Hope for Tomorrow

This is the story of a hopeful robot and his race to save humanity. But I should warn you now, before you get attached: this story does not have a happy ending. It is full to the brim with adventure and hot air balloons and is bursting at the seams with friendship and spaghetti noodles. But a happy ending it does not have.

There is a small town somewhere across the ocean that is much like your own town, except for the Super Invention Factory smack dab in the middle. It was begun by Samuel Finkle, a man with a mission to make life easier for the residents of his beloved town. He quickly made a name for himself as a cunning creator of great gadgets and odd objects. Every spring a festival in his honor was held in the town square and the townspeople waited with bated breath for the unveiling of his latest invention.

How I’d love to fill your ears with Finkle’s incredible inventions- auto nose hair clippers, living hats, jello couches- but we haven’t the time. This story centers on Finkle’s final creation, his magnum opus: the Weather Bot (not a very creative name for a sophisticated super-mechanical weather-predicting machine, but Finkle was old, and you have to cut old people slack. It’s one of the Big Rules in life, the other being cover your mouth when you sneeze).

It was May and unbeknownst to the town the final Finkle Festival. A hush of a breeze passed through the waiting crowd, scattering flower petals and mussing hairdos. The microphone on stage squealed. A baby cried. Slowly a silver wheelchair creaked into view, carrying the hunched and grayed Samuel Finkle. He reached the microphone and stretched a shriveled, shaking hand into his pocket. With a voice as soft as cobwebs, he whispered “Presenting, the Weather Bot. May he bring you joy.” Finkle uncurled his fingers and revealed a smiling robot, only six inches tall. “Weather report, please”, Finkle croaked. The robot buzzed and hummed, and then with a PING! a printed report from his belly revealed the seven-day forecast. The crowd erupted and Finkle smiled.

The Weather Bot was a hit and everyone in town eventually had a W.B. tucked next to the coffee pot or perched on a microwave. But Finkle soon died and not long after the townspeople discovered Two Day Shipping and the old factory in the middle of town was boarded up. Who needed an old inventor when you could ship any manner of convenience to your doorstep? There were so many packages being sent to town that mailmen whizzed about in jetpacks, frantically trying to keep up. (It wasn’t uncommon in those days to glimpse a mailman catching a break in a tree or atop a power pole. I even heard one caw once.)

Everything was going fine until the third Monday in July fifteen years after Finkle’s death. It wasn’t a particularly special Monday, as far as Mondays go. Mrs. Johnson was pushing a pod into the coffee machine when her Weather Bot signaled an impending weather forecast. Bzzzzz….. Ping!

She was smearing cream cheese onto a burnt bagel when a word caught her eye on the printing report.

“Good morning! Weather report for 7/7-7/14:

Monday: Sunny, high of 72

Tuesday: Sunny, high of 75

Wednesday: Scattered showers, low of 68

Thursday: Sunny, high of 77

Friday: Cloudy, high of 70

Saturday: Sunny, high of 80

Sunday: Ice storm, low of -15”

Mrs. Johnson tore the report from W.B.’s belly and read it again. A bit of cream cheese left a greasy splotch on the thin paper. Ice storm in July. The woman ran a finger over the Weather Bot’s dusty head. Its electronic face smiled. She bit her lip.

On Tuesday morning W.B. generated an updated report.

“Update for 7/8:

Tuesday: high of 80

Saturday: low of -32”

This time Mr. Johnson read it with his wife. “Sorry darling, it’s broke.” He crumpled the paper into a ball and tossed it toward the trash (he missed). Mrs. Johnson followed her husband to the dumpster behind their apartment, her terry cloth robe swishing around her slippers.

“Oh, Doug. It was a wedding present; I’d hate to part with it.”

Mr. Johnson huffed about things not being made like they used to anymore and stomped across the already warm parking lot. The last thing the Weather Bot saw as the dumpster lid closed was Mrs. Johnson’s purple hair curlers.

              When the dumpster lid was next opened the Weather Bot was completely covered in weather reports. In fact, the entire dumpster was bloated to the brim with printed reports. He heard the lid crack open with a thud, and dazzling sunlight bore between the layers of paper.

A mechanical voice with an Australian accent pierced the silence, each word electronically pronounced. “Tsk, what do we have here?” A slender metal arm shuffled through the pile of reports before grabbing W.B.’s left arm.  “No. It can’t be.” W.B. was plucked into the air like carnival toy and dangled before a blinking screen. And there, grinning like a ghost from the grave, was Samuel Finkle. Well, a version of him at least.

“A Weather Bot! My greatest creation.” The electronic voice was clear but the picture of Finkle’s face didn’t move. “Say, how do you like the new body? I’m just like you now.” The Finkle Bot placed W.B. on the lid of the dumpster and gave him a twirl. His metal body and arms were as slender as pencils, and his eight mechanical legs moved like a spider. W.B. was silent.

“Oh don’t be scared, dear boy. Before I died, I placed my consciousness in this robot, its standard fare. I never need to shower or eat or go to the dentist again. Really, I should have done this decades ago. I feel fantastic!” W.B. eyed him warily.

“The accent? I think it suits me. You’re just jealous because I didn’t give you a voice box.” The Finkle Bot poked W.B. in the chest and then tore the reports free. “Good golly, you’ve been busy.” He hemmed and hawed down the line of paper, his mechanical fingers tapping like raindrops. When he had read every forecast he rubbed his robot forehead. “It’s worse than I thought. Come now, do you want to save the world?” W.B. buzzed and jumped onto his feet.

“That’s my boy. Follow me to my steed. I’ll explain everything on the road.” Idling behind the dumpster was a rowboat. Finkle Bot climbed in and patted the seat beside him. “All aboard.”

As I’m sure you’ve seen one before, and I don’t want to bore you to tears, I won’t describe the rowboat aircraft in finite detail. Let’s just say, when Finkle Bot pushed the hot air balloon button and they lifted it into the sky, it was beautiful.

              As they picked up speed, W.B. glanced over the edge of the hot airboat and watched the deserted town sail by. Cars lay rusting in gutters and ivy was growing over entire homes. “Sad, really. That no one listened.” Finkle Bot sighed and hovered a metal finger over a button on his screen. “I don’t mean to frighten you, Weather Bot, but you must know what happened.”

Images of ice storms ravaging the beach on a hot summer’s day flicked by. A torrential flood licking chimneys. Black smog coating spring flowers in sludge. Few humans remained in each photo.

“Weather Bots across town began reporting odd forecasts, but folks didn’t listen. They threw you away and plugged their ears.”

W.B. looked sadly at the passing clouds below them, snapshots of deserted towns between the cloud breaks.

“The earth is dying, Weather Bot. We’re killing it.”

As an abandoned robot unable to fulfill his purpose, W.B. sulked, but just for a moment. He was built to be very hardy, so after a moment of feeling sorry for himself and the world he hopped onto his small feet and -PING!- printed a weather report.

“Good morning!

Tomorrow there will be a chance for sun.”

Finkle Bot chuckled a mechanical laugh. “You’re right, there’s always a chance.” He tore the report from W.B.’s belly and folded it into his hand. “But we are running out of time and I need your help. The storms are spreading but if we can warn the next towns over we may be able to fix it.”

W.B. patted his belly.

“That’s right, I need you to show them what you know.”

The hot airboat sliced through the sky, tufts of cloud shredded in its wake. Finkle Bot held W.B.’s small hand and smiled.

The next town over that hadn’t been touched by the impending storms was a town known the region over for their delicious spaghetti. They were a proud people and not ones to usually listen to reason. The hot airboat touched down outside the town square, which drew some attention.

“People! Listen! You must listen to my small friend.” Finkle Bot held W.B. into the sky as a new weather forecast for their town pinged from his belly. The people stared and then began to move away.

Finkle Bot grew desperate. “No, please listen! Terrible weather is coming your way unless we change. We can’t treat the earth like our dumpster, we must change.” The people didn’t listen.

Finkle Bot filled his air with lungs and bellowed, “THE STORMS WILL TAKE AWAY YOUR SPAGHETTI!” A hush grew over the town square. The people listened.

And what happened next? Well, in the beginning, I told you this story didn’t have a happy ending. And in some ways, it doesn’t. Entire towns were wiped out and the only reason people started listening to Finkle Bot and W.B. was under threat of losing their pasta. But listen they did, and they worked with Finkle Bot to create inventions that took care of waste. It wasn’t perfect, storms still came. But they worked together to create a better future. (And they didn’t lose a single strand of spaghetti.)