infant robot by a lotus pond

‘Let me ask you a question.’ I paused for his silent acceptance before I continued, ‘If I am not the future being you mentioned, then I really don’t know what you’re talking about and where the beads are. What if you’re wrong about me?’

‘Then how can I ever find the beads? Without them my clay doll wouldn’t have come alive.’

‘Alive? The beads are so important?’ I asked, ‘but aren’t they just beads?’

‘They are great beads, seeds...’

‘Seeds?’ Then I realized I mistook the sound.

There was a small lotus pond in the far corner of the courtyard. I caught sight of an erect stem. I always wondered how could the flower still flourish in the night.

Lotus seeds. Suddenly I was inspired. An infant robot coming from the future, settling in a... a temple, waiting for something to happen or someone to come, and of course, with the seeds being the key to its survival, its being, its trans-temporal evolution... I was excited.

Lu studied me. 'Sir, you look different.'

I smiled, with the joy of working through the plot of my would-be fiction. I might just include the sixth mascot idea. But then I realized it was Lu’s idea, or that of the future being he mentioned. I couldn’t do plagiarism.

‘Are you now the secret being that visited me?’ Lu asked in a low voice.

‘...Maybe.’