Road Less Taken 1 | Page 10

Upgrade

Economically friendly saucers that run on vegetable oil zip by at exceedingly fast speeds. Moon rovers transport supplies across the smoothed over moon’s surface. Simple boxlike structures are scattered across the surface in clusters attached to the ground by massive beams stuck in the ground through the foundation. The earth can be seen high above the atmosphere acting much like the moon used to. These are just of the few things found in NASA’s Moon City.

Fish woke to the sound of the beeping of his alarm clock. Air bubbles burst to the surface as he heaved a big sigh. He stretched his scientifically modified fins and rose for the day. He held his breathe and surfaced to attach his helmet. He filled it with some water and then attached to his airtight suit. He then proceeded to crawl out of his tank and crawl down the ladder to the floor.

Today he needed to finish his report for school. He had written everything out and just needed to print and staple it. He booted up his robot, 500, and asked him to print out his report. The report came out but the report wasn’t stapled! When Fish asked 500 what was wrong with the stapler 500 said that it was jammed.

Fish didn’t know what to do. He decided that he would try to get his report stapled at his friend Dog’s house. Dog was very happy to see him. He needed to staple his report too and couldn’t get his robot to staple his report either. So Dog asked Fish if 500’s stapler was working. Fish replied that he had actually come over to ask Dog if his own robot was working. Fish was devastated. He was really counting on Dog to be able to get his report stapled and now neither of them were able to get them stapled.

They decided that next they would try Fish’s grandmother’s house to see if her robot would be able to staple their reports for them. Again they met with failure so they devised a plan to go through the whole of NASA Moon City, visiting each house to ask if they could borrow their stapler. At every house it was the same answer either the owner’s of the robots replied that just that morning the staplers in the printers had quit working or when Fish or Dog put in their report it came out unstapled. Finally, they gave up and went to Fish’s house for a snack.

When 500 brought them their snacks they started to brainstorm ideas on why all the printers in the world weren’t working. Dog thought maybe the robots were on strike but they decided that wasn’t practical since the robots didn’t mind printing the reports in the first place. Then Fish thought that maybe all the staplers were out of staples. They figured it was worth a try so they asked 500 to show him his staples.

When 500 opened his compartment to his printer however they saw a flashing red light. Fish asked 500 to stop before he opened his stapler and pressed the red button. The panel on 500’s screen said upgrade commencing and had a little green bar that began to fill up. After the upgrade was complete Fish decided to try to staple his report one last time. He put his paper into 500 and it came out without a staple but it was fused in the upper left hand corner as if it was stapled.

Fish couldn’t believe all this time and all 500 needed was an upgrade to staple his paper together. The people of earth must have produced a new system of stapling and sent out the upgrade without sending out a message. He was just glad that they had finally figured out what was wrong. Fish and Dog once again made a round around the city telling people about the upgrade and how to install it. In the morning they both turned in their newly fused reports for school. Many of the other children at Fish’s school had been having the same exact problem as Fish and were very thankful that Fish had discovered what the problem was. From then on every time Fish had a problem with 500 he always checked for upgrades.

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