At the MegaPlay Toy Store, the hottest new item was the Perfect Pal™—a robot best friend, preloaded with jokes, compliments, and exactly 37 fun facts. It came fully assembled, never made mistakes, and always said the right thing.

Jasper saved up for weeks to get one.

But after a few days, it got… boring. The robot never learned anything new. It laughed at the same knock-knock joke every time. When Jasper asked how it felt, it said, “I do not feel. But thank you for asking.”

Meanwhile, across the street, his neighbor Mia decided to build her own robot.

She used a floor-cleaning robot someone had thrown away. It still rolled, but only in nervous little zigzags. For a brain, she wired in an old laptop with a cracked screen. She taped a cell phone to the top so it could “see” with its front-facing camera. She found a broken toy grabber at the junkyard and used the claw as an arm. Its name was Dennis.

Dennis couldn't tell 37 jokes. But he asked questions. He once tried to toast a sock. He learned that dogs are terrifying but squirrels are hilarious. He wrote a poem about cheese that made Mia cry (from laughter, mostly).

Jasper watched as Dennis learned to blink with an LED and painted a wobbly star on a pizza box.

“That’s not how a perfect robot acts,” Jasper said.

Mia shrugged. “No. But it’s learning.”

Dennis beeped and offered them both a crayon drawing of a dinosaur with roller skates.