One day, Denkou's family moves house. It's very fast and everybody has to be quiet.
"It's easier this way," Mr. Skunk tells Denkou. "We don't wanna get complaints from the neighbours. We'll lose our damage deposit, y'know."
Denkou sees another robot close up for the first time. It is a non-AI Robita that carries suitcases for Denkou's uncles and puts them in their car. When everything is packed, Skunk puts Robita in the car's trunk. Denkou asks if they can ride in the trunk with Robita but Skunk says no.
Uncle Blues drives really fast and coasts through the night sky. Everybody is quiet; even Uncle Jazz doesn't turn on the radio, and Denkou knows how much he likes loud beep songs. Denkou's neighbours must be really cranky, but they don't know for sure, since they've never gotten to see many of them.
Mr. Skunk and Denkou sit in the back of the car among suitcases. He is holding them in one arm in a way that Denkou has seen people hold babies on TV. Denkou knows Mr. Skunk wants to make sure Denkou doesn't fall out of the aerocar as it speeds over the street. They are happy and comfortable.
The family stays at a little house for a while. It is like nothing Denkou has seen before. It's small and its own building, and Denkou doesn't have to wait forever in the elevator to go from the front door to their room. The house is in a forest clearing with a big truck and some trees in front of the house.
"Don't run off," Uncle Blues yells from the porch. "There's bears out there."
Denkou plays in the yard sometimes. Very thin, weak snow lands on the beige grass sometimes, and it usually melts by the end of the day. Denkou makes snow people, like they saw on TV: a little round person is sitting beside two tall people and a short person. Denkou has lots of time to craft their accessories; they use a dry leaf to make Uncle Jazz's hat, pebbles to make Uncle Blues's glasses, and an oil slick in the driveway to make Mr. Skunk's clothing; Denkou uses a stick to paint on the oil. Skunk sees it and is so proud he takes a picture and laughs.
One day, Uncle Blues says the house is like "the Evil Dead cabin." Denkou cannot download footage for "evil dead" on their own, so Jazz hacks into a nearby service tower so the house can get TV reception, just like he did at the apartment. That night, the family watches a movie set in a cabin that looks slightly like their new home.
"It's got better roofing," snarks Blues. Jazz throws an empty beer can at him. It falls on the floor with a dinky metal sound.
"This is the best I could get us!" Uncle Jazz complains. "▒▒▒▒, I miss the city too, but..."
"I don't miss it..." Mr. Skunk lays across the couch closest to the TV. "You don't realize how much the city makes your ears ring until you come out to somewhere like this."
A man on the TV is yelling and laughing. Things in his house are yelling and laughing back at him. The man makes funny faces even though he is covered in dirt and blood. A deer head laughs and it makes Denkou laugh, too.
"I'm supposed to be spendin' Hanukkah with my girl," whines Jazz.
Mr. Skunk snaps and yells, "If it's that big a deal, you shouldn't have ▒▒▒▒▒▒ up our getaway!"
The room is silent. Denkou keeps watching the movie, and eventually, Uncle Jazz sighs. He gets up and toddles out of the room, probably to get another beer can. Beer doesn't smell like anything particular to Denkou, but from what they can gather, it's water that makes people angry and fall asleep.
A few nights ago, Denkou's family went out for a "family bonding exercise" as Mr. Skunk called it. They went to a huge glass building and played a game called tag. Uncle Jazz was "it" first, and he hot-wired a big metal thing so Denkou could go into the building. Then Denkou went up to a spot in the building that Mr. Skunk had tagged electronically, where there was a big metal box they had to grab. Once they did, they would run down to another door in the building where Uncle Blues had parked. The car didn't fast enough and the rest of Denkou's family keeps teasing Jazz for it.
The guy on the TV's hand is suddenly pulsing. The lines on the back of his hand that move with his fingers look like wires. Just as Denkou begins to worry how thin the man's outer plating is – he could snare his surface covering and get his wiring ensnared, of course – the man's hand grabs his own face. Denkou bursts into laughter so hard they fall back on the floor.
Jazz comes back into the room, but Denkou doesn't want to turn away from the movie quite yet. They enable their auxiliary audio cache to record everything around them for later. Uncle Jazz opens another can and is yelling.
"It's really not my fault the engine froze!"
"Oh, it is yours," Blues says sarcastically. "You practically live under that car's hood."
"It's ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ December! The ▒▒▒▒ did you want me to do, put an electric blanket in there?!"
"We asked you to get home on time," Blues is standing up now. "And fix the car. You knew we were doin' a heist the next day, but you were off-"
"At the auction, man! I was gettin' gear at the auction!"
"Should've gotten a better ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ engine while you were there!"
"Fine! You wanna know why I mighta' ▒▒▒▒▒▒ up fixin' the car?! You guys let the little ankle-biter loose on me all day! They wouldn't stop telling me about turtles they saw on TV! ▒▒▒▒▒▒' turtles! So I'm trying to fix a car while-"
"You don't think I get tired of watching the kid, too?! I've been putting off visiting my man for weeks now-"
"Guys," Skunk shouts. "Knock it off! Kid's tryna watch the movie!"
Denkou's uncles go quiet. Denkou finally looks way from the movie and studies their uncles. Blues has rolled up the sleeves of his red silk shirt. Jazz is standing in the doorway to the living room, holding his beer can with two hands. His eyes are big and watery.
"▒▒▒▒ you guys," he sputters. Jazz runs down the hall towards his room. Blues groans and turns back to the rest of the room.
"Don't worry 'bout him, kid," he says tiredly. "He's just a cranky drunk."
Denkou decides to go sit beside Mr. Skunk. He's falling asleep and starting to recline, but there's enough room for them to sit beside him. Uncle Jazz sounds like he is crying and talking on the phone in his room. Uncle Blues is annoyed by this, and eventually, he goes to his own room. He snores kinda loud so Denkou knows Blues is asleep.
Time passes, and the movie ends on a cliffhanger. Denkou turns to Mr. Skunk with the intent to ask him if there's another movie to watch, but Skunk is asleep too. The TV begins to play commercials for dish soap. Denkou knows it's time to be quiet.
Carefully, they stand up from the couch, and begin to load their stored auditory cache from an hour before. They know they missed a lot of input from around them. They load the cache and play back the audio.
By the end of the cache, Denkou feels sad.
There is a strange, uneasy pulse in their motor. Quietly, Denkou walks out of the room, leaving the TV on. Maybe Skunk will want to watch it when he wakes up.
Denkou decides to go to sleep. Their containment capsule is now in Mr. Skunk's room, which Denkou liked a lot, because now they can rest without feeling so alone. But now, tonight, they don't feel like being near anyone else.
On the way to Skunk's room, they notice the door to Uncle Jazz's room is just the slightest bit open. They carefully peer through the gap: Jazz is asleep, bundled in blankets, and gripping his phone. He looks upset even in his sleep.
Denkou thinks about the turtles they saw on TV last week. It was a documentary about types of turtles that had been running in the early morning. Denkou had thought Jazz was really interested in the stuff they were talking about: it was all about turtle species and how they live, and stuff. Jazz kept saying "uh-huh" and nodding, but he never really looked at them. Denkou thinks about the word "ankle-biter". Their internal database runs a quick search and returns with pictures of weird rats and messed-up looking furry things. Noun: humorous, derogatory, North American.
Denkou thinks about the car. Uncle Jazz said it's their fault the car didn't work.
They go into Skunk's room, get into the containment capsule, and lie there. They try to fall into sleep mode but they just can't. Denkou lies there for hours, thinking, until their battery eventually runs down.
Denkou charges for approximately 22 hours. When they wake up, fully charged, their internal clock updates before their very eyes. It's so weird that nobody tried to wake me up, they think, even though this took so long.