"Say cheese," the smiley face replied, but with an unreal robotic tone rather than a natural human-sounding tone. Simultaneously, the words "Say cheese" appeared in a little balloon, like in a cartoon strip, beside the smiley face's mouth. Nicknamed "Myna Bird," the program, which Ivy had designed, was a crude demonstration of speech recognition and synthesis, which enabled the Joey to hear and speak plain English words. The microphone fed the sounds directly into the converter box and through the Joey, which interpreted them into actual text and spoken words, based on a library of words it had already learned.
"Goo goo," the boy said.
The smiley face did not reply.
"I said, `goo goo,'" the boy said again, breaking into gales of laughter.
"I said," the smiley face said, unfamiliar with the rest of the sentence.
"I said `goo' fucking `goo'!" the boy shouted.
"I said…fucking," the smiley face said.
The boy chuckled a trippy chuckle and glanced at the others - and saw that none were laughing. He turned around and saw Peter. Busted.
"What the fuck is going on?" Peter said loudly.
"What the fuck is going on?" the smiley face mimicked, deadpan, minus the fury.