Maybe James was overthinking, but he noticed Martha was distancing herself from him. Martha usually comes to his bedroom more than three times a day, but now, she barely even talks to him. It was not only Martha; the rest of the family was behaving strangely towards him also.
James could not blame them though. Because of him, the family was put in danger more than once and sent away from their beloved home. To be honest, James had expected this attitude for a long time, but despite it, he still felt sad.
He was already used to being alone though. James shrugged and went to his study desk and opened his PC. He then powers it on and took out the toy robot he was programming before the memory incident.
"AI and I have been doing this, but now, AI is no more" James muttered sadly. Not that he could not program it himself, but it felt a lot better if he had someone to talk to, to make fun with. James shook those thoughts away and focused on his screen.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"Initialization failed, restarting…"
For the 20th time, the module failed to start, which made James groan in frustration. "What am I doing wrong?" he asked apprehensively. He then unplugged the robot and attempted to restart it manually.
"Initialization failed, restarting…"
James then closed his laptop in frustration and rested his back on the chair and deeply sighed. His birthday was coming in three days' time, and Martha has not even mentioned it. Maybe she did not remember, or maybe she did not care.
James would bet on the latter. Just a month ago, in March, Martha brought out a journal that was filled with the family's birthday, including James, and informed them who was going to be celebrated a week before the due date. The person that was to be celebrated by that time was Nicolas. On the due date, they threw him a surprise party while he was coming back from his after-school lessons.
The memory made James smile subconsciously. The reaction Nicolas made was priceless. "He was like 'Oh mommy a ghost!'" he giggled and stood up from his seat. He then looked at the time on his PC. "07:45! Oh my god! I actually stayed up all night to program." James was bewildered. He walked to the small mirror and checked his face. He was generally fine, except that his vision was blurry due to staring at the screen for a long time.
Three months ago, James was waiting for his impending death to come after his brain refused to sleep. The article he read informed him that one week was the maximum time a person can stay awake before he or she dies off. A week passed, but James was still fine. He kept looking at the mirror for any changes, but there was none. Weird.
Right up to this time, James had not slept a wink. He used the silence of the night to learn to code. He already mastered six of the major programming languages and can write code for machine learning flawlessly. He planned to write a program that would behave and act like a human, with the ability to make decisions for themselves, but right now, his PC would practically explode if he attempted that.
He used Java, which, according to an article he read, was the most stable programming language, and can be used for almost any field of programming science, to code the robot that failed to work.
James went to one of the three bathrooms that were shared by the family, but the three of them was currently being used, so James went back to his room and waited for ten minutes before he checked again.
About ten minutes later, James went to check the bathroom, and two was already free, so he entered one of them. James missed his former house, where a room had a bathroom, now he had to share bathrooms with the entire family.
After bathing, he went out of the bathroom to his room and prepared himself for school. When he was done, he checked himself in the mirror, left his room to the sitting room and sat on the sofa to wait for the rest of the family.
Esther was the first to enter the sitting room, and she looked at James. James stared at her, and immediately caught a flash of cold hostility in her eyes, before walking past him to the front door.
Then the rest of the family came over and went to the car, Martha then started the engine and left the estate.
After Martha dropped the rest of the kids at their schools, she then drove to James' school. Throughout the journey, Martha did not speak a word. She just focused on the road with a poker face, while momentarily staring at James from the rearview mirror.
By the time James arrived at his school, he climbed down of the car and waited for Martha to give a word of encouragement like she always did, but the only thing he received was a groaning engine as Martha abruptly left the school premises, leaving James standing and shocked.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
James could not focus on what the AP physics teacher was saying, as his thoughts wandered about. He was thinking about his parents again. He thought of the time his mom made a terrible cupcake she tried to learn from YouTube, and by the time James tasted it, he almost vomited his stomach out. Mary would then laugh and pout her lips "Aww, my own son hates my making, I'm sad" and that would make James laugh, while still gagging from the terrible cupcake he ate.
Tears began to drop down on James' face, and he quickly wiped it off. "Smith, Smith!" His name began to echo in his mind, before someone nudged him, bringing him back to reality.
"I asked you a question ten seconds ago because you were not listening. What are the units of specific gravity?" he asked, glaring at James.
James then blinked at the teacher, who was about to give him the stylus, before he answered. "It is unitless".