“Perhaps I can help.” Ceeron’s head spun 180 degrees. It reached into its large metal backpack and removed a solar panel. I had seen the massive bot perform these motions thousands of times. But never for this purpose.

Ceeron angled the panel above Emma’s head, blocking the sunlight.

Her own personal patch of shade.

Emma turned her grateful gaze up at the panel. “That thing looks super heavy. You sure you don’t mind?”

Ceeron’s reply was simple and true. “I was designed for this.”

Emma lowered her hand. A smile appeared on her face. “I feel so special. Thank you!”

“You are welcome!” replied Ceeron.

They continued walking in this way.

Everywhere Emma went, the rectangle of shade came with her.

00101100

Emma’s gaze passed from SkD to Ceeron to me.

“How long have you guys been friends?” she asked.

Friends. I knew the word, of course. It was preprogrammed in my vocabulary database. But knowing a word is not the same as understanding it.

“We are not friends,” I said. “We are coworkers.”

Emma considered this. “How long have you worked together?”

I performed the math instantly, but SkD beat me to the answer. A number appeared on its screen.

Emma knit her brow. “What does that mean?”

“That is the number of days we have worked alongside one another,” I said.

“Over twelve years,” added Ceeron, still holding the solar panel over Emma.

“You’ve worked together all that time, and you’re still not friends?”

“Of course not.”

She stopped moving. So did the rest of us.

She said, “So, you don’t, like, hang out together when you’re not working?”

“When we are not working, we are in sleep mode,” I pointed out.

Emma scratched her head. “Don’t you ever take time off? You know, do other kinds of stuff?”

“Like what?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Just like, sit around. Hang out with each other.”

I shook my head. “Robots do not hang out. That would be unproductive.”

“Yeah, but . . .” Emma pushed aside a strand of hair. “It’s fun.”

Fun. Another word I knew but did not understand.

Emma placed her hands on her hips, considering us from her personal patch of shade. “I think you guys are friends. You just don’t know it.”

Was she correct? Ceeron, SkD, and I spent 98 percent of our waking hours together. Over that time, I had learned things about them. The kinds of things you only know when you are close to another robot for long stretches.

I knew that Ceeron hummed to itself while working. Creating quiet electronic melodies that it thought the rest of us could not hear.

And that SkD drained its battery quicker than the rest of us by performing loops/zigzags/tricks while it worked.