Eugene Bulinsky is what you’d call a klutz. He’s also what you’d call a flippin’ genius. Unfortunately, in social situations, the one does not balance out the other. No one cares much if you’re a genius when you’ve just dumped a gallon of clam dip on their new carpet and the clam dip clogs up the vacbot, which proceeds to explode and spray their guests with fuzzy goop.

Eugene Bulinsky, this is your life.

At least, it was Eugene’s life pre-nanny. No, Eugene didn’t hire a nanny to look after him. He made one. Actually, he made a whole bunch of them. Euge isn’t a genius for nothing.

I found out about the nannies when Eugene called me up and invited me to a party at Garry Greenwald’s. My first reaction was total disbelief.

“Euge,” I said, “Eugene. How the hell did you get invited to a party at Greenwald’s condo? The last time you were there he said he’d never let you anywhere near the place again.”

Eugene laughed. (It sounds like snorting to the uninitiated, but it really is laughter.) “Garry’s having a problem with calculus,” he said, which was explanation enough.

“And you offered to bail him out,” I surmised.

“Yeah. Besides, I promised him it’d never happen again.” Eugene pushed his glasses up his nose and grinned sheepishly at me from the vucom.

“Huh! Promise the poor damn cat!” I said. “He’s the one with the concussion.”

“I paid his vet bills.”

“Don’t whine, Eugene. I hate it when you whine.” I plopped a big blob of clay on the table in front of me. “And how the hell could you promise Greenwald something like that? You leave a wake of total destruction wherever you go. You’re like Hurricane Eugene.”

“Not anymore,” he told me.

Something about the way he said that made me take my attention off the award-winning sculpture I was working on and look at him. He was glowing. I knew what that meant. I glowed when I completed a sculpture, Eugene glowed when something in a test tube cried “Papa!”

“Oh, God,” I said. “Okay, Frankenstein, what’ve you done this time?”

“Nannies,” he said.

“Huh! I always said you needed a keeper.”

He snorted and yucked a few times, then pushed his glasses back up and said, “Not a nanny. Nannies—nano-machines.”

“Nano-what?”

Eugene looked exasperated. “Honestly, Nina, sometimes you’re such a dwit. Nano-machines. Little tiny machines that do little tiny jobs. Except that these nannies do big jobs. They’re ... mega-nannies.”

“Mega-nannies,” I repeated.

“Okay, so that’s probably a contradiction in terms, but well, they’re bigger than most nano-machines; too small to be called micro-machines.” He shrugged. “So—mega-nannies.”

“Right. Well, that’s very interesting, Eugene, but I don’t have time to concern myself with all this scientific mumbo-jumbo, right now. I’m preparing to create some truly great art.”

Eugene scratched his head, which he always does when the subject of art comes up. He didn’t understand art any better than I understood nano-whatever-it-was. I asked him to explain the nanny business to me again, but he went multo-mysterioso on me and told me I’d have to wait till the bash at Greenwald’s to witness his new invention—and his new persona.

Great, I thought. Dr. Nanny and Mr. Hyde.

Saturday night we arrived at Garry Greenwald’s Marblehead condo when the party was in full swing. Everybody watched our entrance and it wasn’t because we made such a glam duo—although, Euge looked better than usual, I had to admit. His hair wasn’t in his face and he wasn’t wearing that damned white jacket that looked like a cast-off from Dr. Who. Together, well, together we were quite a sight. He’s so conservative and I’m so Punk-emian.

Garry looked like he wanted to run and hide when he saw us. I saw him glance toward the aquarium like he might go throw his arms around it for a final farewell. Instead, he smiled (talk about in-sin-cere) and came over to say “Hi.”

Actually, what he said was, “Bulinsky, if you screw up my condo again, so help me-“

“A Bulinsky never makes a promise he can’t keep,” said Eugene solemnly.

“A Bulinsky never makes a party he doesn’t wreck, you mean.”

“Go soak it, Greenwald,” I snarled. “He promised, okay?”

Eugene was already wandering off toward the buffet.

Garry paled.

“God, Greenwald, you’re such a yup. Didn’t your folks ever teach you that friends are more important than things?”

He glared at me. “God, Zubin, you’re such a Punk. Didn’t your folks ever teach you that money doesn’t grow on ATM’s?”

“Oh, look who’s talking!” I shot back. “Your family is so loaded, you could buy Boston UAT. I got here on an art scholarship and Euge lives from grant to grant.”

“Euge!” He glared at the buffet again. “I don’t know why you hang around with that nerd, Nina. People think you’re weird.”

“People think I’m weird anyway,” I said. “Or hadn’t you noticed?” I swung my head quickly toward the group next to us and caught Susie “Sugarlips” Santini staring at me.

She smiled and pointed a gold fingernail at my hair. “Nice stripe,” she said. “That’s real cute the way you dyed your hair to match your ... outfit.”

I gave Greenwald a “so there” look and went to find Eugene. He was still at the buffet happily stuffing his face.

“Tr’ un’a dzz,” he said as I arrived. He was holding out a puffy little ball of something vaguely fishy smelling.

I shot a glance back at Susie and nibbled it out of his fingers. He grinned, she looked like she wanted to throw up.

“Lemme get you a plate,” he said.

Before I could say, “Don’t bother,” he’d reached across the table, between the coffee samovar and the punch bowl, and grabbed a bio-foam plate from the stack.

I saw it coming before it happened: The plate hitting the punch bowl’s long-handled glass dipper; the dipper flipping up, end over end in a graceful arc, spraying bright pink punch all over the white table cloth and coming to rest with a cartoon “squish!” in an untouched mold of Crab Angelica which disintegrated into goopy blobs. The effect was almost artistic. I heard a loud groan go up around the buffet and glanced at Eugene. Usually, when these things happen, he blushes, cowers and apologizes like crazy. But this time, he was just standing there with his hands in his pockets, grinning.

“Eugene?” I said.

He just shook his head and twinkled at me.

“Dammit, Bulinsky!” bellowed Greenwald’s voice in my ear. “You promised!”

Eugene yucked a couple of times. “No problem,” he said. “Watch. Watch!”

He pulled the dipper out of the mold and laid it on the devastated table cloth. It was like a bizarre ballet set to the beat of the Shrewd News. While we watched, the crab spread was pulling itself together—literally—reshaping, remolding ... it was kind of gross, actually. The little crab-shaped indentation on top even reappeared. It looked like it’d just crawled out of the caterer’s van. The dipper, meanwhile, was getting cleaner by the second as if some tiny, invisible dogs were scarfing up the crab spread with invisible pink tongues. And the table cloth—heck, I’ve seen stains disappear like that in commercials, but never in real life.

It took about five minutes, all told, before every trace of Eugene’s extraordinary grace were obliterated. He grinned harder and slipped the sparkling punch dipper back into the bowl. It was so quiet on that side of the room you could have heard a pin drop—except for the Shrewd News blaring from the quadro and Eugene yucking and snorting like there was no tomorrow.

It took the crowd about ten minutes to recover. It took me longer. I was watching them examine the table inch by inch when I felt a tug on my arm. Eugene was giving me a look that was one-quarter Captain Kirk and three-quarters Space Cadet. “This party’s dull. Let’s go have dinner.”

I let him steer me out to the car. I heard two “Nice stripe’s” and one “God, where does she get those clothes?” on the way through. I didn’t even stop to snarl. They must’ve thought I was sick.

Euge took me to the top of the Prude to this incredibly ritzy, incredibly expensive place with candlelight and real flowers and detoxed wine.

“Okay,” I said when we were sharing a stunning view of the city. “Two things: One, how’d you do that trick at the party; and two, how are we paying for dinner? My plastic is limp.”

“Second thing first,” said Eugene. “I’m paying—cash. And firstly-“ He took off his glasses, set them on the table and rubbed the little red spots they left on his nose. “-that wasn’t a trick. It was the nannies.”

The nannies again. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s hear it.”

He leaned toward me across the table. “You know my field of research is nanotechnology.”

“Y-ye-ah,” I said dubiously.

He sighed. “Nina, you don’t listen to me. Nanotechnology is the design and construction of tiny machines that perform programmed tasks.”

Slow dawn over Mount Zubin. “Like cleaning up after Hurricane Eugene?”

He nodded eagerly. “Exactly. Except that true nano-machines work on a molecular or even sub-atomic level and they’re programmed to fix things on that level: chromosomal damage, tissue damage, that sort of thing. They can even act as anti-bodies. My mega-nannies, on the other hand, are especially designed for bigger jobs. They’re programmed to fix tiny broken things, clean up messes, put things straight.”

“Wow!” I said. “That’s pretty impressive. So now you’re safe to have around. How do they work?”

He gave me a dubious look. “I’m not sure you’d understand, Nina.”

“Give me some credit, Bulinsky.”

“Well, okay, you might understand, I suppose. Um, let’s see... Okay, here. You’re an artist, right?”

I nodded solemnly.

“And you know, say, what the, um, Mona Lisa is supposed to look like, right? So if someone painted a mustache, say, on the Mona Lisa, you’d notice it right away. And if you had the talent—and I’m sure you do—you could fix it, am I right?”

I continued to nod.

“Well, the nannies don’t have talent, but they have programming that recognizes and memorizes default patterns—like the real Mona Lisa. Some of the patterns I preprogrammed, others are assimilated by the nannies as they—well, shop around, I guess you’d say—make comparisons and check it against their existing data. If for some reason a pattern is distorted, they return it to the control pattern—the default. That is, they fix it.”

I applauded. “Very good, Eugene.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “And just think of the applications. Homes, businesses, labs, hospitals, places that just have to be clean. Places humans and larger machines can’t clean.”

“Whoa,” I said. “To boldly go where no bot has gone before.”

“Very funny. But seriously, Nina, these little guys can do a lot more than what you saw them do tonight.”

“I didn’t see them do nada. I saw a crawling crab spread. What do these things look like?”

In answer, he pulled out his wallet and handed me a holopic.

I goggled at him. “You carry pictures of them in your wallet?”

“How else am I supposed to show you what they look like? I can’t exactly carry a microscope around in my pocket.”

“Okay,” I acquiesced and looked at the holo. “Holy shit!” I exclaimed. Other patrons glared at me, offended. I ignored them. “They’re... They look like-like bugs.”

“Well, I guess they are bugs, sort of. Programmable ones.”

“Geez, they’re ugly. Ugly, colorless bugs.”

“Beauty,” Eugene informed me, “is in the eye of the beholder.” He took the holo back and tucked in into his wallet. “I happen to really like that orange streak in your hair.”

“Thanks,” I said, “but it’s peach. How do those little tiny things move stuff around the way they did at Garry’s?”

Eugene beamed (and I mean beamed) at me. “That’s one of the things that makes the Bulinsky Mega-Nanny special. When a job is too big for the individual nannies, they combine to form a group machine—a micro-machine or, well, sort of a nanny gestalt. They can also replicate themselves. The size of the replicant will depend on two things: First, the amount of convertible matter and/or energy around to fuel the replication process and, second, the size of the job at hand. Bigger job—bigger nannies. Of course, there is a limit to what they can do. Most macro-objects are beyond their abilities ... unless I can crack the energy barrier.”

“Macro-objects,” I repeated. “You mean big stuff like the punch dipper.”

“Very good, Nina.” He seemed surprised.

I pointed a deep purple fingernail at his ostentatious nose. “Don’t patronize me ... . So how big is too big?”

He replied by very deliberately pressing the face of his wristcomp. Then, with a flourish, he set the crystal sugar bowl in the center of the table and made this “nothing-up-my-sleeves” gesture. “Observe,” he said and sprinkled pink fructose on to the table cloth.

I glanced quickly around to make sure there were no waiters watching. The last thing I wanted was to get tossed out of this place before I’d eaten. By the time my eyes returned to the fructose, it was already on its way back to the bowl.

“That’s it?” I asked. “Sugar crystals?”

“Well, no. Actually, they can handle grains of sand, dust balls, even individual sheets of paper. But those jobs take a pretty big gang and a lot of convertible matter.”

“Convertible matter?” I asked dubiously. Euge waved a dinner roll at me. “Energy,” he said, and took a big bite out of it. “Food.”

My stomach gurgled. “Speaking of food,” I said, “can we order?”

He sighed and nodded, popping the rest of the roll into his mouth.

Dinner was fantastic. Eugene let me babble on about the grant and residency I was up for,and my gallery opening next weekend and how I was going to take the art world by storm with my new stuff. He didn’t even seem to mind me making him come up to my studio to look at it. And he tried really hard to appreciate it too. I could tell. When I whisked the sheet off the main piece, he stared at it intently, then he wriggled his eyebrows, wrinkled his nose, took off his glasses, cleaned them on his jacket, put them back on and puckered his lips. Then he made a slow circuit of the piece.

“It’s, ah ... it’s, ah...” he said.

“It’s a man,” I said. “Man in Anguish.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I can see that. But, it’s, ah...” He frowned. Waved his arms. “Wrong, somehow.”

“Wrong?” I snarled. “WRONG? A man who wears white socks with black silk pants is telling me my sculpture is wrong?”

“I didn’t mean it that way. I meant it-it’s out of balance ... or ... something...” He looked at me sheepishly. “Don’t listen to me. I don’t know anything about art.”

“That’s an understatement.”

“I’m sure it will really impress the Selection Committee,” he said soothingly and pushed his glasses up his nose. “Um, how about some coffee?”

I relented. Eugene had this way of looking like Clark Kent. I could never stay mad at him for more than a second or two. When I came out of the kitchenette with the coffee he was sitting on the sofa in my small raised living room looking down into the studio. I scooted some magazines off the coffee table and put down the tray, then flipped a clay-caked sweatshirt off the sofa and sat down. I became aware of Eugene’s intense scrutiny. When I glanced at him, he looked away again, nervously nudging a baseball-sized dust bunny with his foot. “Uh, Nina, I don’t mean to criticize your housekeeping, but-“

I was suddenly intensely embarrassed. “This place is a mess, isn’t it? I’m sorry. I guess I need a vacbot, but the damn things are so expensive. Besides, it’d choke on the stuff it’d have to clean up down there.” I nodded toward the studio.

Eugene was twinkling at me again. “You don’t need a vacbot. You need a nanny.”

I started to get all indignant, then realized what he was talking about. “You mean Bulinsky Mega-Nannies? Well, sure! That’d be great! I’d never have to think about housework again.” (Not that I gave it much thought now.)

Eugene touched his wristcomp. “There. They’re all yours,” he said. “At least this bunch.”

“That’s it? You just turned them loose?”

He nodded. “By the time we’re done with our coffee, this place will be clean as my lab. You won’t even have to wash that sweatshirt... You will have to put it away, though.”

I did, too, but I didn’t mind picking up the sty if the nannies were going to be doing all the slopping. And, bless their little default patterns, those nannies just seemed to know that tuna salad did not belong on the studio floor nor cracker crumbs in the bathroom.

“So, what do I feed them?” I asked Eugene as he was on his way out the door.

“Nothing.”

“Then, what—batteries?”

Eugene yucked. “You can’t put batteries in something that small! Even a millimin flat-chip solenoid would be thousands of times too big for the largest nanny. Brighten up.”

“Brighten up, yourself,” I told him. “I just figured they had to have some kind of fuel.”

“They do. They subsist on a combination of energy sources. Solar and electromagnetic energy, which they can store-“

“A-ha!” I said, poking him. “Batteries!”

“Okay-okay—batteries. Plus, they intake the surplus organics—the garbage they clean up—and they consume any harmful bacteria they may find. It’s a bug eat bug world.” He yucked again.

I pushed him out the door.

I could tell right away that life with nannies was going to be great. It improved my standard of living a thousandfold in the first few hours. Didn’t improve my stable manners any. In fact, I think it even made me a bigger slob, knowing that thousands of tiny butlers were following me around straightening up after me. Talk about having your cake and eating it! I didn’t even have to worry about where the crumbs fell. I told myself that with the burden of mundane housekeeping lifted from my shoulders, I could easily turn out the several additional major pieces I needed for the gallery opening. (My big break!) Plus, I needed some “works in progress” to show the Grant Selection Committee on Wednesday.

I spent Sunday hopping art galleries for inspiration, then Monday morning I got down into my creative chakras and started a new piece. I unveiled “Fred” (Man in Anguish, to you) and let him look over my shoulder while I gave birth to his sibling. It was a smaller piece than Fred, or rather “she” was. She was destined to be a ballerina (inspired by the Degas work I’d seen the day before), but with a classic Zubin twist. She was going to have five arms. I’d also seen a truly cream statue of Siva yesterday (Lord of the Cosmic Dance and all that) and thought his six arms were just incredibly expressive of the rhythm and movement of the cosmos. But, of course, six arms were just so symmetrical, so ordinary. So my Cosmic Dancer would have five arms.

I put on some passionately energetic Russian music and worked in a frenzy, getting a big kick out of the way my team of nannies scarpered up every nibble of rubble that hit the floor. I mean, vacbots, look out! The place looked like a hospital operating room.

I had classes beginning at 1:00 pm, so at 12:30 I bid a reluctant farewell to Fred, Pavlova and the dust patrol and marched off to satisfy state educational requirements. It was a long afternoon. All I could think about was my five-armed Pavlova and the GSC and the gallery opening and the dawn of Nina Zubin’s stellar career. It was 5:00 pm when I got home, and getting dark. I had an armful of back-pack and groceries and had to turn the light on with my shoulder. (These low rent digs don’t have housecomps and sense-switches to turn them on for you.)

“I’m home!” I announced to my menagerie and turned to greet them. I stopped dead in my tracks. My pack and groceries thumped as they hit the floor. “Oh, my God,” I said and moved zombie-like toward the studio.

I couldn’t believe it. Instead of a Man in Anguish and a Cosmic Dancer, I had Two Men in Anguish and a Sculptor in Confusion. I came slowly down the steps, staring. Fred II was an exact duplicate of Fred I in every way but size. He was even casting his anguished gaze in the same direction.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, a bit of conversation played back. Something about nannies and artists and mustachioed Mona Lisas. I heard Eugene’s voice saying, “Nannies don’t have talent-“ Fast forward. There it was—that bit about “recognizing and memorizing default patterns.”

I stewed. Maybe I should’ve been flattered—the nannies had evidently recognized Big Fred as a “default pattern” and given me Little Fred. Of course, that also meant that Pavlova had looked somehow distorted to them. All in all, they cost me a morning’s inspired work. I swore violently. I wondered if nannies could hear. Eugene hadn’t said so. I continued to swear anyway. There was nothing to do but start over again. I got out some fresh clay, covered the Freds and turned on the Russian music. It was tough, but I managed to recapture my inspiration.

After many intense hours of pounding, molding, weeping and cursing, I had a Cosmic Dancer that surpassed my first attempt. I quickly threw a sheet over her to keep the nannies from getting ideas. Then I ate a late dinner and called Eugene to give him a hard time about his nannies’ antics. He wasn’t home, so I left a saucy, Zubinesque message about naughty nannies on his vucorder.

I overslept the next morning, barely made it to my mid-morning classes and raced home to start work on my next piece. I already knew what it was going to be—a mime. A mime with a dagger. A mime into crime. I would call it “Deadly Silence” and it would knock the Committee’s socks off. When I finished up at about 3:00 am, I just flopped onto the sofa and stared at him for a moment. He was beautiful: Posed in that dainty, mime arabesque; his head tilted to one side; his little peaked hat askew; the dagger drawn up to his left cheek while crazed eyes stared over it at the viewer. Gave me chills.

I got out my old Panasonic Discam and circled him slowly, shooting him from every angle. I noticed that the nannies were at work on the little pile of scrapings by his pedestal.

“Good nannies,” I said. “Have this place finessed by ten hundred hours, got it?”

I covered Petrucchio and flopped back onto the sofa.

I overslept again. Seriously, this time. I woke up at 9:35. The Grant Selection Committee was due at 10:00. I literally threw myself into the shower, dressed like a madwoman (there are those who say I always dress like a madwoman) and gobbled some breakfast. Thank Eugene, I didn’t have to clean up the crumbs. With two minutes left, I brewed coffee and raked my hair.

The door chime sounded promptly at 10:00 as the Committee stepped onto my front porch. I flatter myself that I was all poise and dignity when I let them in. There were three of them and they were escorted by my art professor and mentor, Professor Frewer. I smiled at him and he smiled back, then introduced me to his colleagues—the Drs. Midori Hirasuna and Ford Goodwin and artist Jeff Ripley.

I was in love. Midori Hirasuna was everything I wanted to be: Sleek, shining, stylish, stunning—all those great “S” words. I knew she was an artist of great style, too, and desperately wanted her to like my stuff.

Coffee and interview came first. I answered questions, smiled a lot and tried to come across sensitive, quirky and artistic. Then came the unveiling. I went to Big Fred first, slipped the sheet from his gaunt frame and announced, “I call this one Man in Anguish.”

“Ah, ha,” said Professor Frewer. He puckered his lips and looked professorial. I glanced at Professor Hirasuna. She was scribbling notes, a very tiny frown between her perfect brows. Ripley nodded. Goodwin had a poker face.

“Do you have anything else, Nina?” asked Professor Frewer.

“Yessir,” I said and turned to Pavlova’s platform. “This is Cosmic Dancer.” I pulled her cover, watching their faces. There was no expression on any of them.

“When did you change your style, Nina?” asked Frewer.

“Well, you know I’ve been trying very hard to develop a style of my own,” I answered eagerly. “This is what I came up with.”

He frowned. “I’m just a little puzzled. You told me you didn’t have any interest in realism.”

I goggled at him. A woman with five arms—realism? I turned to Pavlova and goggled again. She didn’t have five arms, she had two. Two graceful, symmetrical, very normal arms that went with her graceful, symmetrical, very normal body. And she was strikingly familiar.

Dazed, I crossed to Petrucchio’s pallet and gingerly tugged off his sheet. So much for high art. My beautiful, twisted, deadly mime was now a rounded, whimsical clown. Even the dagger was gone. In its place was an old-fashioned bicycle horn.

“These pieces are really quite a departure from the first one,” commented Hirasuna. “Is this your entire collection?”

“Uh,” I said. “Yes ... right now anyway. Uh, these were sort of an experiment. They’re not representative. Like I said, I’m searching for my own style.”

Hirasuna nodded.

“Your technique is flawless,” said Ripley encouragingly.

“Thanks,” I said and wondered if I should try to explain about nannies and default patterns.

The Committee held a brief conference on my rear balcony, then left, leaving me alone with Professor Frewer. He looked almost as confused as I felt.

“Nina, this wasn’t a real good time for a dramatic change in artistic direction. I showed the Committee your sketches. They expected ... something quite different.”

“So did I,” I murmured.

He glanced back toward the studio. “The realistic pieces are nice,” he said (in that way that makes “nice” sound like “god-awful”), “but they’re not exceptional. And they have to be to warrant a grant and a residency.”

“What about Fred?” I asked desperately.

“Fred?”

“Man in Anguish?”

He looked at it, pulling his lip and squinting. “Well, it’s interesting but ... I don’t know, there’s something ... wrong about it. It seems ... out of balance, somehow.”

I don’t believe this, I thought. “So, no grant? No residency?” He looked sympathetic. “I know you’re capable of better work, Nina. Look, do you think you’re going to have some more pieces ready for your opening?”

“I-I hope so,” I said dubiously.

He put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t look so defeated. The Committee won’t complete its evaluations for another two weeks. If you can have some new work at the opening, I’ll make sure they see it.”

When he was gone, I sat on the sofa with my head spinning. Okay, so I had a second chance. The first thing I had to do was get rid of those damned nano-vandals. I called Eugene. He still wasn’t home. I left an obscene message on the ‘corder and snapped off the vucom.

Damn! How was I supposed to get any work done with thousands of little art critics rearranging everything to their default patterns? And what patterns! A dolly-dancer and a circus clown. Where the heck did they get-

My eyes focused on the cover of an art magazine on the coffee table. One of Degas’ pink and blue ballerinas gazed back at me. I looked at my statue. The pose was identical.

Okay. Default pattern number one. But I knew I didn’t have any art magazines with clowns on them.

“O-oh!” I groaned and smacked my forehead with the heel of my hand. The only clown in this apartment besides me was the stuffed one on my bed.

I hid the magazines, the clown, very piece of bricka-brack I owned. Alas, the nannies simply looked elsewhere for “inspiration.” Every surreal form I made, they painstakingly herded into the epitome of bland. At one point, I had a two hundred pound ottoman and a clay replica of a macrame wall-hanging I forgot to take down and hide.

In the midst of defeat, a light went on. I was galvanized. Cackling like a banshee, I tore around the kitchenette strewing garbagy tidbits all over the floor—coffee grounds, egg shells, old dead alfalfa sprouts—you name it, I strewed it. I created a mess of such epic proportions, an army of vacbots would have mutinied at the sight of it. Then, while the nannies were busily attacking that, I attacked Pavlova and Petrucchio and reduced them to their component clay lumps. In their place, I erected a huge form that pushed the very limits of the surreal. (Just in case, I thought.)

When I finished, I was ravenous and thirsty and had a hell of a headache. I got myself a soda pop and went back to assess my work. I stepped over a self-stacking pile of art clippings and a herd of dust bunnies that was making its way back to the recyc and flopped down on the steps between the living room and the studio. What I had here was definitely different. It was part man, part mountain and part Gaudi cathedral. It looked almost, but not quite, like fire that had been magicked into stone. I liked it. In fact, I thought it was probably the best work I’d ever done—except maybe for poor Petrucchio. While I was sitting there, patting myself on the back, I saw it start. A smooth patch became slightly pocked, a small hole enlarged itself. The nannies were on the move.

I jumped to my feet. “Dammit, no!” I shrieked. “Stop it! Stop, you stupid nannies! That’s not an accident—it’s ART!”

They ignored me.

Snarling, I launched myself across the room to my workbench, grabbed a couple of lumps of fresh clay and hurled them in the general direction of the nannies. A lot of other stuff followed, a big bowl full of pebbles, a trayful of seashells, some handfuls of colored glass chips, a lot more clay.

“It’s not broken, for godsake!” I cried. “Don’t fix it!”

Sobbing frantically, I ripped at the pile of magazine clippings I’d hidden on the top shelf of my workbench, sending a litter of paper to join all the other crap on the floor. Maybe while they were busy with that, I could move my beautiful whatever-it-was out of nannies’ way. But they weren’t to be distracted. Tiny changes continued to edit the surface of my creation even as the new junk began to stir. They’d just deployed their ranks—probably replicated or whatever it was they did.

Oh, for a vacbot! I’d suck them all up and-and-

“Damn you, Eugene Bulinsky!” I cried passionately and sailed across the apartment to the vucom. He was still out. I left a frantic, pleading, vicious message in which murder and suicide figured prominently. Then I sat down to have a good cry. Many teardrops later, I looked up, bleary-eyed, to see what the nannies had done to my career.

I stared. Then I pulled myself to my feet and moved dazedly back into the studio. My Zubin masterpiece had kept the shape I gave it, but the nannies had added some stylistic nuances. In fact, the pocked and scarified surface of the thing looked much more interesting. It had pebbles and seashells and bits of glass embedded in it and it sparkled like the crown jewels under the studio lights. Even as I watched, a tiny, dried out husk of a starfish crawled into place among the sand encrusting its base.

I stared at it until the activity seemed to be at an end, then circumambulated it slowly. It was magnificent, imposing, dream-like. Except for the towel draped across the pebbly “beach.”

“For pity’s sake, you guys,” I complained. “Couldn’t you at least’ve shoved it out of the way?” I reached for the towel and yelped as my fingers met clay instead of cloth. “Holy mackerel, it’s perfect!”

Perfect, except for the finger prints I’d just left in the fleecy-looking surface. The nannies quickly fixed it.

I shoved a neat stack of magazine clippings aside and perched on the workbench. This was incredible—the achingly weird and the boringly mundane combined in the same stupendous work of art. And it was all mine ... well, at least, most of it was.

“Oh, you beautiful nannies,” I breathed. “Where did you get this one?” It had to be something fairly close at hand.

I glanced down at the stack of clippings. On the bottom was the front page of a travel rag surmounted by a neat pile of smaller pictures that hadn’t made it into my “morgue” yet. The caption on the front page read: Ski and Scuba Among Australia’s Coral Castles. I moved the clippings so I could see it better. That was a coral castle, all right—right down to its embedded inhabitants. An inset showed a sun-washed beach. I looked at the clippings in my right hand—Antonio Gaudi’s Barcelona Cathedral was right on top. My eyes moved back to my—okay, our sculpture. It was an almost perfect compromise between the similar yet distinct patterns in the photos.

I frowned. Where the heck had the towel come from? I turned over the Gaudi and laughed aloud. A beautiful, fleecy bath towel dominated the half-page. It was an ad for a Bloomie’s white sale.

Two days and a lot of clay, junk and magazine clippings later, I and my team of apprentices had a gallery annex-full of Zubin magic to show the world. It was a true team effort: I laid the foundation of sur-reality, offered the mega-nannies some raw materials and several “inspirational patterns,” and they did their best to make sense out of it all.

I had to admit, I’d never worked so hard in my life or felt so creative. As I pushed myself to drag more and more original forms out of the ether, I realized that I had default patterns, too—and up until now, they’d been damn boring. But no more.

And as an added bonus, other people seemed to find them interesting, too. By the time the Selection Committee came into the Gallery on Saturday morning, I’d already sold two pieces.

“Oh, Nina!” whispered Professor Frewer in my ear. “This is more like it! Look, even Hirasuna is impressed.”

She certainly seemed to be. She was nodding and scribbling like crazy. When she reached out and tried to pick up the towel at the base of the Cosmic Castle, she even smiled. (Grant, ho!)

“Quite remarkable,” she told me as they were leaving. “The juxtaposition of real and surreal is ... magical. What inspired you to take such a dramatic artistic direction?”

I shrugged. “Well, like I said before, I was just seeking my own style. You know, my own natural ... default patterns.” I smiled brightly.

“Well, you seem to have found them,” said Mr. Ripley. He shook my hand.

Old, gruff Professor Goodwin shook it, too, hard enough to make his jowls shake. “Ahem. Good work, young lady,” he said.

Professor Frewer hugged me, looking like a proud papa seeing his precocious precious off to college. I was rocking back on my heels, mentally counting my earnings when Eugene came in. He looked like he’d run all the way from Swampscott.

“Nina! Gosh, Nina, I just got your messages. I’m really sorry about all this.” He ran a hand through his rambunctious hair.

It was mean of me, but I decided to put my old buddy Euge through the ringer for all the agony I’d been through on the road to victory. I scowled at him. “And just where the hell were you, Mr. Bulinsky, while I was being held hostage by your nano-terrorists?”

He blushed and actually scuffed the floor with his foot. I’d never seen anyone do that before. “I was out hawking Bulinsky Mega-Nannies, trying to generate some interest in my programming.”

“Hmmm,” I said sourly. “And did you?”

He scuffed again. “Yeah, actually, I did. Now, I kind of wish I hadn’t. Gosh, Nina, I’m sorry they screwed up your artwork.”

“Eugene Bulinsky, I want you to see exactly what your little beasties did to my artwork.” I led him into the annex (the Zubin Wing, I liked to call it) and stood him in front of the Castle.

“Oh, gosh,” he said. He pushed his glasses up, then took them off and cleaned them. “Oh, Nina, I’m sorry. Is this terrible?”

“Terrible?” I laughed out loud, then planted a wet one on his forehead. “Euge, you dwit, it’s incredible! I’ve sold three pieces since we opened this morning. And in about two weeks, I’ll be a granted resident of Boston University of Arts and Technologies.”

He looked hopeful. “You mean, I’m not going to have to take my nannies back and reprogram them?”

“Reprogram them? Euge! Eugene!” I tweaked both his cheeks. “Let me remind you of an old bit of wisdom: If the default pattern is in working order, reprogramming would be counter-productive.” I linked my arm through his and rocked back on my heels, surveying my magic kingdom. “In other words, Eugene: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”