38 Josephine Engelberger

38 Josephine Engelberger Peanut stood up, 'So you worked with Mr White?' she said, a tide of anger rising inside her. 'You helped him on his mission to destroy Chroma?' 'In a manner of speaking,' replied Engelberger. Peanut spun around to face the Markmakers, her face bright red. 'WHY HAVE YOU LET THIS WOMAN INTO THE BUNKER? HOW DOES SHE EVEN KNOW WHERE THE BUNKER IS? SHE IS ON HIS SIDE! ' Peanut,' said Mrs M calmly, Josephine is most definitely not on his side. On the contrary. She has been imprisoned in the Spire for the last twenty years, on Mr White's orders.' Peanut stood staring at Engelberger, breathing hard. She could feel her heart racing. ' I, er, how er, wh-why

did he put you in prison?' 'Because,' said the woman, her voice low and measured, 'I dared to question him.' 'Question him how?' asked Little-Bit, eyeing the woman suspiciously. 'I questioned his motives for wanting the robots,' she replied. 'When he initially asked me to design them, I was led to believe that they would be serving Chroma. That they'd be a force for good and enhance the city's creative output.' 'Why on earth did you think that?' asked Peanut. 'Because that's what White told me,' she replied, tears pooling in her eyes. 'It seems ridiculous now, I grant you. But... I believed him.' 'We all did,' said Mrs M putting a hand on Engelberger's shoulder. 'So, hang on. You're a science person like me,' said Rockwell. ' Well, I must say it would be nice to have a scientific thinker to keep me company among all these creatives!' 'But, my friend, I am a creative person too,' said Engelberger, looking at the boy. 'I have swum in the Rainbow Lake. It just so happens that my gift is a knowledge and application of physics, engineering and, specifically, robotics. Peanut looked at Rockwell and shook her head. 'You're just like my mum. You have to stop with this whole science

versus art thing. We've talked about this before. Don't you remember what Albert Einstein said?' Rockwell frowned. 'He... he said that the greatest scientists are always artists as well. 'Exactly!' said Little-Bit. 'Newton was a painter. Galileo was a poet...' 'She's right,' said Peanut, smiling now. 'Think of Leonardo da Vinci. He was pretty decent with a paintbrush, right? But he also knew a thing or two about engineering. The two aren't mutually exclusive.' 'Scientific endeavour is totally dependent on the huge leaps of imagination at its very core,' said Engelberger, nodding. 'You should never forget that, young man. 'So what happened when you questioned Mr White?' said Peanut, who was now sitting back down in her chair. 'We had just finished building the first generation of RAZERs. I was excited to unveil them to Chroma's citizens. As far as I was concerned, they were going to be working on things like increasing pigment production, colour-correcting the Rainbow Lake, and helping to build the new galleries that we'd been planning for years. I thought the future of the city looked very bright at that point. But the first thing White sent them to do was to whitewash the famous Graffitied Wall in Warholia.' 'Oh! I think we just flew over that!' said Rockwell excitedly.

'I was appalled!' said Engelberger. 'I immediately went to see White, and I asked, in no uncertain terms, what he was up to. And right there, in the Mission Control room at the top of the tower, he revealed his true self to me for the first time. It was scary. Let's just say that he didn't like being questioned. Not at all! That was when I realised that the city had a big problem, and that I had contributed to it. ' So what did you do?' asked Peanut. ' Well, I felt awful. Terribly guilty. But there was no time for self-pity. We were already working on the second generation of RAZER by that point, so I focused all of my energy on trying to program them to develop more autonomy. I wanted the robots themselves to be able to make decisions. I figured that at least that might help at some point in the future.'

The three children looked at each other. '72!' they said in unison, remembering the rogue RAZER and Resistance operative who had helped them on Die Brücke, sacrificing themself by deliberately falling into the Rainbow Lake and causing a distraction so that the children could carry out their mission successfully. 'By then I knew I wouldn't be part of Mr White's regime for much longer. Not now that I had openly questioned his methods,' continued Engelberger. And, sure enough, a week later a platoon of RAZERs arrived at my lab in Modernia and took me to the Spire. I was imprisoned by the very robots that I had designed.' She smiled and shook her head. ' The irony.' 'Tell them, Josephine,' said Mr M. 'Tell the children what you've just told us. Tell them what you found out before you were imprisoned.' 'OK,' said the woman, taking a deep breath. 'In the week before I was taken to the Spire, White became much more vocal in terms of what he really wanted to achieve as Mayor of Chroma.' 'That he wants to mono the city and stop people from our world visiting Chroma?' asked Peanut. ' Yes. But that's just the start,' said Josephine. 'He also plans to drain the Rainbow Lake completely so that no one, from any world, will ever swim in it again. He wants to make sure that all creativity will die everywhere.'