Seeking Magic

“Zike!” the child calls. “Where are you? Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

Zikon lets out a small sound of laughter. Not a loud one, but a subtle one. Their programing allows them to feel amusement, but the laugh is more for the girl’s benefit than theirs. It’s a clue, you see. Because although the girl has told them to come out, they know she doesn’t mean it yet. She’ll let them know when she becomes so frantic that the game is over. Until then, she’ll look through the forest in search of her friend. And hopefully in the process, she’ll find the surprise they’ve planted.

“Zike! The leaves keep moving! They covered up your tracks! It’s no fair!”

The robot lets out another chuckle, a little louder than the last one. This child hears this time and goes still. “I heard that!” She begins to creep in the right direction. “I know you’re here somewhere! You didn’t climb a tree, did you? We agreed no climbing!”

Indeed, they did. Just last week one of the child’s friends fell from a tree. Zikon would never forgive themselves if something like that were to happen to their human. And for an artificial intelligence than can be easily ported into a new body when one wears out, never can last a very long time.

The girl has made it to the other side of the tree Zikon lays behind when she spots something. It’s shiny like a gemstone, not shiny like the metal of Zike’s casing, but she stops anyway. Kneeling to the ground, she reaches for the shiny object. It sticks out like a rock, but when she tries to pick it up she realizes it’s attached to something buried. “Zike… I found something weird.”

If Zikon had a face that allowed for smiles, they would smile now. You see, they planted the shiny object. It’s the top of a jar made of brightly painted glass, which the girl sees quickly as she pulls it from the soil without questioning why the dirt around it is packed so loosely.

“Zike!” she exclaims. “There’s a map! I found a treasure map! Come see!”

Feeling proud of themselves, Zikon climbs to their feet and goes to look. The rest of the day, they know, is going to be given over to hunting for a mysterious treasure. “Let me look.”

The child reaches out and taps her robotic companion. “I found you!” she says as she holds up the map Zikon drew the night before and hid as she lay sleeping. “See this? It was left by a fairy! She says that if I follow all the clues and prove myself worthy, I’ll get something. What does that say?”

Zikon pretends to read the note. “Enchanted treasure.”

“Wow. I’ll get an enchanted treasure. I want one!”

“Indeed,” says Zikon. “An enchanted treasure sounds very valuable.”

“Oh, yes.” The girl nods with all the solemnity a six-year-old can muster. “They are. And very pretty. I will find it and it will make Loiuse Sinclair all kinds of jealous, because even if she found a note like this, she’s not smart enough to figure out where to go!”

“And where do we go?”

The girl tilts her head. “Well, that’s a picture of the waterfall. So I think we look near there.”

“Very well,” says Zikon, somewhat wishing that they did have the ability to smile. “Lead on, my lady.”

Grinning, the child leaps up and starts to run through the woods, her metal friend close behind her. When the girl grows up, she’ll come to realize that most of her childhood adventures had been orchestrated by her loving nannybot. But for today, the magic is real.

The above image is "A Matter of Time" by Matt Dixon, whose work may be found at https://www.mattdixon.co.uk/

The image was offered as a prompt on my writing prompt project Wording Wednesday, more information about which may be found at https://wordingwednesday.blogspot.com/

Rust

This story was written in response to this image by Goro Fujita, which was used as a visual prompt on G+'s Writer's Discussion Group.

Mayva frowned at the scene laying outside in the garden. “He's all rusty and he doesn't care.”

“I don't know,” her brother said. He pushed back the thick strand of black hair that threatened to cover his face. Mayva had no idea why he didn't cut it. Her own hair never got more than an inch long. “I think maybe he thinks he deserves it.”

“Deserves it?”

As they watched, the once invincible IR-49-A, affectionately known to those he defended as Ira, moved a chess piece that put him one obvious move away from being in checkmate.

“And does he deserve to lose to a cat?”

Marc grunted. “Playing like that, I'd say he does.”

The cat moved a bishop and looked up in triumph.

Ira just nodded.

“I don't get it.” Mayva leaned a hip against the windowsill. “Was there hardware damage from the Arbor Day fiasco? I know Zip is smarter than a normal cat, but...”

“He let her win.”

The siblings stared down as the songbird that had been sitting on Ira's head hopped down to take the cat's place across the chessboard.

“He's going to let the bird beat him too, isn't he?”

Marc let out a long breath that smelled of the tuna sandwich he'd had for lunch. “He usually does. He's gotten a lot worse since you moved out. Not that there's a correlation there.”

“Have you looked into replacements?”

“Of course I have.” He shook his head and his hair fell into his face again. “We could afford one. But...”

“Yeah.” Although Mayva was the less sentimental of the two, even she wasn't keen on the idea of chucking the robot who had been equal parts bodyguard and nanny during her childhood. And it wasn't like the mansion was under that great a threat anymore. Things weren't like when she was little and they were attacked by other families on a weekly basis. “But if someone did do something, would he even defend us?”

Marc glared at her. “He's still Ira. His programming won't let him ignore an actual threat.”

“So is he depressed because there isn't one? Does he need someone to fight?”

“Dunno. I don't think so.” There was a long silence while they watched Ira's opening moves. He was, indeed, going to let the bird beat him. “He said something the other day about how it was nice not to have to worry about hurting people anymore.”

“But it's his job to hurt people!”

Below them, the robot spun his head. “No,” he said, startling his opponent.

“Tweet?”

There was no way the two upstairs could know he was talking. His mouth stayed in a perfect smiling curve whether he made noise or not. But they saw him looking and ducked out of view.

He turned back to the bird. “The humans just described my function as causing harm to other humans.”

The bird nudged a pawn, then clicked his beak in question. The cat, who sat beside the board watching the game, gave a snort and bent to lick her paw.

“My job is to stop people from being hurt.”

“Tweet,” replied the bird, acknowledging that this was an important distinction.

Ira moved a rook, wished his humans understood, and knew they never would. Not the spoiled children, now spoiled adults, that he'd killed to protect.

He shook his head, which dislodged a clump of rust. The rust drifted slowly from his neck to lay on the grass as Ira slid his queen into danger and hoped it was a bad enough move to help his avian friend win.