I am honored to share that Lena’s story, The Wondrous Robot, is the first accepted submission for Breaking Into The Craft. Lena is an active member of the Horror Writers Association. A list of her work can be found on the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.

Lena Ng roams the dimensions of Toronto, Canada, and is a monster-hunting member of the Horror Writers Association. She has curiosities published in weighty tomes including Amazing Stories and Flame Tree’s Asian Ghost Stories and Weird Horror Stories. Her stories have been performed for podcasts such as Gallery of Curiosities, Creepy Pod, Utopia Science Fiction, Love Letters to Poe, and Horrifying Tales of Wonder. “Under an Autumn Moon” is her short story collection.

Her book, Under an Autumn Moon: Tales of Imagination, can be found on Amazon

Lena has an impressive list of places that [mistakenly] rejected the story. I very much admire her tenacity in finding a home for this piece!

1. Brothers Uber: the story was written in 2018 for the prompt of scifi retellings of fairy tales. It was inspired by Pinocchio/Velveteen Rabbit/movie Toy Story/movie AI
2. Factor 4
3. Daily Science Fiction
4. Metamorphosis
5. Syntax & Salt
6. El Chapo Review
7. Harbinger Press
8. Knicknackery
9. Shoreline of Infinity
10. Unsung Stories
11. Infinite Worlds – not an official rejection but to presume rejection if no reply>90 days so I didn’t include it originally in the count
12. Cloud Lake Literary
13. McCoy’s Monthly
14. Wondrous Real Magazine
15. Flashpoint SF
16. Apex
17. The Arkansas International
18. Grace & Victory
19. 34 Orchard
20. Sans. Press
21. Orion’s Belt
22. Allegory
23. Etherea Magazine
24. Aniko Press
25. Tree and Stone
26. British Science Fiction Association BSFA.co.uk
27. Sprawl Magazine
28. Metastellar
29. Flame Tree Publishing
30. Baubles From Bones
31. The Orange and Bee

When asked “What do you love about this story?” She responded:

What I love about this story is the idea of a scifi premise told in a fairytale style. Until I saw the prompt, it didn’t occur to me that a futuristic story could be told in a traditional form. I also love the bittersweet ending. Some of my favourite fairy tales growing up were The Nightingale and the Rose/ The Selfish Giant/The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde, along with The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen; all of them are bittersweet. These were the stories that stuck with me, and I hope my story will stick with the reader.

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The Wondrous Robot, by Lena Ng

There once was a robot and he was truly a wonder. He had stout, spring-action legs; he moved his arms with a soft, mechanical whirr; and the alloy of his body shone with a metallic glow. On Christmas eve, he had been hidden behind the tinseled tree, but at the break of dawn, the little boy, who had begged for an iBot all year, soon spotted him with a wide-eyed yelp.

Many other things were excitedly unwrapped from the joyous abundance under the tree: toy hover cars which zipped around the room; space hockey sticks with an anti-gravity puck; from a projector, a 3D hologram of the Blue Fairy fluttered through the pine branches of the tree, waving her slender silver wand.

What the robot wanted to say, what lay deep in his processor was “I hope to be your best friend.” But he wasn’t programmed to say this so he said, “I like ice cream.”

At first, the little boy, a rambunctious, sweet-faced kid named Ryan played with him every day. He pushed a switch to make the robot’s halogen eyes flash. He pressed the small red button on the robot’s back and the toy would dance a mechanical breakdance. He confided in the robot who replied with his programmed lines of “Let’s go on an adventure”,”Kids rule” and “We’re on a mission.”

 Eventually, the robot was left plugged into a charger in the corner of the room. Even though he was fully charged, the little boy instead played space hockey with a neighbourhood boy, and not a second thought was given to his robotic friend. As the little boy played on the purple grass on the lawn, the little robot wished with all his circuits that he could join him.

The other toys—VirtuPets, dinotrucks, hatchisaurs—jealous when the robot was the favourite, openly ignored him. They had thought the robot had his time with the boy and now attention would be paid to them. But the attention spans of little boys are short and the next new toy was always on the horizon. Only the Blue Fairy would stop her fluttering around the room to speak to the robot. She had also felt the sting of being forgotten.

 One day, as the Blue Fairy hovered overhead, the little robot watched wistfully as the little boy wrestled on the bedroom floor with his new puppy. They tumbled and turned and the puppy let out some high-pitched barks. After a breather, the little boy took the puppy out to the backyard. The robot’s head drooped when he heard the back door close. “Blue Fairy,” he said, “do you think the little boy would play with me if I were real?”

The Blue Fairy darted around him, examining all his angles. She said, “You are already real.”

The robot felt his processor race. “Not to the little boy. Not in a way that would have him love me.” The robot made a whirring sound which could have been a motorized version of a sigh. “If I could wish anything, I would wish I were real.”

The Blue Fairy waved her wand like an orchestra conductor. “Some day you will be real. As real as the puppy. As real as the little boy.” She had the power to grant wishes, as all fairies do, when the wish came from a true heart, even if it happened to be a microchipped one.

The robot had so many questions. “When will this happen? How would I know that I’m real?”

The Blue Fairy gracefully landed before him on satin-clad toes. “All real things dream. One day, you will do something so wondrous your head will fill with dreams. That’s how you will know you are real.”

Sadly, that night, the projector’s battery ran down and the Blue Fairy disappeared. The robot would have liked to discuss dreams and what it would be like to be real and be loved.

Late Saturday morning, when the little boy was sent to his room for a time-out, he discovered his robot again, still charging in the corner. The boy pushed the switch to make the robot’s eyes flash. He pressed the small red button on the robot’s back and the toy would dance a mechanical breakdance. He confided in the robot who replied with his programmed lines of “Let’s go on an adventure”,”Kids rule” and “We’re on a mission.” The boy and robot raced the hover cars around the room. The puppy barked and bowed and jumped all around them.

The robot shouldn’t feel, since he was made of wires, metal, and cable, but as a third generation model, when the robot saw the little boy smile, he felt a trembling in his circuits. When the little boy put his arms around him, the robot felt a rise in his internal temperature, in a pleasant way, and his core processing speed would slow so he wouldn’t overheat.

Later, the little boy took both the robot and puppy into the front yard. They raced the toy hover cars over the purple grass. But as little boys sometimes do not know the difference between make-believe and real, Ryan ran to see a real hover car, zipping on the superhighway in front in the house. The robot, however, understood the size difference between a toy and a car, and the little boy and a car, and rushed out to save his dear companion. Maybe for love, but robots…how could they love?

And there was a crushing of steel and the crying of a scared but otherwise uninjured child. The light in the robot’s eyes started to flicker, and the Blue Fairy appeared once more, wings translucent as sapphire. The robot looked but saw no projector. “How are you here?” the robot asked.

“I’m in your dreams,” replied the Blue Fairy.

“Then I’m finally real,” the robot cried out with joy, and under the bright moonlight of Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, the light in his halogen eyes was extinguished.