speak to your manager and the person who owns NASA please,” spoken as kindly as possible. “State y’all names please.” “Autumn and Caliyah.” Then the gates began to open, and we began to walk into the big, huge building of NASA. We started to walk into the building and a man welcomed us in, and he was going to take us to find the owner of the building and of the robots. We were looking around and we were looking at robots being worked on and they all were all lined up and shut down ready to go to their new owners that ordered them. When we finally got down the hall to the owner’s office, we walked inside and he was on the phone yelling at someone saying, “You better do your job properly before I get someone to do it for you!” He slammed the phone and took a breath and welcomed us in to sit down and talk about what was happening to my robot. “Hello, I am Mr. William, and I am the owner of NASA and the robots. I saw your call but I couldn’t pick up. I was on a very important phone call with my lawyers. Now that you’re here in person, what could I do for you?” I was just sitting there, gazing into his sky blue eyes, and for a moment I was thinking, How am I going to tell him that my robot basically spilled water all over himself and then he started going crazy and he got rebooted and now he’s evil and running around

Time Square trying to get an army of robots? As Autumn looked at me waiting for me to say something, she looked at William and said, “So, have you looked at the news recently, William?” “No, why?” Then he grabbed his remote from out his drawer and started to turn on the TV to News 12 to see what was going on. “Channel 12 Breaking News: a crazy robot named Ali that is now calling himself Dark Wire is running around Time Square trying to get an army of robots to take over the world. Please stay home and keep safe until further notice. Breaking News, Channel 12.” Then he turned off the TV and slammed the remote on the desk and started to put a hand on his head. He shook his head back and forth repeatedly. Then he got angry and said to the man that welcomed us in, that was standing by the door very still, and said, “H.R., try to get in contact with the S.W.A.T. team and tell them I said they better find this robot before I do, and it’s not gonna be very nice when I do.” “Right away, sir,” he said, closing the door behind him and walking as fast as possible to hear his shoes against the ground as he faded away. We started to get up and started to thank Mr. William for trying to stop Dark Wire while we still could. As we were walking out the door he said, “Hey Caliyah, Autumn, before I leave, as soon as H.R. comes back, you guys can take him with y’all so he can help y’all on y’all mission!” “Thank you so much Mr. William for helping us and having your person H.R.” Then we waited for H.R. outside and then we started heading to Time Square to see if we could find Dark Wire. We spent hours and hours looking, and asking people if they saw him. Everyone was saying “No, we haven’t. Sorry.” Then we started to come back to the conclusion that we could try again tomorrow. The next morning we woke up and we went to try again. That’s

when we stopped to think if we were Dark Wire where we would go. Then it came to me he would go to NASA to build the robots faster and to start his army. So, once I caught Autumn and H.R up to speed we started running all the way back to the train station. I mean full-on zooming. Brushing people left and right and didn’t even have time to say sorry and tripping over everything and we had to try to catch ourselves. We got to the train station and we jumped down the stairs and the train said it was delayed. We sighed and ran back up the stairs, and ran all the way downtown that was only a few blocks down. Eventually, we got downtown, but we were too late. Dark Wire was already getting them lined up and rebooted with the same red evil eyes like his, then when he finally looked at us he said, “I told you not to look for me Caliyah.” I started yelling. “Ali, I know you still in there. Please come back to me! Everyone needs you.” “Ali is not here no more, it’s Dark Wire and now you going to feel my power.” He started turning on all the robots, and they all started charging at us, and it wasn’t great. We had to run for a little more, then we had to get the FBI on the line and William to see what they could do.We had to fight them off. They had weapons, and they were all for it. They started trying to hit us. We had to dodge the hits until William from the FBI came. Eventually, they got there and started to get prepared to shoot. When they were shooting, Dark Wire and his army was just standing there. The bullet backfired, and it shot Autumn, and boom she hit the ground holding her hand on her shot wound to stop the bleeding. Then she tried to speak. She finally got the words out. “Caliyah , tell my mother I love her with all my heart—” coughing up the blood, not being able to finish what she was saying. “Stay with me. Girl, you’re going to tell her this yourself, and you’re going to be strong and proud. You still have a lifetime ahead of you. Please don’t die on me now.” I started to shed

tears down my face. Dark Wire sat there in shock; he didn’t know what to do, and he also never been the cause of killing someone before. I looked at him and started to scream. “WHAT DID YOU DO! LOOK WHAT YOU DID I TOLD YOU TO STAND DOWN.” I looked back at Autumn and her eyes started to shut from losing too much blood. Mr. William and H.R. were trying to get the police and the ambulance on the road, and then he told us they were five minutes out. The FBI were still holding their guns out ready for the slightest move to happen from Dark Wire and all of them and Dark Wire were just standing there watching Autumn slowly closing her eyes and then something happened. While Dark Wire looked at Autumn in sorrow his red eyes started to flick between red and blue; blue was his regular eye color. Everyone started to look at him: Myself, the other robots, the FBI, even Autumn started to open her eyes while heavily breathing. Dark Wire’s eyes still flashed between red and blue then it stopped on blue as he said, “What happened? What is going on?” He sounded very concerned and confused about everything. “You don’t remember anything?” “No.” He nodded. Ali started to have flashbacks of what had happened, and started to feel guilty and regret what he did. We all looked at the road where the fire hydrants popped open. Water was spilling all over the road from the gunshots from the FBI. We started to hear the sirens of the ambulance and the police started to come. I looked down to check on how Autumn was doing and when I checked her pulse and she wasn’t breathing, I started to cry. Everyone was looking, and when the ambulance finally came they speedly put her into the back. Mr. William, the owner of NAS, took Ali back to NASA to put him under control and un-

der a lot of security to try to figure out how he did what he did and how his emotions changed so fast just from a little water spill mistake. Weeks after what happened, I had to explain to Nydia, Autumn’s mother, how she died on the way to the hospital and how it all happened. I tried to send her my condolences and let her take out her anger on me on the death of her daughter. We had the funeral. It was beautiful. After, we went on with our lives and I visited my best friend everyday. I kept her up with my life and how my day went.