The Filling Station
By JH Tomen
April 15, 2026
April 15, 2026
All around me, robots lay in the field, their various shapes leaving impressions on the dewy grass. Beside each one was a contraption of one sort or another: multi-spectrum solar tubes, tiny wind turbines, gravity rollers. It was the full extent of the charging services our little filling station offered. It certainly wouldn’t seem like much to someone in the city. But out there, near the Ever Forest, we had the last scraps of civilization on offer.
I stood in the middle of it all, conductor of a silent symphony. With no robot of our own, I did the sums in my head, calculating how many kilowatt-hours our customers had absorbed — and how much longer until we could free up another spot. There was a queue of robots waiting by the “office,” the name my sister and I gave the little shack we lived in.
“Hey, Nut!” my sister called behind me. “How long for this gentleman?”
By gentleman, she meant a cube-shaped robot with tracks for legs. He looked to be a C-103-QS model, though my sister never knew that kind of thing. They were good at planting seeds, so he must have been headed to the forest ranger station.
I surveyed our customers again, letting the numbers dance together in my head. Numbers were like that for me. They had colors and shapes, personalities even. And the way they danced told me how they would add, subtract, divide. That’s why I’d spent so much time reading operating manuals. The math wouldn’t do much good without knowing how big the battery was on a B-33-Q versus a B-33-N.
“This customer is nearly done!” I called back, pointing to a humanoid robot lying face-up in the grass. She’d said she was merely “on vacation,” her time off approved by her factory. “Can you top her off with the bike?”
The robot’s eyes flickered when I pointed at her, her processors coming back online as she smiled.
“Thank you kindly, tiny human girl,” the humanoid said.
“I’m seventeen,” I muttered.
“And I’m two-hundred and seven,” she said, chuckling. “Still, I meant no offense.”
“But your model…”
“One of the oldest, something we’re rather proud of — though I’ve gone through quite a few batteries in my day. I still need another—”
“0.7 kilowatt-hours, I know. Don’t worry. Bolt is coming with the bike.”
As if on cue, my sister barreled out of the office with a giant stationary bike hoisted over her shoulders. We — and by we, I mean Bolt — used it to muscle customers over the finish line when passive energy took too long. Always the athlete, she could famously produce three kilowatts on the thing, twice what the manual said it should be capable of.
“You two are…very different,” the humanoid robot said as Bolt plugged in the bike.
“Yeah,” Bolt said, heaving one of her powerful legs over the side. “My sister’s the smart one.”
“She meant physically,” I said to Bolt.
“Oh,” Bolt said, slowly cranking the pedals as she built up momentum. “Yeah, you actually fit in the bunk beds.”
I rolled my eyes, but inside, I had the warm feeling I always got when Bolt defended me. Things hadn’t been so easy when Mom died, leaving us in the orphanage. Actually, I hardly remembered Mom, but Bolt said I took it hard. She blamed Mom’s death for making me different—though, if I’m honest, I’ve never been normal. The other kids would tease me, catching me talking to myself as the numbers danced—something I couldn’t do in my head back then. They were the ones who started calling me Nut.
“If she’s a nut, then I’m a bolt,” Bolt had declared. “A bolt is useless without a nut, you clods.”
She then proceeded to give three of the other girls a beat down they’d never forget. It had taken a pair of robot orderlies to pull Bolt off the other girls. But even as the bruises from the fight faded, the nicknames had stuck. More importantly, as an adult, Bolt was still strong as an ox—and keen about protecting me.
I checked the other customers, making sure they didn’t need anything. There was a tree-trimming robot shaped like a giraffe who had asked me to sharpen his blades. He was only at fifty percent, though, which gave me plenty of time. Next to him was a tiny weather drone with hummingbird wings. I noticed a splotch on one of the drone’s cameras and leaned down with my rag, wiping it clean.
“Obliged, citizen,” the drone said in reply.
I was usually tasked with “customer service” as Bolt called it, since I was better with robots than people. Sometimes, they needed spare parts, cleaning, repairs. We weren’t authorized for that, but this far out, it was rare to find robots under any sort of strict guidance.
It was also the reason we’d set up out here. When Bolt “graduated” from the orphanage, she’d searched for somewhere to live so she could adopt me. In the end, all she’d come up with was this shack a two-week hike from the nearest mag-train. But with enough muscle—from Bolt mostly—and searching through scrapyards, we had a decent business.
Ding! A bright, even tone chirped behind me. Ninety-five percent charged.
I turned back to find the humanoid robot woman sitting up, watching. Bolt was cranking away on the bike, rapidly pushing the battery toward full. Sweat was dripping down her forehead, Bolt’s perfect form urging the pedals up and down like pistons.
“Fascinating,” the robot muttered, facing me. “I presume you take the payment, little one?”
“I do,” I said, fumbling for the credit transistor. We never used it for anything but food and rent—and the rent was low at that—but we didn’t charge our guests much either. Bolt wanted to up the prices, but she knew I was sensitive about it. Something about charging the robots bothered me.
Ever since the Luna Treaty gave robots autonomy—and wages—they’d been forbidden fusion cores, forcing them onto solid state batteries. A charge would last a good amount of time, but it wasn’t infinite. And since they were forbidden to create power of their own, they were forced to buy it from us. That made them awfully human in a way, forced to scrape by for each electric “meal.”
I punched in the price into the number pad—a measly six credits—and held it out to the robot.
“It’s…rather low, no?” she asked.
“Uh…yes. Hopefully you’ll stop by again on your way back.”
“Oh, I intend to!”
She held out her wrist, her eyes flashing blue as she synced with the transistor. Our data bank back in the shack chirped, signaling receipt of payment, and I began to unhook the humanoid. She stood, and was starting to thank me, when a great crash echoed through the woods.
I whipped around, freezing. What emerged, however, was not some monster. It was a mech-bus. Shaped like a giant cat with crab-like legs, it skittered out from between the trees, coming to a rest beside our shack. The front door opened, and a bewildered robot jumped down. It was a XT-44, the kind they’d had at the orphanage. Instead of a face, it had a little beak-like snout and a flat, green scanner for an eye.
“Thank goodness I found you!” he called. “Our NAV went out in the woods. We were almost out of battery when I got your station’s ping. I— Palera, is that you?!”
“Well, I’ll be damned!” Bolt yelled, leaping from the bike. “Rigoberto!”
Rigoberto? He’d been one of the orderlies at the orphanage. Bolt had been friends with all of them. Despite my affinity for bots generally, I could never seem to bond with the things. They had a…coldness compared to other models, the strict “protocols” keeping them from protecting me the way Bolt had. Still, I wandered up behind her as Rigoberto shook her hand.
“And little Cupera!”
“It’s Nut,” I said, also taking the robot’s hand. I’d been working on that with Bolt. I hated shaking hands, though at least robots were cleaner than people.
“Wow,” Rigoberto said, looking over our field of customers. “I never expected to see you two again.”
“What are you doing here?” Bolt asked, staring up at the mech-bus.
It seemed to be the same rusty model we’d use for field trips. As we looked, a dozen children stared down at us through the windows.
“Beach weekend! There’s some town past the forest, and the orphanage got a hotel deal.”
My own memories of field trips bubbled up, almost all of them bad. It was the one time they tended to divide us by age, which meant Bolt couldn’t protect me. One time, we went canoeing in some river, and they stuck me in the middle of two other girls. The others lost their paddles messing around, and they’d forced me to give mine up, ripping it from my hands. Then, of course, they lost that too, leaving us adrift until one of the orderlies swam out to get us.
In fact, I could still feel the splash of the water on my face. Feel the— Wait. That was rain. I looked up, only just realizing a thick blanket of clouds had swept in. The wind picked up, making the chimes we’d hung on the roof of the shack tinkle.
“Storm imminent,” the weather drone behind me groaned. “Storm imminent!”
All at once, the robots began to call out in a variety of tones — and languages. I wasn’t perfect at deciphering binary chirps, but the ones in English were clear enough.
“Request to remove!” they cried. “Request to remove!”
As part of the Luna Treaty, not only had robots lost the ability to charge for free, but the Bot Mother had agreed to program them to be unable to plug or un-plug themselves. Technically, none of the models littered around our field could be hurt by rain, but robots could be superstitious about such things. Besides, only the perovskite solar towers would gather any power in the gloom. They--
“Nut!” Bolt yelled, giving my shoulder a shake. “You can do this, sis.”
I’d frozen again. In a moment, though, Bolt and I were unplugging robots for all we were worth. My mind swirled with uninvited numbers, each calculation telling me how much money we were losing by ending the sessions early. The rain had picked up to a drumbeat. My fingers slipped on the transistor as I accepted payment from the hasty customers. The ones that could fly took off into the air, zipping in the direction of the woods.
“Wait!” Rigoberto called from beside the shed. “What are we gonna do?”
Bolt and I both paused, our hands on the weathered tylon charging cables.
“You’re welcome to wait it out inside with us,” Bolt called. “Not much room, but it’s warm.”
Rigoberto looked back at the kids, their faces pulling off the glass one by one as they realized they wouldn’t reach the ocean. How many of our field trips had been canceled for one technical problem or another? Even if I’d been excited to see them cancelled, I could picture Bolt’s young face staring glumly out the windows of the orphanage.
“Wait,” I said to Bolt, meeting her eyes. “We could do the special.”
“No,” Bolt said emphatically, unplugging her customer and moving on to the next one.
“But—”
“No.”
“It’s not that dangerous.”
“You wouldn’t know. If I let you try it, you wouldn’t be alive to stand here yapping at me.”
“Bolt.”
She ignored me, moving on down the line.
“Bolt!”
That stopped her. I almost never raised my voice with her. She looked up at me, mad as a bull. But she was listening, even if her full focus turned me back into a stammering child.
“For…the kids, you know? And…well, the rent. I… Let me try it. Please?”
All I got was a single nod, but it was enough. Thankfully, she didn’t make me talk to the crowd of scrambling robots.
“Everyone!” she yelled, her muscles standing out against the wet back of her shirt. “We’re going to try and catch some lightning. If you help, you get 75% off.”
Surprisingly, almost all of our customers—the ones who hadn’t run away, anyway—stopped. The margins on robotic work were almost as bad as ours, and the extra cushion would surely help.
Refusing to let Bolt change her mind, I dashed for the shack. I took our rain coats off the pegs along the inner wall, flinging the bigger one back out the door for Bolt. The shack was small, and half of it was filled with junk for the business. Scooting along the edges of the pile, I reached the switch on our home battery, flipping it to prime. Bolt was right behind me, pulling the massive charging cable off the wall with a groan. Even for her, with a thousand feet of tylon, it was heavy. I followed behind her with the whimsical-looking antenna I’d designed.
As she reached the door, Bolt stopped, jabbing a massive finger in my face. “A robot carries it up the hill.”
“Okay,” I squeaked, even as I smiled my brightest smile at her. I’d wanted to do this for years. And best of all, my mind was quiet for once. No numbers dancing, no urge to mutter something to myself. Just excitement. Just hope.
“Alright,” Bolt said, dropping the cable with a splash in the now-muddy field. “Everybody grab a handful — or whatever you got for hands. We’re taking it to a hill east of here. One of you is gonna take the antenna. If you volunteer for that, your discount goes up to free.”
The humanoid robot raised her hand.
“We can’t—” Bolt started, no doubt as scared as I was of losing the six credits we’d already been paid.
“I don’t need a refund, dear. I’d like to see what happens. Besides, my model’s therma-skin is rated for a million volts.”
“Uh…” I said, peeking out from behind Bolt. “Lightning is 300 million volts.”
“Well, we’ll have to hope most of it passes into the ground, won’t we?”
Past the tree line, the sky was turning a frightening shade of green. With Bolt in front, we began to unspool the cable. There were hooks and claws and mag-levers, each robot somehow getting a grip on their stretch of tylon. Even the C-103-QS grabbed some, a hook emerging from his cube-shaped body. Rigoberto drove around in his mech-bus, letting Bolt jump on the back bumper.
“Alright,” Bolt yelled once everyone was set, her voice nearly lost to the howling wind. “Let’s go!”
She pointed at the humanoid robot holding the antenna. “Stay at the tree line until I wave to you. Dash up as quick as you can and plug her in.”
The humanoid nodded, holding the antenna at a careful distance from her chest.
I could hardly see past the brim of my coat’s hood as we began our grim march through the rain, the wet grass soaking the outside of my coat. The wind spun around us, shifting the grass like some ancient creature moving through water. If you walked east about a hundred yards from our shack’s little clearing, there was a big hill in the middle of the field. After I saw it light up during a storm once, I’d had my idea for the “special.”
“Drop!” Bolt finally yelled as we reached the hill, robots all along the line letting go of the cable. The sky crackled with lightning; the thunder too close together to count.
“Come on!” Bolt yelled down to the humanoid robot.
Like most of the robots in her model type, she was incredibly fast. She dashed from the tree line as we all ran back the other way. As we reached the trees, a blinding flash filled the field. Even before my vision cleared, though, I heard the result. A loud beep came from inside the shack, the battery calling out to us.
“Fully charged!” it said cheerfully through the pounding rain. “Four hundred kilowatt-hours.”
“Four hundred?” I asked no one in particular. I’d expected the lightning to lose some capacity on the tylon line, but that was a full charge. It would last us weeks — maybe even forever if we charged it back up with solar. We’d process customers faster, get ahead of the rent. We’d--
Bolt barreled into me with a giant hug, spinning me through the air.
“You did it!” she cried as the robots began to cheer. “You perfect little genius.”
“Wait,” I cried. “The customer!”
As Bolt put me down, I felt a pit in my stomach. I raced back to the edge of the tree line, looking out into the rain. But there, wading through the grass was the humanoid woman. Her left arm was singed from the elbow down, but she had a smile on her face.
“I’ll be expecting that discount next time!” she called.
“Oh, you’ll be getting it!” Bolt called, yanking the cable back down from the field one giant handful at a time. The rain was actually starting to let up, and she no doubt wanted to get us back to work as soon as possible.
I watched, smiling like a fool. For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel like such a nut. At least not in the way those girls meant… I felt like Bolt’s nut. Like something essential. I had done something no one else could do. I’d made the numbers dance, crafting us a lifeline out of lightning.
JH Tomen lives in Chicago and works in clean energy. When not writing fiction, he’s the author of the climate Substack, The Carbon Fables.
Author’s Note:
I love thinking about the future of energy. Every five days, the sun makes as much energy as our planet’s entire fossil fuel reserves. As we open our minds to the possibilities of non-carbon energy, it’s a reminder that virtually anything could be usable energy—even lightning! The other element I wanted to explore in this piece is my own neurodiversity. While there are challenges to having a different brain, just like Nut, there is always some unique beauty to be found in however we’re wired. Sometimes it just takes a loved one like Bolt to help us see it.