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"I'm worried about that kid," Debra says.
It's Summer - Summer break, to be precise, so Charlie's packed up his life, such as it is, and come back here to check up on his favorite son. Who is, admittedly, also his only son, but who keeps count, right?
"Max," he says. "His name's Max." There's part of him that's been expecting this conversation - except that he'd be saying Debra's lines and she his.
They're in the kitchen, with Marvin puttering about somewhere upstairs. It's a nice kitchen, a nice house. Way better place for a kid to grow up than some run-down gym.
Max is in the garden, playing ... some game or another with Atom. Charlie isn't sure how it works, exactly, but hey, Max looks happy, so it's all good, right?
"I know what his name is, Charlie." Debra glares at him. Nothing new there.
"He seems, I don't know, happy?" Charlie offers. He's arrived two days ago; he's not looking for a fight. "Is that what's worrying you? That he's happy?"
"What worries me is that that robot's the only friend he's got," Debra says.
Charlie considers saying that's one more friend than he's ever had, but that wouldn't be fair to Bailey. Or, okay, to Finn, even if Finn's really more of a valued acquaintance.
"He's young," Charlie says. "Like, what, ten going on eleven now?"
"Twelve," Debra says. Her tone suggests it's some sort of criminal offense to maybe not be so great with guessing people's ages.
"Twelve, then," Charlie amends. "Give it some time. Hey, plenty of kids his age are just hooked up to the 'Net all day, lying about their age and getting up to God knows what. You should be happy, at least he's outside."
"You're an idiot," Debra says.
"I'll teach him how to play basketball," Max says. He and Atom are lounging on the very nice terrace that comes with the very nice house with the very nice kitchen.
Charlie notes the small differences in their positions and discards them as unimportant. Shadow mode's on, fine; he'll roll with that.
"That's nice." Charlie's actually thought about this. Who wouldn't?
Eleven-year-old yelling at a giant robot to kill! kill! kill! - well, it doesn't take an idiot to see maybe that's not entirely healthy. Fun, sure, and Charlie doesn't think Max is going to go all ... Terminator on them or something, but hey, if Debra'd called him up and said, Charlie, I'm worried that Max has become too used to violence and people using bad language and drinking way too much soda and staying up way past their bed time, he'd have said, You know what, you're absolutely right.
Instead, apparently, it's His best friend's a robot.
Max sips a drink that Charlie hopes to God is just fruit juice. (It probably is. Debra's OK, most of the time, and Marvin ain't so bad, either. Nice folks, really.)
"The kids at school think I'm a freak," Max says.
Well, that one's a doozie. "The kids at school haven't done half the stuff you've done."
"I don't think they'd have the guts to talk smack about me that way if they'd seen Atom," Max says.
"Robots don't go to school," Charlie says. "They can't. There's a law."
It's a bluff, actually; Charlie has no idea if there's an actual rule. Bots have always been, well, for grown-ups. They're expensive, for one, and not exactly toys, for two.
There's talk of setting up a Junior League WBR. Charlie suspects it's just a ploy to make sure Zeus and Atom don't face off again for another ten years, at least, but he might be a little paranoid.
Maybe Tak Mashido really is just a nice guy who wants the kiddies to play nice with each other.
"He'd beat them all up," Max says. He balls his right hand; Atom mirrors the movement perfectly.
What looks kind of cute on a twelve-year-old looks a lot different on a sparring bot.
"You talk about stuff like that to your aunt?" Charlie asks. He doesn't know how to say, You can't do that, Max. You just got to hang in there and let them beat you if they come at you.
Charlie's scum, okay, but he's not that kind of scum.
Max scoffs. "Of course not. She wouldn't understand."
"Girls can be pretty mean," Charlie says. "Don't go underestimating your Aunt Debra, now. Betcha she packed a mean uppercut in her school days." Her sister did, anyway.
"I talk to Atom," Max says. "He understands me."
"Yeah," Charlie says. "Bet all the other kids at robot school picked on him for having a human buddy, huh? Don't listen to them, Atom. You and Max just keep on doing your thing, yeah?"
Atom looks back at him, unblinking. Unthinking, too, Charlie reminds himself. Nothing going on but circuitry and ventilation behind those baby blues.
"He won't listen to you," Max says, with the supreme confidence of the kid who's (let's be fair here) beaten the champ of all champs. "He's smarter than that."
"Thanks," Charlie says. "Guess you don't really want those new parts I brought for you, huh? Dumb guy like me - what do I know?"
Max and Atom look at one another and it's - it's Max, turning his head and Atom mirroring the movement. A neat trick, though; Charlie can see how this might become their next thing, now that most people have already seen the dancing.
Next generation bots are built to take a lot of punishment, like Atom, but the shadow mode thing, that's not coming back in a hurry. No point to it, with hardly anyone remembering how to box anymore.
Ten years from now, who knows what kind of competition they'll be looking at?
"Well, you've come a really long way," Max says. "I guess we could have a look. Just to be polite."
"Oh, I don't think so." Charlie shakes his head slowly. He thinks Atom might begin to mirror his movement, aborting at the last moment. "Sorry, not in the mood anymore. Maybe some other day."
He's probably just imagining things.
"Okay," Max says. Charlie scowls at him. "Tomorrow, then."
"Really tomorrow," Charlie warns, because he knows the way Max thinks. "Not 'one minute past midnight' tomorrow. Real, 'I've had breakfast and gone for an early morning run' tomorrow."
"Or you could show them to us now," Max says. "I mean, if you want it that badly."