Robots needed their downtime, too. Plug Man really liked video games. He lived in electronics, after all! He could tell you just about anything about them, the coding, the history, his favorite characters, franchises - even about how Unreal Engine 6 could conjure up so many trillions of triangles at once!

Thing was, he was pretty lonely! You’d think in a world full of robots, there’d be tons and tons of geeks, eager to play a bunch of the games he’d had just lying around with him, but the truth was, most robots were just too busy and focused on their designated tasks to care about such things.

Enter Koala Bot. A total nerd, lazy, not really programmed to have any special interests or functions whatsoever. Built only because somebody thought it would be funny to give some personality to a robot koala. He met them in an Archaic Pastime, one day, and they made fast friends. It was wonderful! Finally, somebody he could just talk, and talk, and play with!

And so they did. On Plug Man’s down time, he hung out with the koala. It was wonderful. He felt so completely at home, just wasting away the hours playing through Smash, Animal Crossing, Persona, all these games that he couldn’t talk about to anybody! Things that he felt totally alone on! But now, he wasn’t alone!

Then came secrets. Things he kept to himself. Cute little things, like the fact that he wished he could take showers, or that he really liked oil cream. The koala began telling him secrets too - like the fact he only had four days worth of charge, and always took an entire day to refuel and energize himself. The two became closer, and closer, spending more and more days together.

Then, one day, it just happened. The accident. Koala’s hand on his “joystick”. It really was an accident. Koala wasn’t like that. He wouldn’t just take advantage of the nerdy robot like that. But that little accident made him realize something he hadn’t even considered. How comfortable the koala’s touch had felt. How he wanted the robot to keep going - the anticipation of the feelings that awaited…

It was just an accident, but he didn’t want them to stop. What if Koala didn’t want to stop? He’d never felt this way about another robot before. Ever. Just playing video games, feeling happy, being able to relax, and say whatever you want, and express yourself… embrace somebody, kiss somebody, so guiltlessly, so blissfully…

Would Koala match these feelings? It took so much strength, so much courage to profess that he was enjoying their touch, but what if that would ruin their relationship? Make things so terribly awkward? Would he be able to live with himself? Would he be able to look at games the same way as he did before?

As his partner pecked him on cheek, and kept going, sparks rose up out of the plug man’s conductors. Feelings surged. Wild, scary, exciting feelings. The sensation of the soft, gentle, plush hands against his joystick. They weren’t playing video games anymore. They were experiencing a sort of togetherness that no video game could help the two simulate.

He really wasn’t alone anymore. And he wouldn’t have to be.