d never had any problem holding my tongue around The Amazing
Robotron before.

"Hel-lo, Chet. How have you been?"

"I've been OK."

"Have you been stud-y-ing math-e-mat-ics and phys-ics? I had the supp-le-ment-al
mat-e-rials de-liv-er-ed to your apt yes-ter-day."

"No, I haven't. I don't think I wanna be a pilot no more. One of my buds tole me
that you end up all fugged up with time an' that, that you come home an' it's
the next century an' everyone you know is dead."

"That is one thing that hap-pens to some ex-plor-a-tor-y pilots, Chet. Have you
thought a-bout any o-ther poss-i-bil-i-ties?"

"Kinda. I guess." I tried not to think about the 125th story and the ocean. I
was thinking so hard, I stopped thinking about what I was saying to The Amazing
Robotron. "Maybe I could be a counselor, like, and help kids."

The Amazing Robotron turned into a pinball machine again, an unreadable and
motionless block. Silent for so long I thought he was gone, dead as a sardine
inside his tin can. Then, he twitched both of his arms, like he was shivering.
Then his robot-voice came out of the grille on his face. "I think that you would
be a ve-ry good coun-sel-or, Chet."

"Yeh?" I said. It was the first time that The Amazing Robotron had told me he
thought I'd be good at anything. Hell, it was the first time he'd expressed
_any_ opinion about anything I'd said.

"Yes, Chet. Be-ing a coun-sel-or is a ve-ry good way to help your-self
un-der-stand what we have done to you by put-ting you in the Cen-ter."

I couldn't speak. My Mom, before she fell silent, had often spoken about how
unfair it was for me to be stuck here, because of something that she or my
father had done. But my father never seemed to notice me, and the teachers on
the vid made a point of not mentioning the bat-house -- like someone trying hard
not to notice a stutter or a wart, and you _knew_ that the best you could hope
for from them was pity.

"Be-ing a coun-sel-or is ve-ry hard, Chet. But coun-sel-ors sometimes get a
spec-ial re-ward. Some-times, we get to help. Do you re-ally want to do this?"

"Yeh. Yes. I mean, it sounds good. You get to travel, right?"

The Amazing Robotron's idiot-lights rippled, something I came to recognize as a
chuckle, later. "Yes. Tra-vel is part of the job. I sug-gest that you start by
ex-am-in-ing your friends. See if you can fi-gure out why they do what they do."

I've used this trick on my kids. What do I know about their psyc