The high school's robotics club has a supply budget, but it's not the biggest, and anyway she can't use that stuff for personal projects. Her dad is willing to donate scrapped car parts from his auto shop, but his customers have been having a run of good luck lately and he hasn't had to throw much out. All of this explains why Margaret is detouring through this junkyard on her way home from school, looking to score some free parts.
Junkyards don't do 'free', but they will do 'dirt cheap' if she goes and gets the parts herself.
Regardless, there's an unusually large and active miniature dust devil in one of the far corners of the place today, rattling loose metal and occasionally even picking something up and putting it down somewhere else.
That's kind of odd. She'll go check out that corner, it's as likely to have good stuff as any other corner and has the advantage of being more interesting.
Something's definitely strange in this corner. The wind is warm, dust is everywhere. The little pieces getting moved around aren't going in the same direction as the swirling dust sometimes. And the patterns and eddies change frequently, almost with intentionality.
"What?"
This bears investigation. Maybe a genie? She picks up one of the little pieces that just got moved.
"Hello there?" she says to the area in general.
The dust - stops, for an instant, then reverses direction and tugs at the bolt. "Put that down, I'm using it."
"Okay, all yours." She puts it down. "What are you using it for?"
More of the parts fly this way or that. Sometimes two of them combine, seemingly at random - tubes fitting into bolt-holes, bolts attaching to electrical wires.
"That is not yet clear."
Well, she knew genies were weird. This is either an engineering project more sophisticated than she can understand, or the genie is in a position to benefit from some advice. Either way holds the potential for the weirdest shop talk ever.
"Do you know what you're trying to make?"
"No. That is what I'm trying to learn."
More parts-swirling, more random connections and just as quick disconnections.
Margaret is heavily reminded of her tiny child self with a box of Legos.
"Deciding what to build can be lots of fun! I'm building a robot that can play soccer against other robots."
"I don't know what those things are."
"Oh, a robot is a machine that either moves on its own to do some task or can be controlled by a human for some task. Mine is going to be controlled by a human. Soccer is a game where two groups of people try to get a ball to the other group's end of a field by kicking it."
The genie thinks for a good twenty seconds, then crumples some of the more uninteresting parts into a rough sphere and rolls it along the ground some. Then the ball collapses back into scrap.
"...I am not interested in soccer."
The not-quite-non sequitur makes her choke down a giggle. "Neither am I! I just like building the robots, the actual soccer-playing is just to test it."
Wind continues to waffle indecisively.
"I want to see the design of a robot."
"I can show you the one I'm making, when it's finished."
. . . she's heard stories about genies and their sometimes willingness to return favors. She takes a deep breath.
"If you like it, will you make me magic?"
...
"It is not certain that your robot is what I want to learn about."
"Making a human magic is a great and mighty wish."
"Tell me more about the robot."
Oh good back to familiar conversational ground. Sort of. Well, not really.
"So the one I'm making on my own is going to be a sort of spider robot that can go up a climbing wall. It's going to have eight legs that extend and retract, with hooks on the ends, and a camera I can see through to pilot it, and the motors will all be . . . "
She will infodump about this robot for quite a while if permitted, pausing occasionally in case the genie has questions or wants more or less detail.
The genie doesn't ask questions. It just drinks it all in. (Well, once it asks what a 'volt' is.)
Eventually, it declares, "If you allow me to watch you design and build and test this robot, I will grant you a wish. If it is impressive enough, the wish can be a granting of magic."
She is gonna build the best darn spider-bot that ever spider-botted.
"Deal. How do you want to do this? I can come back here tomorrow and bring what I have so far?"
"I want to observe all the work. I can be small and quiet if I must."
Is she really going to invite a genie to come hang out in her basement?
magic
With her parents in the house?
spirit-bearers don't age
Really?
magic magic magic
"You can come back to my house, then, if you stay hidden. I'm making it in my basement."
The genie sort of - sighs, the wind surging for a moment, but it feels like a cheery agreement, not a resentful or reluctant thing.
"I will stay hidden. I will follow you."
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