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Jenny Wakeman had stayed up all night, but she felt certain she’d finally gotten everything right in the latest Quantum Kaleidoscopic edit of the Tremorton High student body. She was anxious to arrive at school and see how her social status had improved in Alternaverse-7. 

But as Jenny scooped up her backpack, a ding sounded in her head and a message scrolled across her vision screen: Pride comes before a fall. The teenage robot had set up this internal warning system after one too many misadventures in which her downfall had been the result of her overconfidence. 

Had she gotten everything right? Was there anything she’d overlooked? She’d relocated the means girls, the handsy guys, and each and every person who’d ever snubbed or slighted her. What could she have possibly missed?

She stepped on something, then bent and retrieved a lone Jenga game piece. It must’ve escaped its box when she’d thrown the game into her closet in disgust the night before. All those humiliating defeats at the hands of her suddenly dexterous mother, who’d never been able to beat her before . . .

“The fingers!” Jenny’s first instruction to the Kaleidoscope — her test case — had been something seemingly insignificant — add an extra finger to each human hand. But each time she’d altered reality, Jenny had forgotten to remove that instruction, and now, many Alternaverses later, every human hand would sport ten fingers and a thumb. 

She took the Quantum Kaleidoscope out, intending to fix her oversight, but spotted a glowing yellow LED light that hadn’t been lit before. The machine’s power level was low. The pip crystals’ “endless” energy was apparently reaching its end. 

There was no telling how many more chances she’d have to fiddle with the functioning of the universe. As disturbed as she was by the idea of ten-fingered human hands, she couldn’t risk exhausting the pip crystals’ power to fix something so trivial. 

Outside Tremorton High, all was unusually quiet. Jenny wasn’t surprised. She’d relocated the majority of her former classmates, leaving just Brad, Sheldon, and a smattering of other students sure to be unfailingly friendly.

What did surprise her was a set of hover bikes with complicated instrument displays parked outside the school’s entrance. “Are the Space Bikers in town?!?” Jenny burst through the front door and zoomed through the halls, poking her head into every classroom. Each was devoid of students and teachers, blanketed in dust and cobwebs. 

At the opposite end of the building was shop class, and here, finally she found the remainder of the student body. Some of them were building what appeared to be a solar-powered birdhouse, its many levels connected by little escalators. Others were dismantling an ornate grandfather clock and examining its weights, gear train, and chime mechanism. A third group was engrossed in a set of blueprints. The students looked up and gazed at the teenage robot. The adoration Jenny had long sought shone in their eyes, but it was accompanied by something else . . . mania?

Sheldon stepped forward. “Jenny, what’re you doing here?” A crooked smile crept across his face. “Are you finally joining shop class?” 

Brad sidled up beside him, eyes wild. “We’ve all waited so long for this moment.” His hands reached out; his twenty fingers fidgeted. “To hold you, to have your heart.”

Sheldon said, “And your brain! And all the gears and servos and wiring. So much to examine. So much to dismantle.” He picked up an electric screwdriver.

Sheldon, Brad, and the rest of the class closed in on the teenage robot. They chanted, “Take her apart, put her back together. Then take her apart. And put her back together. Then take her apart . . .”