“No, no, thank you, Cog. I’m fine. It’s just . . .” She takes out her notebook and clicks open her pen. “Can you tell me how you made your shopping decisions?”

I explain my cheese dilemma to her and my idea about brushing my teeth with Whizzy Cheese. She nods a lot and jots down notes.

When she is done taking notes, she clicks her pen closed and pockets her notebook. “Well, we have some things to work on, mainly concerned with judgment. But for a first attempt, you did a very good job, Cog.”

I feel warm inside. It is a familiar sensation, something I experience whenever Gina tells me I have done something well.

“But we actually don’t need all this cheese,” she continues. “Nor do we need seven dozen apples or eight different kinds of orange juice or twelve different varieties of dish soap. So let’s start putting most of this back.”

I learn that unshopping takes longer than shopping.

As we return items to shelves, Gina explains to me where my judgment was faulty and led me astray.

“Is my judgment the result of a bug?” I ask her. “Can you fix it?”

“No,” she says, hanging seven bags of shredded cheese back on their hooks. “It’s just something you have to learn. It’s like my old professor used to tell me: ‘Good judgment comes from experience, but experience comes from bad judgment.’ That means we learn by making mistakes.”

I process this for a while.

“How long did it take you to learn good judgment?”

“Oh, I’m still learning it, buddy. I’m learning it all the time.”

That night as I lie in my room, unable to enter sleep mode, I look at my stars. I imagine I can see beyond them, through the ceiling of my room, through the roof, through the sky.

I think about what Gina told me.

We learn by making mistakes.

I am Cog. Short for “cognitive development.” I am built to learn. Which must mean I am built to make mistakes.

I form a decision: To increase my learning, tomorrow I shall make some big mistakes.

Chapter 2

WHEN MORNING COMES I CONSUME my portion of biofuel, which is called breakfast.

I am supposed to clean myself and get dressed before joining Gina in the laboratory for my learning period, but instead of going to the lab, I walk very quietly down the hall and cross the living room to the front door.

The door is kept locked and requires a key, but only from the outside. I am not certain, but I believe this is meant to protect our property. Property is what belongs to you.

Leaving the house without Gina’s permission is a mistake. This pleases me, because a mistake is an act of bad judgment, and I expect my act of bad judgment to increase my cognitive development.

I step out into the world.