The Little Robot Who Waited (Part I)

A boy and dog story with a sci-fi twist

Happy New Year everyone🎉!

To kick off 2024, I’d like to share a short story that has been percolating in the back of my mind for several weeks. It ruminates on the bonds we created and lost during childhood. Hope you guys enjoy it.

Quick announcements before we begin…

1. If you’re new here, yay! Welcome 👏! I reply to all comments and emails, so feel free to reach out anytime.

2. A couple of weeks ago, I announced that I’ll be implementing a paid subscription plan starting in February. For those who’d like to show your support earlier, you can do so with the button below. Here’s the video announcement if you missed it.

3. To spur engagement and build community, I’ll be adding discussion questions at the end of each story. If you’d like to participate, make sure to click the “comment” button at the very bottom. You can also use this feature to ask me questions as well. :)

Now, on with the show!

The little robot chirped happily as he rolled down the deserted street. Lucas, his master and only friend, jogged by his side, whistling a tune he’d made up. Around them, skeletal towers of metal and glass loomed like titans of a bygone age. Diluted sunlight streamed through jagged cracks in their facade, painting the air with fractured patterns of light and shadows.

And everywhere—quiet. The type of quiet that seeped into your bones and invited you to peer closely at everything, from the clumps of vegetation that burst from cracks in the ground to the garishly dressed plastic humanoids in the display windows to the tiny black and yellow creatures that looped through the air above their heads.

A cone of blue light projected from the robot’s crown, capturing one of the creatures in a self-contained Grav field. He carefully maneuvered it closer to get a better reading.

/HONEY BEE - a stinging winged insect that collects nectar and pollen and lives in large communities. Domesticated by neolithic humans for their wax and honey. Thought to have disappeared by the late 21st century. Current status: EXTINCT.

CX-948, or Charlie as Lucas liked to call him, released the bee and updated its status in the Universal Data Library: Recent encounter in the year 2356 AD. Population status: UNKNOWN.

Beside him, Lucas was busy kicking a red and white can down the street. It clattered into a gaping slit on the sidewalk clogged with muck and plastic detritus.

“Whooooo!” Lucas pumped the air with his fists. “And he scores! Did you see that? Did you see that?”

Charlie chirped in affirmation. He spun his lopsided, cylindrical body a few times to match Charlie’s movements as best as he could only to get his treads jammed. He tried wiggling them to ease them loose, but they stubbornly refused to budge.

“Here, let me help.” Lucas bent down and began prying something from the gap between his treads and torso. “Looks like it’s a piece of wire. Almost got—ow!”

He pulled back, sucking on his thumb. Charlie chirped apologetically and shrank back.

“It’s alright, Charlie,” Lucas said, showing him his finger. “It’s just a scratch. Besides, if I’m ever going to be an archaeologist one day like Ma and Pa, I can’t be afraid of getting down and dirty.”

Over the years, Charlie’s shiny chrome had all but faded to a cloudy gray and his once state-of-the-art treads were now rusted, leaving him barely half as fast as he’d been in his prime. Worst of all, an accident two years ago had left his voicebox cracked and dysfunctional, robbing him of his primary function.

“What good is a research bot that can’t report its findings?” Lucas’ mom had grumbled the day she gave Charlie to Lucas. “Paid 700 Holz for him and now look. Useless.”

Despite these flaws, Lucas never complained. Never rolled his eyes at him. The boy would even deliberately slow his speed when crossing rough terrains such as this one so the little robot could keep up. And this was how the little robot knew for certain that Lucas had not truly grown up, though he was bordering thirteen. Any adult would have sold him to a scrapyard for some extra change years ago. But not a child. Not his Lucas.

“What do you think they did with this, Charlie?” Lucas asked, picking up a coiled piece of glass with a metal and plastic base. “Stuck them in their ears to make themselves prettier? Or fed the metal end into their cars to make them run?”

Charlie’s neural network flared again and a second later, a word sprang into his consciousness. /Lightbulb - A pre-Collapse device used to convert electricity into light consisting of an illumination filament enclosed within a transparent glass shell.

Lucas squinted and brought the object closer to his face.

Charlie tried tuning the pitch of his chirps to mimic the cadence and tone of human speech to communicate his findings, but when he finished, he could tell from the expression on Lucas’ face that he’d failed. As usual.

“Yeah, yeah, I know what Ma and Pa said. I’ll sanitize myself head to foot when I get back to the ship, I promise. It’s just…”

Lucas gestured at the landscape. “I mean just look at all these treasures.”

Charlie adjusted the magnification of his optics and began dutifully scanning the objects around them, but before he could identify them all, Lucas added, “You know this is where we came from, Charlie? Even your ancestors. Bet they weren’t half as smart as you, though.”

The boy sighed. “One day, I’m going to figure out what this world looked like before The Collapse. Maybe even bring it back to life. Ma says it can’t be done. Not really anyway, but, hey, she also said you’d stop working before my last birthday, so pfffft she’s one to talk.”

Charlie chirped encouragingly, spinning again for emphasis. By the time he was facing Lucas, he noticed that the light in the boy’s eyes had softened into something he couldn’t pinpoint. Peace? Sadness? His neural network pulsed rapidly but could produce no explanation.

One of the most outdated setbacks of the 948 series was not being able to identify mixed emotions. Try as he might, he could not register how any being, synthetic or natural, could hold more than two feelings at once. Sad was sad. Happy was happy. But perhaps there was something he was overlooking. After all, if 1+2 could create 3, then perhaps it’s possible for Sad + Happy to also create something new. But what could it be?

In an attempt to cheer Lucas up, he caught another bee with his Grav field and presented it to Lucas.

The boy smiled and patted the robot’s round head, “C’mon, Charlie, it’s getting late. Let’s head back before sunset.”

Although Charlie took note of his assured expression and the steadiness of his voice, the little robot knew that somehow, Lucas was once again feeling something beyond his comprehension. Perhaps it had something to do with the “sunset” phenomenon.

/Sunset — The descension of the sun below the horizon as a result of the diurnal rotation of the planet.

Lucas, having been born and raised on the international starfaring ship, The Pandora, where every minutiae of his environment was carefully controlled, had clung to Charlie all night, trembling, his eyes squeezed tight, the first time he’d witnessed a sunset.

There was something sublime about the type of darkness that reigned over half a planet at any given moment. It made the shadows that flickered in the corridors of a sleeping spaceship appear like mortals before a god. It incited reverence. It demanded you face your own truth.

But Charlie understood none of this, having only been programmed to experience natural phenomena through the senses and not the soul. Nonetheless, he faithfully guarded his friend night after night, chirping softly in reassurance each time he woke up, gasping and slick with sweat.

“It’s alright, boy,” Lucas once whispered, burying his face in the robot’s side. “Ma says everyone goes through this on their first expedition. Even the bravest archaeologists. You know Pa didn’t sleep for three nights straight?” He chuckled then sighed, “Bet he would have been able to sleep better if he also had you, Charlie.”

Shadows began to elongate as the sun wheeled towards the earth. Lucas kept his hand on Charlie’s head as they walked, and Charlie gently heated his crown plate in response. Together, they picked their way through the ruins back to the research site where Ma, Pa, and the rest of the archaeology team would be busy running final diagnostics and packing up delicate equipment.

As they neared their destination, Lucas stopped and sniffed the air, a frown creasing his forehead.

“Is that—” His face paled. “No!”

Charlie chirped in alarm as his optics narrowed in on the thick column of smoke blooming in the air up ahead. Before he could caution Lucas against the dangers, the boy sprinted forward, screaming, “Ma! Pa! Where are you?!”

The little robot pushed himself as fast as his weathered body would allow him to go, chirping after Lucas all the while. Twisted metal debris tore at his treads, causing him to tilt precariously each time he turned. Within a few minutes, the boy was already leagues ahead, his figure obscured by smoke and his voice drowned by the roaring inferno.

By the time Charlie reached the research site, the smoke had grown so thick, that he lost track of Lucas altogether. He spun frantically, magnifying his optics to scan the crumpled laboratory tent and the overturned testing tables but to no avail. A loud groaning sound erupted overhead as a shadow fell over this end of the street. He propelled himself over a pile of charred boards and out of the shadow just as heavy frame of melted metal and glass crashed to the ground.

“Charlie!”

The robot raced for Lucas’ voice, chirping with relief.

“Charlie! Over here, boy!”

A second later, the silhouette of The Sterling materialized through the smoke, its sleek, teardrop body outlined in bright crimson. As he wove around the rusted shell of an overturned truck, he could feel the ship’s engine rumbling awake. This combined with his damaged threads knocked him onto his side, cracking one of his optics. Before he could resituate himself, something searing hot and heavy fell on top of him, pinning him in place.

Charlie scanned the object and discovered it was the corner piece of a stone balcony. To his right laid a few smoldering pipes, just within reach of his Grav field. He latched onto them and wedged them into the space between his head and the balcony. Then, he began to push, lifting the balcony centimeter by centimeter while painstakingly shimmying towards freedom.

Above the sound of rushing flames, he could detect two male voices shouting not too far away. He tried chirping at them but all he could produce were a few notes of static before his voicebox fell silent for good.

“I told you not to mess with those wires!” Someone was shouting.

“I’m sorry, I—”

“Slauson and Kade are dead because of you!”

“Enough! Both of you get in now!” A third voice bellowed. “Maine, how are the thrusters looking? And why is the hatch still open?”

“Charlie!” Lucas cried. “We can’t leave him!”

“I’m sorry honey, but he probably didn’t make it.”

“No! No! I heard him earlier. He’s out there.”

“Lucas, where—? Lucas! Come back!”

The balcony crashed to the ground with a loud thud as Charlie hoisted himself upright. He limped over broken asphalt and half-melted metal sheets, scouring the landscape for Lucas. Ten seconds passed. Then another. A change in the wind sent the worst of the smoke billowing toward him, eclipsing his already compromised vision. Then, almost out of nowhere, spindly arms caught him around the middle, pulling him into a familiar hug.

“Charlie!”

The little robot perked up on hearing Lucas’ voice.

“C'mon, we don’t have much time!” He cried.

Realizing that Charlie’s tattered treads would impede more than help, he began to push the little robot, despite shouts from The Sterling urging him to save himself.

He pointed at an immense shadow looming above the ship and panted, “Ma says that building’s starting to tilt!”

A gust of wind cleared some of the smoke and although Charlie only had the chance to glimpse the shape of its outline, he knew with calculated certainty that the situation was much, much worse than Lucas had painted it. The building had already snapped at the base. The entire structure from the sixth story up was tilted at a forty-five-degree angle, leaning precariously against another building directly across, whose crown had also burst into flames.

Massive slabs of flaming concrete plummeted to the earth, missing The Sterling by mere meters. The ground shook with their impact, causing Lucas to stumble and lose his grip on Charlie.

“Hold on, boy!” Lucas cried in between hacking coughs. “We’re going to make it!”

Photo by Adam Wilson on Unsplash

The distance disappeared between them and The Sterling at a steady pace. Ten meters. Nine meters. Eight. Seven. Through the haze of whirling sparks, Charlie could make out the beckoning glow of the boarding port. He could hear voices shouting. See arms waving from the safety of the ship. Someone was jumping up and down. Ma. Another figure was leaning against the wall, squinting into the darkness. Pa.

Just as Lucas thrust him through a tight opening between two twisted metal frames, a slab of concrete the size of a small car hammered the ground in front of them, obstructing their path and sending a flurry of dust and sharp bits of debris flying in their direction.

Lucas rubbed his eyes and gasped, “It’s ok, Charlie. I’m ok.”

A terrible groaning sound cut through the air followed by the shriek of a thousand metal joints fracturing. The little robot did not need to look up at the descending flames to sense what was coming next. He did not need to see The Sterling’s thrusters brighten to a fierce purple and the ship rise higher, higher to know that they had, at last, run out of time. None of that was important. What was important now was directing every last bit of his energy into his Grav field projector.

The boy gaped at the blue aura encasing him as he began to rise unsteadily into the air. Then, he began to flail his limbs, stretching his arms towards Charlie as if desperation alone was enough to cover the widening distance between them.

“No!” He sobbed. “No, Charlie! Please! Don’t!”

The crown of Charlie’s head began to hiss and smoke. Still, he pressed on, hurtling Lucas towards his only chance at salvation. The Sterling began ascending at a noticeably rapid pace, veering at sharp angles to avoid the shower of fire and brimstone. His remaining optic began to dim as he pumped his final iota of energy into the Grav field. The last thing he saw was Lucas dangling from the corner of the boarding ramp with Ma and Pa crouching over him.

He magnified Lucas’ face just before the shockwave hit. Those scrunched eyes, that wailing mouth, the tears streaking down his cheeks…Charlie recognized that expression.

/Grief - Feelings of anguish and sorrow as the result of a significant loss, usually the death of a loved one.

But there was also something else. Something thinly veiled just beneath those etches of pain. Something Charlie could only guess at with his outdated programming.

/Hope - A feeling of confidence or assurance that a certain longing will be fulfilled; Archaic: A feeling of trust.

“I’ll come back for you Charlie!” Lucas’ voice was faint, a glimmer of a lifeline amidst the primal chaos. “I promise!”

A second later, The Sterling disappeared in a pulse of light, leaving the little robot to his fate.

Discussion Thread Prompts:

• Is Charlie still alive? Will Lucas fulfill his promise to him? Share your thoughts on what you think (or hope) will happen next.

• This story belongs to the sci-fi apocalyptic genre. What’s another short story or book from this genre that inspires you? Feel free to share a link!

• Is there something you’ve lost from your childhood (a toy, a pet, a memento, etc.) that you still think about and miss to this day?

---