The Frankenstein Project, Grade Four

Chapter 1 - The Skull

Charlie picked himself up off the ground and dusted off his clothes.  He wasn't bleeding--well, wasn't bleeding very much anyway.  Good thing he remembered to put on his afterschool pants though, because Mom was probably going to want to add another patch.

He bent and lifted his bike to an upright position and started to mount it.  Then something shiny caught his eye.  It was sticking up out of the dirt.  He let the bike fall down again and kicked at the object.  It looked like there was a light glowing from it.  He bent down and pulled.  It wasn't a little thing--this seemed to be the tip of something buried.  

Charlie took the jackknife Grandpa had given him for his birthday, loosened the dirt from around the thing, and pulled again.  It budged a little.  He loosened the dirt some more, took both hands--the thing felt like it was pulsing a little bit--and pulled as hard as he could.

And out it came.

Startled him pretty good too when it did, because it was sort of like when you try to pick up an almost empty milk jug that you think is almost full.  He fell backwards onto the ground, wincing, and the thing landed on his chest.

Then he really got a start because this thing he'd been pulling on, which--now that he thought about it--looked sort of like a spine, was attached to what more than sort of looked like a skull!  An alien metal skull with glowing blue light showing through the eye holes.

Charlie shuddered and batted the thing away from him.  It rolled and lay upside down butted up against a tree stump.

Charlie had scooted as fast as he could away from the thing and had thrown his arm up in front of his face.  Now, he lowered his arm and cautiously looked at the thing.  The glow was pulsing, and that was weird.  Charlie looked around.  No one was there.  He glanced at the place where the thing had been in the ground.  It had been really stuck, so it must have been buried there for quite some time.   But he'd been over this ground countless times!  Why hadn't he seen it before?   He thought about it and figured, well, that last rainstorm must have sent enough water through here to finally expose it.   That's why he hadn't discovered it until today, and that's why it had never caused his bike to spill him before.  Yep, that had to be it.

But if it had been buried here for a long time, how was it still so shiny?  And why was it glowing?

Curiousity overtook caution and Charlie carefully picked up the object.  It did appear to be what it looked like--a small skull shape with a very short length of what appeared to be spinal cord attached to it like a tail.  As he turned it over in his hands, the glow started to dim.  Then it blinked out.  So, he did what any fourth grade boy would do--he banged on it.  And the glow came back.

Charlie grinned, close-mouthed and dimpled, and you could almost see the thought bubble above his head.  Robot.  This was a robot.  Well, a piece of one anyway.  He didn't know how it got here, and he didn't know where the rest of it was, but where he stood was a wash.  He reasoned that some time ago, the robot must have crashed and come apart.  Then the rainwater carried all the pieces through and since this part was sort of heavy, it got snagged and buried, and the rest had been washed out to the ocean.  Made sense to him.  And since the rest wasn't here, it was up to him to build the rest himself.

And win the science fair.

Charlie tossed his robot skull into his backpack, picked up his bike, and pedaled up the wash toward supper.