“Themes,” Anne grumbled. “Why does anything even need to have a theme? Why can’t a story just be a story?” She tapped her pencil against her blank paper.
“Because a story just being a story is good for nothing,” said Wilma, a haughty lilt in her voice. “At least with a theme, we can apply something to real life and get use out of it.”
Anne sneered across the desk. “You are brainwashed, girl.”
Wilma raised her head and gave a glare. “I’m realistic. Artsy stuff doesn’t do any good. We should all be more like Irwin.” She lowered her head and went back to writing.
Anne gave a quick look at Irwin. Then she did a double-take.
Irwin was the only non-organic classmate in Anne’s class. It had showed up in the Nursery not long after Mollie and Ollie had been dropped off, and got added to the class along with them. The robot was tiny, barely over a foot tall, and its body was basically two half spheres with a gap between. Out of the gap sprouted a glassy orb on a wire, with another wire sticking out the top of that, which led to a very tiny but detailed satellite dish. Another wire stuck out of the gap on Edwin’s “back” end, which connected to a thin metal halo which encircled its entire body. Everything was a dulled and tarnished grey, except in all the spots where ugly rust had grown over the metal. The halo and the satellite dish tottered back and forth whenever Irwin moved.
Right now, however, the satellite dish was jittering back and forth at an alarming speed, in concert with a pencil scribbling furiously on the paper in front of Irwin. (Irwin was sitting on top of the desk; otherwise, it wouldn’t have been able to see.) Irwin had filled nearly an entire page with writing in the time it had taken Wilma to do one paragraph.
The pencil continued to move, without being touched by Irwin.
“Okay,” Anne said, “I had no idea you could do that, Irwin.”
The satellite drooped to the side. The pencil stopped moving and fell over.
Anne stared. “Uh. I’m sorry? I didn’t mean to, like, scare you, or anything.”
Irwin remained still.
“Just, it’s cool. That you can do that, I mean.”
Irwin remained still.
“And it’s . . . okay? That you can do that, I mean. You don’t have to hide it from us.”
“And she was willing,” said Irwin. Its voice came tinny and surrounded with static, like a radio that was only barely tuned to the station it was trying to play.
Anne stared for a moment, then looked at Wilma, who had stopped working to listen. Despite their earlier disagreement, the girls now shared a look of confusion. “That’s . . . good,” Anne finally said. “Good to hear.”
Irwin remained still. Eventually, the girls both went back to focusing on their own papers. Neither looked up when the sound of Irwin’s pencil on paper began once more.
* * *
Fox sat with his back against the wall. Across the room, Marty and Edwin were playing Sorry!, Marty as the yellow player, and Edwin as the red.
Fox watched as Edwin’s satellite swiveled, and a card drew itself and flipped over. The swiveling continued as one of the red pieces moved the correct number of spaces. Then the swiveling stopped again.
Marty gave Fox a meaningful look. They had both heard about Edwin doing homework the day before from the girls.
Fox said, “So I guess the big question is, what is that thing coming out the top of your head?”
Edwin’s voice crackled out, “A tin can, she thought—B&M beans or Campbell’s soup.”
Fox blinked. Marty, drawing the next card, said, “Uh. Okay.”
While Marty moved one of his pieces, Fox said, “But how does it—how do you work? How are you doing that?” He pointed at the card Edwin was now drawing from the deck.
The crackling radio noise came again. “Nor can we tell you so you’ll understand. That’s all over your face.”
Fox blinked.
Marty leaned in close to Edwin. “It’s all right to tell us, okay? We’re your friends, now. We’re just curious about what you can do.”
Edwin replied, “Stand, be brave, be true, stand for your brother, your friends.”
Marty raised both eyebrows in surprise, drawing back just a tad. He then turned to Fox and shrugged. “My turn,” he said, and drew a card.
* * *
“Thank you for coming here with me,” said Nostrum.
Irwin rolled along behind him, leaving a pair of furrows in the snow between the centaur’s hoof prints.
Nostrum stopped at the crest of a hill, looking up at the artificial sky. “My people place great importance in the stars. There are many things that can be read from the way the stars arc across the sky from year to year, night to night, hour to hour. These stars are artificial, of course.”
Nostrum folded his legs and kneeled down to get closer to Edwin’s level. “My people are not . . . scientific, as humans would say. We read the stars, but we don’t know why or how we are able to do so.” He looked down at the robot. “I do not understand your functioning, or what that machine on top of you is, or how it works.” He laid a hand on Edwin’s chassis. “But I like you. Don’t let the questions of the others bother you too much. Humans like to understand things as they are now. But I think you and I like to see things farther ahead, yes?”
Nostrum stood up. “Let’s head back to the Bunks. We must rest for our classes tomorrow.” He began to trot back to the doorway that led into the corridors.
He didn’t hear Edwin crackle from behind him, “Once you get into cosmological shit like this, you got to throw away the instruction manual.”
* * *
doctorlit's note: I will never be able to prove this, but I swear, I swear, I SWEAR I designed Edwin before BB-8 was released in The Force Awakens. I SWEAR YOU GUYS.
—doctorlit swears, you guys