Omega to Alpha: Love with the Perfect Robot

Story by Cai Marshall

Written by Tom Cayler

54,000 words

Daniel Rhyse, nineteen, the youngest professor on campus, teaches ethics at the prestigious Cambridge Institute of Science, CIS (affectionately know as “Kiss”). But after he is ordered to give undeserved A's to the school's crack robotics team members, he realizes that he’s nothing more than a glorified rubber stamp. Rhyse has two choices: quit in protest, or accept being a doormat.

Instead, he volunteers to be rescued by CIS's robot in the Ivy League Robotics Competition. His rescuer is Omega. She is black and she is beautiful. After Omega wins the competition for CIS, Rhyse visits her daily. He is smitten.

When, however, Rhyse learns that CIS is preparing to convert Omega into a search-and-destroy android for military purposes, he has to rescue her. In order to do this, he recruits one of his students, Walter, sixteen, a charming science nerd. But where do they hide the world’s most powerful robot? Once CIS sends Alpha—its newest combat-ready robot—after them, Rhyse realizes the answer to that question: in plain sight. The only hope for Omega is to live free as what she appears to be: a young black woman.

Written by the son/father Cai Marshall, 18, and Tom Cayler, Omega to Alpha is a humorous action-adventure tale, a robot love story with a black female superhero.

Cai is a high school student in NYC. Tom is a New York Foundation for the Arts screenwriting-fellow and an OBIE-winning actor. His one-person play, Men Die Sooner, was filmed and broadcast by PBS.