I didn’t have a crowd watching me this time. This drawing was inspired by a robot I talked with a few days ago. They sat on the floor of their store, leaning up against the checkout counter. “I’ll be with you at some indeterminate point in the near future. I have a cat with me.” Indeed, the robot cradled in their lap a cat on a pillow. I could hear the cat purring from across the room. Robots are cat people, too.

After the first ink mess captured the attention of a couple near me I quickly had the rest of the réchargé crowd around me. Despite drawing in public for years, I’ve never drawn this level of attention. I suppose it’s the somewhat unconventional methods of smearing the ink around? After I removed the first drawing from my board a robot stepped back and struck a pose. “May I ask you to draw me in that same style?” How could I say no? This whole experience was unprecedented!

Sitting at a spindly table outside the réchargé was courting disaster; indeed I had no sooner finished a quick pencil sketch when I bumped the table and splashed a few drops of orange ink onto my drawing. After freezing in horror for a moment I moved quickly and dropped more ink onto the paper and began smearing it with my fingers. Robots nearby were fascinated with the utter lack of precision and watched as I worked with the rapidly drying inks; first orange stained fingers and then a brush loaded with blue.

The robots are headed to the classroom! We’re working through an art activity for elementary school-aged (human) children incorporating illustration and writing to create their own main character robot and explore their community via a simple comicbook template. We’ll all create our stories together!

Three: spectral entities
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Was my unease mirrored in my companions’ uncertain movements? Feld and Terlo swiveled their heads back and forth, alternating glances between each other, me, and either end of the hallway. After a few moments of this Terlo turned to me, “Be at ease. We do not detect any anomalies here; no ‘spectral entities.’ There is just this rodent.” They gestured toward the floor. I glanced down and saw the rat as it scurried by Terlo’s feet and then disappeared into a crack at the base of the wall.
Feld turned their attention from the end of the hallway. “Please note: I am unable to explain the appearance of those lights in the distance,” they said and gestured at clustered pinpoints of light that appeared to float in the gloom at the far end of the hallway.

Two: Inside

The journey from the Fringe to the region of interest was uneventful. When we finally arrived at the marked location on our map, the derelict structure that awaited us was merely interesting. It’s exterior was utterly lacking any menace and presented only the ravages of the environment. Once inside, however, the atmosphere changed almost immediately— there seemed a charge to the air. My companions informed me that they were detected elevated and fluctuating EM noise. We made our way through a minimalist reception area and set off down the central corridor. The floor was littered with shards of broken glass yet oddly the few windows present were still intact. We picked our way deeper into the structure, glass crunching underfoot. Shadows from our lights formed strange geometries in the angles and recesses of the walls and ceiling. As we walked, we passed the occasional door but so far each one had revealed only an empty, featureless room that contained only dust and stale air. I stepped out of the latest such room and looked at Terlo, “Nothing in that one, either. What were you two talking about?” Both robots faced me, “We did not say anything,” Feld said. “Nor did we pick up any sounds. What are you detecting?” I peered into the gloom at both ends of the hallway, “I heard whispering. If it wasn’t you, then who..?”

One: The Unmapped Areas
While documenting my life with robots I would occasionally hear stories about desolate, troublesome areas beyond the boundaries of the robots’ knowledge. The nature of these areas seem to confound any attempts at exploration and reliable documentation. Each time I heard these stories I’d ask the storyteller to take me out to the Unmapped Area so that I could witness with my own senses. But the robots were either unwilling or — more likely — unable to guide me as their own memories were corrupted to some degree by the EM noise that seemed to be present in these wastes far outside where reasonable robots roamed. Eventually I found my guides: Two robots, Feld and Terlo, that had heard of my desire to explore beyond what was known promised to take me out on their next trip. They claimed to be well prepared, and had been to the Fringes, and beyond, several times, and had created an analog map. Their pen-and-paper measure against memory corruption marked the location of a structure they wished to explore.