Every morning, just after the tide slips back into the sea, he trundles down the shore with a creak in his joints and sand in his gears. Rust blooms across his chassis like lichen on an old stone wall, and one of his eyes flickers now and then, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He’s a relic, really—Model 7-G, long retired, long forgotten. They called him “Helper” once. Now the gulls just call him company.
He spends his days beachcombing. Not for metal or lost tech, but for shells—fractured cockles, pearled spiral whorls, the occasional mermaid’s purse. With careful, clumsy fingers, he assembles them into vultures. Not birds of prey exactly, but delicate, hunched creatures with shell-beaks and driftwood wings, always gazing out to sea. He plants them in the dunes or tucks them into rock crevices, where the wind whistles like an old song.
No one knows why he makes them. Maybe he remembers the sky. Maybe he just wants to leave something behind that isn’t wires and code. The children in the nearby village say he’s haunted. The old ones say he’s grieving. But mostly, no one bothers him. And every now and then, someone finds a vulture on their doorstep, wings spread, beak open in silent call.
The tide comes. The tide goes. The robot builds.
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