Chapter Text
Gyrus held back tears as he tried to wake the education droid.
“I’m sorry. Please come back! I didn’t mean to…”
“Too curious for your own good,” his most recent guardian had told him. And they were right. Gyrus had only wanted a quick peek behind the droid’s operating panel - to see if its wiring was similar to the one he had at home. But the moment his small hands had lifted its metal plating, it became limp and unresponsive.
“Please…” he cried, wiping frantically at his tears so they wouldn’t fall onto the circuitry below and cause further damage.
The careful footfalls of the classroom human aide sounded as she approached. “What’s going on over here?” she asked softly, sounding almost playful.
Guilt and grief welled up inside Gyrus. “I broke them,” he sobbed. “I broke them and they won’t wake up.”
He waited for the inevitable lecturing: You know better than this. We had a talk about this last week. Why are you making me repeat myself? I expect you to not make the same mistake a third time.
Instead, the class aide placed her hand on his shoulder as she crouched to join him in peering into the droid’s open hatch. “Oh, darling, you didn’t break them! They’re perfectly alright. In fact, they did exactly what they’re supposed to do! Here, let me show you…”
She scooped Gyrus’ small body into her arms and set him down on her leg as she tended to the droid, flipping switches and pressing buttons as she explained what had happened. “You know a lot about computers, so you’ve probably heard of sleep mode, haven’t you?”
Gyrus nodded proudly.
“I thought so!” she said with a grin. “Now, you see, droids use a lot of electricity…”
“They run on high-voltage currents,” Gyrus recited.
“Exactly! And high voltages can be dangerous to small hands,” she said, “so when a droid detects that small hands have opened its operating panel, it enters safety mode, which looks a lot like sleep mode. You didn’t break them, Gyrus. They were just trying to protect you.”
She shut the hatch and pressed the external power button on the droid, and Gyrus gasped with delight as the unit’s peripherals began to light up.
“I can’t wait to have big hands so I can turn the droids back on like you can!” Gyrus exclaimed.
The aide laughed, though Gyrus wasn’t sure why. Then she set her hand on his head and sort of… shuffled his hair around. He wasn’t sure what the gesture meant, but it felt nice. “Until then, you just let me know when you want to look at Eddie’s insides, and we can do it together, okay?”
Gyrus’ breath caught in his lungs. He wasn’t sure what he was feeling, exactly - he was happy, but he also felt like he was going to cry again.
“I’m not in trouble?” he asked.
She laughed again. “No, hon. Why would you be in trouble? Look! Eddie’s waking back up!”
The education droid emitted a series of musical beeps and began its boot-up sequence, but Gyrus was too preoccupied to feel any excitement.
It felt nice to be held like this, and yet part of him felt deeply uncomfortable. It was… foreign. He’d seen other kids’ parents hold them like this, but none of his guardians ever had, not even when he earned gold stars for his schoolwork.
With some effort, he pushed himself out of his aide’s supportive grip. Even if he wasn’t in trouble right now, he certainly hadn’t earned this. And as much as part of him wanted to take up the offer to inspect the droid together again, he would never ask.