The Robot Who Failed at Being Boring

How it begins

Otto Copper failed at being boring before the museum opened.

He had been told to polish the labels. Instead, he found that the label reading ORDINARY SPOON belonged to a spoon with a remarkably bent handle.

'What happened to it?' he asked.

Mina Whisker checked the catalogue.

'Unknown.'

'Excellent,' said Otto. 'A mystery.'

'It is not an excellent mystery. It is a spoon.'

The adult mouse curator had spent all week preparing a reassuringly quiet exhibition. The village museum needed somewhere people could come without being asked to gasp.

Otto understood. He lowered his voice.

'A very small mystery.'

By ten, visitors had gathered around the spoon. One remembered a picnic. Another thought the handle had been bent to reach a narrow jar. A third proposed a giant, though the spoon's size made that unlikely.

Mina found the crowd discussing cutlery beneath her sign PLEASE ENJOY THE CALM.

'Otto.'

'I've kept the excitement below shouting level.'

She led him to the next case. It held a plain gray stone.

'This one is for looking at quietly.'

Otto looked.

There was a tiny red line across the stone, shaped like a path. Beside it, the catalogue recorded the place it had been found. The place was now the pond.

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Tried very hard to have no questions.

Mina watched the effort and began to feel unkind. A museum with nothing to wonder about might be calm, but it was difficult to know why anyone should return.

'One question,' she said.

Otto's eye lights brightened.

'Whose idea was it to call everything ordinary?'

Mina looked at the label in her own handwriting. Outside, another visitor entered and paused, not because the room was loud, but because somebody had left enough space for a small surprise.

She fetched a pencil. Perhaps the first exhibit needing an improved label was the exhibition itself.