PANDEMONIUM

one

A robot cat is not something I ever imagined having as a pet but when my dad told me that he might have a shot at building one I got really curious and decided to help him out. I always kinda wanted one of those robotic pets from the shops when I was little, but my parents couldn't afford them. Back then I actually got upset when they told me I couldn't have one but knowing now just how silly they can be, I'm grateful they didn't. Plus, I know my dad can do better. He can build a machine that will move in different directions like a remote-controlled car (which he promised we could build together later) and even jump up and down and stretch its legs like a spring. The only thing it wouldn't be able to do is speak or meow since we didn't have the parts for that.

I watched my dad build the robot the whole time. I read his blueprints with him and memorized all the steps he took to put all the moving parts in place and when we were almost finished, I handed him a screwdriver and he smiled and pieced together the last bits. "Ta-da!" he said when he screwed in the last bolt.

Then he turned to me and said, "Would you like to paint it?" I had many canvasses and a drawer filled with tube paint in my bedroom but this would be the first time I painted a machine. I told him yes, since it looked easy enough and Dad produced a bucket of blue paint from our old rusty shed and tore it open. Then he handed me a white brush and told me to get started.

I walked over to the dusty green bench that Dad put the robot on. Benny walked behind me the whole time, his little black eyes stared eagerly at my hand. Benny was my pet pig and he followed me outside after he woke up, mostly keeping quiet and watching me quietly read the blueprints. After I was done painting the blue skin, I drew two cute black eyes onto the cat's face and Benny grunted in surprise. Maybe he thought it was coming to life or something.

Dad said, "If this robot actually works, Oggie, we could spend the whole year making more of them. Bigger ones, maybe."

I smiled at the robotic cat. The parts we used weren't so shiny but we washed and polished them and they were a nice shade of blue now and, to me, they looked just as good as what you can get in the stores these days.

Dad really struggled building the cat's body. That's where all the machinery and moving parts went. The batteries, the wires, the cogs and bolts, the mechanism that makes the cat walk and jump. If my grandfather was here, he would have thought this was super fancy tech but these days having a robotic pet is just as common as having a real one.

The last thing we added to the machine was a rubber tail with a stiff wire inside. The tail was functionally useless but it wouldn't look much like a cat without it.

"Now for the batteries..." dad said to himself.

That's when I got an interesting idea. It wasn't really smart but I still felt like I had to try it.

"What if we gave it a different kind of energy?" I said. "Then you wouldn't have to waste your batteries on a toy."

"Oh, I don't mind using my batteries, Oggie," dad sad. "We don't have any other kinds of energy, anyway."

I smiled. "Yes, we do." And then I reached out my hand towards the cat's head.

Benny blinked and cocked his head to the side like he was confused. Or was it that he could tell that something strange was about to happen?

I haven't used my powers in months and I didn't just want to simply sit there and wait for my dad's approval to use them. I had a vague understanding of what I could do but I wanted to know more. For as long as I could remember, I have had this strange expendable energy inside of me that I could use whenever I wanted. I was trying to find out what would happen if I put that energy inside a robot. So I touched the cat's head and opened the flood gates to let my power leave me. It felt uncomfortable. Like that moment when you're too sleepy to stay awake in class and your eyes start to droop but your chair is too rough and hard to relax in so you just have to force yourself to stay alert. Giving energy made me feel weak, which made a lot of sense, I guess. I just hoped that I didn't accidentally give my soul away along with my energy. I never really knew exactly what I was letting go of when I used my powers.