Friend Zone
Tansy Cheveyo adjusted another code and then executed the program.
Koko, her newest TeenySaur, moved to join his teammates. Named after her grandfather, this dinosaur would be the initiator of the group.
Whatever action he performed would trigger the responses of the four other robotic dinosaurs.
This time, when Koko picked up the first block, the rest followed his lead. Smiling, Tansy watched them build the castle without a hitch.
The castle had been the most difficult for the group. Raising and lowering the drawbridge had been a challenge, but they were now doing it smoothly.
To ensure fixing the castle code hadn’t messed up anything of the other modes, Tansy ran through them one by one. Pyramid. Space shuttle. Tractor. Suspension bridge.
All with different difficulty levels for the kids who wanted to learn to program. And who liked to play.
She wanted these TeenySaurs to work for various ages. For the younger kids, they could simply execute the program and watch the dinosaurs build.
Options for older kids would include blanks in the programming they would have to work out in order for the TeenySaurs to complete the task. She wanted the mistakes in coding to trigger silly blooper-reel actions.
Koko would fall on his spine ridges and wiggle his feet in the air. Others would dance or spin in circles.
For the kids who wanted the biggest challenge, she would include bits of code for the trickiest parts, but they would have to figure out the rest.
When she’d run through all the programs without a problem, she placed the TeenySaurs back on their chargers and made sure the hookup to the solar panels hadn’t been disconnected.
For a brief moment, she considered working on the knitting TeenySaurs, but her brain wasn’t up to fixing that disaster at the moment.
Tansy stood from the floor and stretched. The sun peeking through the cabin’s window surprised her. Was it morning already?
Her stomach growled, confirming that she’d been working all night. Time to find some food.
Tansy shut down the computer and looked for her phone. Had she brought it? A search of the one-room cabin didn’t turn up the phone, so she put everything back in place and locked up.
A couple of inches of snow greeted her. Snow in the middle of March. Vermont was almost another planet away from Sacramento.
She schooled the automatic scowl off of her face as she started stretching. Sacramento had been an amazing place to live. She still loved so many of the people there. Her brother and foster family were the best people she knew.
But her ex had turned out to be an asshole of quantum proportions and she’d needed a complete break.
Coming to the property Koko had left to her and Joe when he’d died over a year before had been a good decision.
Growing up, Tansy and Joe had spent several winters with their LaChance cousins over in Bloo Moose, Vermont, so snow hadn’t been new for her.
But living in it alone for three months had been a whole different experience. Mostly an excellent one.
Tansy finished her warm up and started jogging back toward the main lodge. There weren’t any paths in the woods, and she wanted to keep it that way. Not only did she not want to disrupt the natural flora or fauna, her brother and foster brothers had drilled safety into her head from an early age.
The fact that they’d all become FBI agents still made her smile. All of them were natural protectors. Like her, they wanted to make the world a better place, but they’d chosen very different paths from hers.
Never be predictablewas one of their mantras.
It was only a mile and a half in direct distance between the lodge and the cabin she’d chosen for her projects, but her runs ranged from a couple of miles to five or six. Depending on how much steam she needed to run off.
Today would be a short one.
Midnight Lake was the center of Koko’s property and all of her runs gave her at least glimpses of it. It soothed her every single time.
The lake had been the draw for some enterprising souls over a hundred years ago. They’d built a home that had been expanded over time into a fly-in fishing lodge.