Astro ended up with the children, who couldn't tell him apart from a human, and he played along, pretending to be a boy. It was easy for him to pretend to be human. Except that he could fly and was very strong, but he didn't show it.

They went out early in the morning, when the surface was still covered in gray fog. Somewhere high above, slowly drifting through the sky, was Metro City — clean, gleaming, as if it didn’t care about what lay below. From time to time, containers of trash fell from it with a dull rumble, and the ground trembled slightly.

“Today we’re heading to the old dump,” Zane said, slinging a bag over his shoulder. “A truck with robots crashed there yesterday. Hameg will be happy if we find anything intact.”

Kora walked ahead, nimbly jumping over twisted hulls and protruding wires. Widget muttered something under her breath, examining parts as if they might start talking to him first.

A trashcan rolled alongside him.

It looked like an old cleaning robot remade into something like a dog: a low body, battered wheels, an antenna instead of a tail. It moved in jerks, sometimes stopping to “sniff” piles of scrap and emitting short electronic sounds — bark-bark, as the kids called it.

“Hey,” Zane turned around. “Why is it stuck on you? It usually reacts like that only to broken microchips.”

“I-I don’t know,” Astro said quickly, looking away. “Maybe… it’s just glitching.”

Zane shrugged and kept walking. The others had already moved ahead — Kora and Widget were messing around near the massive frame of an old service robot and weren’t looking back.

Suddenly, the trash unit stopped.

It extended a thin manipulator and began scratching at the ground. Slowly, carefully, as if it understood the importance of every symbol.

ROBOT

Then an arrow. The arrow pointed straight at Astro.

Zane snorted. “Ah, well. I can’t read anyway.”

He waved his hand and ran to catch up with the others.

Astro smirked. “Nice try, trashcan.”