The Wild Robot

CHAPTER 54 THE WINTER

The island was quiet. The migratory birds had all left, the hibernators were asleep, and everyone else had begun their simple winter routines. Everyone but Roz. Now that she was alone, our robot didn’t know what to do with herself. She stood in her gray garden and watched a sheet of ice slowly form on the pond. Sometimes she could hear her good friends the beavers going about their business beneath the ice, and she wondered when she would see them again.

Roz stood there until snowflakes started drifting down from the sky. The flakes swirled in the breeze and slowly piled up on the ground and on the trees and on the robot. So she crouched into the Nest, slid the stone door behind her, and sat in darkness.

Hours, and days, and weeks went by without the robot moving. She had no need to move; she felt perfectly safe in the Nest. And so, in her own way, the robot hibernated.

Roz’s body relaxed.

Her quiet whirring slowly stopped.

Her eyes faded to black.

She probably could have spent centuries like that, hibernating in total darkness. But the robot’s hibernation was suddenly interrupted when a shaft of sunlight fell upon her face and carried energy back to her empty battery.

Roz’s body tensed.

Her quiet whirring slowly started.

Her eyes began to glow.

“Hello, I am ROZZUM unit 7134, but you may call me Roz,” the robot said automatically.

When all her systems were up and running again, Roz noticed that she was surrounded by broken branches and piles of snow. The roof of the Nest had caved in, and the lodge was now flooded with sunlight. Roz felt more energized with each passing minute. But she also felt cold. Her joints felt stiff and brittle, and her thinking was slow. So she got up, cleared a spot on the floor, and made a fire. The snow inside the Nest began to melt and the robot’s sensors began to thaw, and when she was ready, she climbed out through the hole in the roof and into a bright, foreign landscape.