Julian's ruse

Daryn's mombot forced us to learn how to sing.  We were all up in his room watching him play 'Perfect Crime' on his console when the mombot came in and made us all go downstairs to the dining room to learn how to sing.  Since we'd not had a mombot for a long time, ever since Dad had her returned to the Yard for not cooking pasta properly, I didn't really know much about them.  I was a little surprised at how quickly everyone else obeyed the mombot's instructions.
"I don't want to learn how to sing," I said to Daryn as we trudged down the stairs, the mombot leading the way and dusting the balustrade at the same time.  "I want to play Perfect Crime.  I think I can see how to get past the guard dogs without shooting them."
"Yeah, but the mombot says we have to learn how to sing," said Daryn.  "How are you going to beat the dogs then?"
"I'll show you," I said.  "Can we sneak back upstairs?"
"No," said Daryn.  "The mombot will notice."

* "Dad?"
Dad looked up from his desk.  Scattered across it in hundreds of tiny pieces was a fishbot.  We'd never been allowed fishbots because Dad said they only rusted, so I didn't know where it had come from.
"What?" he said.  He didn't sound anything, not angry, not impatient, not interested.  He was just waiting for me to say whatever it was I had to say and then he'd get on with what he was doing.
"What's a Julian's Ruse?"
"A what?"  Dad looked slightly confused.
"A Julian's Ruse," I said.  "Daryn's mombot wanted us all to learn how to sing today, and it said that when we were all singing right it'd be Julian's Ruse."
"Julie Andrews," breathed Dad after several seconds of thought.  "Wilkins!"
"What's a Julie Andrews then?" I asked, but Dad wasn't listening to me anymore.  Instead, he'd found his phone amongst the fragments of the fishbot and was making a call, one of those work calls where he pushed just three buttons on his phone and then said code-phrases to the person on the other end to identify himself.
"The dog has barked at the pepper-plant," he said after a short pause.  Then, "No, I think its tyres need changing."  That seemed to satisfy the person on the other end because there was another pause and Dad relaxed a little.  Then, "Wilkins has started."
After that he waved me away and had a much longer conversation, but I still managed to catch some bits of it.  The bit where he was talking about us being forced to sing was weird, because it sounded like the person on the other end was describing it to Dad.

* Daryn came to school the next day looking excited.
"They replaced the mombot last night!" he said.  "We've got a top-of-the-line version now!  It can play 'Perfect Crime'!  And it can get past the guard dogs without shooting them too!"
"Replaced it?" I said, but I knew who had ordered that.
"Yeah, I dunno why.  Mom said that it never happens, mombot's are never replaced unless you're rich, and Dad's been phoning people trying to find out what was wrong with the old one."
"Must have been a fault," I said.
"Yeah, that's what Dad says too.  But the new one's so cool!"
"Is it making you learn how to sing as well?"
"No, the new one's so much cooler than that.  It even got rid of the goatherd."
"Goatherd?"
"Yeah, there was a goatherd that the mombot kept in a cupboard.  All he ever did was tell us how lonely he was though."

* I ran a search later for Julie Andrews.  Then I ran a search for Nazis, and after an afternoon of reading, I realised why Dad has got so upset.  When I got home he was still at work though, so I logged onto his computer, connected through to the Yard with his password, and ran a search on Wilkins.
"File not found," was the response.