Story Time: Robot world

Published April 6, 2019
Illustration by Sophia Khan
Illustration by Sophia Khan

One day, my father, who is a scientist, showed me one of his new creations, a teleportation device.

He told me, “If you press the red button, it would teleport you to any random place, but that place would be far away from where you start. And if you are touching something, it will also teleport with you.”

While holding my father’s hand, I pressed the red button. I was immediately teleported to a robotic world along with my father. There we saw some robots working. There was a hotel nearby so we thought to check it to see if we could find another human in this mysterious location.

I didn’t find any human, but we found even more robots there. I thought that if they were programmed to work like this, they may be programmed to understand English too. To my relief, they actually did understand English and asked me what I would want to eat.

My father said that anything halal would be good. The robot quickly bought us two grilled cheese sandwiches. As we eat our sandwiches, we decided to check out the hotel and rent a room for a day. The rooms were pretty great and we checked into one to have a place to sleep.

This world was amazing. It had everything that was there on earth, but way better. The place had amazing laptops, computers, phones, tablets, televisions and every other piece of technology you could dream of

After freshening up, we stepped out to see more of the place we had teleported to. There was a phone shop near the hotel, so we decided to go there as we didn’t have a phone or any means of communication. The shop had phones which were better than every single phone on Earth. For instance, if we compare the phones there to the latest model of an iPhone, the iPhone will be like a potato compared to these.

This world was amazing. It had everything that was there on earth, but way better. The place had amazing laptops, computers, phones, tablets, televisions and every other piece of technology you could dream of. Other than that, this planet had modified literally everything to become based around technology. You thought that a 4K resolution camera or even an 8K camera were good here, we saw some 50K cameras in the shop. The place was a technology fan’s ultimate paradise.

When we got tired of roaming around, we returned to our room to rest. But when we turned to lie down, we saw an empty bed. We were wondering where the pillows and blankets were when my father said that since there was so much technology there, probably some machines would come and arrange the bed.

There were buttons on the nightstand and I pressed one of these. As we expected, mechanical hands came out of the side of the bed and started setting the bed with pillows and blankets from a drawer under the bed!

We both were shocked to see how much could be done with technology. As we were very tired, we quickly went to sleep.

After we woke up the next day, I pressed another button and the bed started to clear and it was made as new in seconds. We went downstairs for breakfast and had an egg sandwich with banana milkshake.

We planned to explore the place more that day, so we asked the robot at the hotel reception if there were any modes of transportation in this world. We were told that there was a car dealership not far away, so we went there to see what we could get.

At car dealership, we saw a hovering car. We immediately selected it. Luckily, my father had his wallet with his credit card, but not cash. We were pleased that credit card was acceptable in this world. Excitedly, we got into the car and as my father drove the car, I found a very useful feature through which I could select any place on the map in the car’s system and the car would drive itself there. I selected an amusement park and we reached there in about three minutes.

There was a rollercoaster there that looked very exciting, so I insisted that we go on it. It had a lot of amazing features like setting its speed and a screen showing the live view of the rollercoaster from different angles that one could select.

The rollercoaster was pretty cool, but there was more to see. There was a seasaw that could be used by one person instead of two, with hands sticking out of the ground which pull and push on one side of the seasaw while you push and pull on the other side. Then there were slides that first looked like the regular ones we have on Earth, but mid-way some parts could be extend and turned with the push of a button according to the choice of the person going down the slide. That made it more fun and longer.

However, the only one thing I missed about Earth was the greenery. There was no grass on the land and the sky was grey because of the factories where so many robots and technology were being made. This also made the sky seem polluted.

Now I wanted to go back to Earth because I missed grass. I turned to my father and told him that I wanted to go back home now. He said it wasn’t a problem, for all I had to do was press a return button in the teleportation device that had teleported with me as I was holding it when I first pressed it to come here. Sure enough, the moment I pressed it, while holding on to my father too, I found myself back home. Though I found the robot world interesting, there is no better place than Earth!

Published in Dawn, Young World, April 6th, 2019

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