ACPOD campus. In the morning the ACPOD corporate tower sends its long, ominous shadow creeping over the school building. Mrs. Singh, my English teacher, claims thatâs a metaphor, but I attribute it to plain old bad planning.
Since I had been delayed by Agent Ffelps, I wasnât sure if Iâd arrived before Billy. I tried the front door. It was unlocked. I stepped inside.
I had never before been in the school when it wasnât full of students. It was eerily empty, and not at all romantic. I stood there for a few seconds, undecided. Should I wait for Billy, or go straight to the nanolab? The door opened behind me, and I think my heart stopped. I spun around. It was Billy.
âAre you okay?â he said.
âIâm fine. You just startled me.â
He cocked his head. âYou look different.â
Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I smiled and said, âThank you.â
âYour lips are kind of red.â
âThatâs called lipstick.â
âOh. How come youâre wearing lipstick?â
âBecause Iâm a girl?â
âOh,â he said, blinking in apparent astonishment.
This first-kiss business was going to be more work than Iâd thought.
âSo  . . . you said something about grey goo?â I asked.
âI was kidding,â he said. âProfessor Little called. He said he needed an assistant to help him with a self-replicating nanobot he was designing. He was pretty excited.â
âBut  . . . isnât that kind of dangerous? Like, turn-the-planet-into-a-giant-ball-of-grey-goo dangerous?â
âIâm sure the professor has plenty of safety protocols in place to prevent that from happening.â
âWeâre talking about a teacher who once showed up for class wearing SpongeBob SquarePants pajamas,â I said doubtfully. âWhy did he call you, anyway?â
âWeâve been working on some things.â
âGrey goo things?â
âWell  . . . not exactly. You know heâs been working on some antitumor nanotech, right?â
I didnât, but I nodded.
âHeâwe, actuallyâcame up with a variation on a self-replicator that attacked a certain kind of growth. Specifically, melanocytic nevi.â
âMelano  . . . what?â
âMoles.â
âI see,â I said.
34
In the Dark
Professor Lancaster Little, our nanotech teacher and a researcher for ACPOD, was one of the ugliest human beings I had ever met. Physically, I mean. As a person, Professor Little was quite niceâalbeit a tad absentminded. But he had several large, unfortunately positioned moles. The biggest one was the size and color of a grape, and it was situated on the tip of his nose. It was impossible to look at anything else. Even if you were able to tear your eyes away from that supermole, they would land on one of the other moles, like the double mole on his chin, or the one hanging off his left eyelid, or the constellaÂtion of moles decorating the top of his mostly bald head.
Donât get me wrong, I liked Professor Little. I just had a really hard time looking at him. Itmade perfect sense that he would try to develop some antimole nanotech.
âThe professor said he had a breakthrough,â Billy said as we walked down the hallway. âHe asked me to stop by the nanolab.â
âTo help him get rid of his moles?â I said, still trying to wrap my head around the idea.
âI donât think weâre quite to that point yet. The nanobots havenât been tested.â
âSo weâre not about to perish in a sea of grey goo?â
âWell, no. At least I donât think so.â
I figured that once we had to look at Professor Littleâs face it would kill any chance of romance, so as we were passing by the school theater, I moved closer to Billy.
âListen,â I whispered.
âWhy?â he said. His voice boomed through
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