"By Design" a children's short story, DRAFT 1

"By Design" a children's short story, DRAFT 1

Once there was a very special robot. This robot was made with hands and wheels and a network antenna. This robot went through its life happy, feeling the joys of the world around it. It felt hot things and cold things, things that were rough and things that were smooth, things that were soft and things that were hard, and things that were wet and things that were dry. And this robot loved all of the things.

But as it grew it learned to listen with his antenna and began to hear the other robots around it. They mocked it for not being built like they were, not being "complete" like they were. For they told it that they could see with their radar, a component that it did not have.

And so this robot became sad in the knowledge that it was not like the others. It became sad that It could not do what they could, and that it would never be what they were. It did not want to believe them, but it used its hands and felt its face and found no place for sight of any kind.

At this the robot became so sad that it turned off its network card and would not listen or talk to the other robots. It set its wheels to auto and drove until its motors would not carry it any further. It looked for the edge of everything so that it might find a place to hide.

But there at the edge of the world it found something it did not expect. Its wheel got stuck on something that whirred and shook and prevented it from going any further. The robot reluctantly turned on its hands and reached out to move the strange object blocking its path.

The robot soon found this unusual object to be unusually stubborn. Every time it moved the object the object moved back into its path, and it could not continue forward. While it struggled with the strange thing it started to notice how this object felt. The strange object was soft but it was also hard, it had bends and curves and wheels and bumps and divots. It was a shape unlike anything else the robot had ever experienced. And soon it found that this object had an antenna, just like the robot did. The robot turned his antenna on to find that the small thing was trying to talk to it. "Listen" it said, "please listen, there is a ravine ahead and if you are not careful you will fall into it and may break."

"That would be fitting" the robot said, "For I am flawed by design, created different, unable to be what the other robots are. I do not understand why I was made this way, but since I am not what I should be, what harm would it do if I did fall?"

"No" the small robot said, "You are not like them, but who said that you should be? You may not be the same but your designer did love you very much. You are red and blue and gold, filled with bright colors that they do not have."

"What do you mean? How do you know this?" the robot asked.

"Because I am not like them either, though I do not have hands to feel, I have light receptors that see color. And I see that you, in your difference are more beautiful than they are. You are not the same, but you were never meant to be. Turn on your antenna fully and I will turn on mine and I will share with you. I will show you the colors that you cannot see if you will show me what it means to feel, I was designed this way as well and I have never felt anything, yet I have always wished to know what water feels like and sand and sky and light."

The robot heard these words and remembered how much he loved all of the things he did have, he rediscovered his own unique talent and turned on his antenna to share it. As soon as he did and the other robot did the same, the two realized that they would never be incomplete as long as they had each other. And so they stayed together the rest of time and were happy to be different; because it meant that they would always have something beautiful to give that the other would appreciate.

the end.