Some Assembly Required (675 words)

And the weekly prompts keep coming, over at https://moreoddsthanends.home.blog/  Here's my response to 

The STEM toy seemed like a great idea for your son/daughter/friend’s kid/young cousin/etc. Who wouldn’t want to build their own robot? But maybe you should have considered…

Some Assembly Required (675 words)

By Mike Barker

 

It all started late in the summer. Abner, the boy next door, started coming over to our yard, and asking questions like how big is Mars and Jupiter, how many motors does it take to build a robot, why do cats fall down on their feet... all the typical STEM curiosities. Some of it we could answer with Google, but by August, we were trying to figure out something to keep him busy. 

 

So when we saw it on TV, the STEM robot toy kit sounded just right for him. He was in elementary school, second or third grade, but his parents said he was really interested in science, so we thought it would encourage him. When we took it over, his parents looked pleased, and he immediately opened it up and started looking at the manuals and all the pieces in it. Then he blinked, and remembered to thank us, before he dragged it all off to his room. His parents then thanked us, saying that they really didn't know how to keep up with him!

 

We didn’t see him for a while after that. Oh, we saw occasional flashes, like the day he walked into his backyard and ran a pair of legs without any body around and around in the grass. Then he frowned, and disappeared again. We chuckled, and guess that the robot toy kit really had been a good idea.

 

School started, and of course, we saw him trudging off to school and back again. But apparently he was busy now, so the little visits and odd questions pretty much stopped. We kind of wondered if he was still working on his robot or not, but it was pretty quiet as autumn deepened.

 

Then things started to disappear. Our trash can disappeared, one of the other neighbors said some piping vanished, little odds and ends. No one quite knew what was going on. Our neighborhood had never had trouble with thefts, but now there seemed to be something happening.

 

Then one day... well, it was Halloween, so we expected some strange sights. A ghost here, sheets blowing in the wind, and a pirate waving a toy sword there were worth chuckles. The teenager who gave a nervous chuckle and said, "I'm pretending to be an extrovert," and held out his bag got a laugh, too.

 

But then it came out of the dark and pushed our door buzzer.

 

We opened the door and blinked at it. It stood taller than the door. The legs, well, after a moment, we realized they were pipes. Long, skinny pipes, with large flat feet at the bottom, and big knobs at what must be the knees.

 

On top of that, there was a... was it a trash can? Yes, our trash can that had disappeared a week beforehand. We recognized the rust pattern on it! Now it made a sort of body.

 

Holes in the side let the arms extend out. Those were two by fours, with another set of gears at the elbows, and at the ends, where there should be hands, there were pincers. Like a crab or something, but plastic? With what looked like sponge rubber on the tips.

 

Of course, on top, a head protruded. We couldn’t tell what the throat was, but something was holding up a grinning carved pumpkin. That’s right, a jack o' lantern was glowing and grinning at us from up top of this apparition.

 

Then the voice said, “Trick or treat! Abner says thanks again for giving him the kit that let him build me! Don’t worry, we like you, so I’ll come visit any time.”

 

It waved its arms. And held out a bag in one gripper.

 

We quickly poured several handfuls of candy into the bag.

 

It nodded, and turned, wobbling a bit, but quickly gained a new balance. As it moved off, it called back to us. 

 

“Have a happy Halloween! Just remember, robots are here to help you!”

 

We closed the door, turned off the lights, and shivered for a while...

 

The end