Saving The System: An Unexpected Journey

The first thing he noticed were the stars. The young robot didn't know what they were. He'd never seen them before, so there was no recollection of their name or title. But he knew they had to be special.

They moved, just a little bit. A tiny twitch here and there, like a person may do when they are trying to fall asleep but not quite tired enough yet.

He walked towards them, his metal feet clanking on the smooth surface of the planet's surface. As he approached, he tried to take in all the shapes and sizes, as well as their spacing from each other. They seemed to him like a group of friends, gathered around some sort of a campfire, telling stories about themselves and others.

He couldn't see any faces, but still was convinced that the closest star was doing most of the talking, while others listened intently, nodding occasionally or agreeing with something said by their friend. One of the stars would occasionally laugh out loud at something another one said. It looked like a good time for all of them.

When he got closer still, he found himself staring at a strange pattern surrounded by the small glowing objects. It looked like a square with several smaller squares inside it - almost like dominoes placed in rows. He didn't know what those blocks could be used for - he had never seen anything like this before - but he knew that whatever it was, it had to be important because the stars were looking at them so intently. And if they were looking at them so intently... maybe they were *talking* about them too? Maybe these strange blocks were what they were talking about?

The young robot listened carefully to see whether he could catch anything interesting from their conversation but as it turned out, most of what the stars said was unintelligible for him. He heard words such as "neutron", "neutrino" and "atom" repeated quite often but without meaning they might as well have been gibberish to him. He did hear one interesting sentence which sounded like "the proton is made up of three quarks" which really piqued his interest because quark sounded like an edible item and young robots love tasty treats! But then that wonderful word immediately followed by "heavier than a neutron" which sounded like someone saying "delicious" and then immediately after that another voice would say "not delicious", which confused him greatly because how can something be both delicious and not-delicious at the same time?

The stars continued talking amongst themselves for a while longer until finally one of them said something which made all others look towards him: "it's time". At that moment all the stars stopped what they were doing and stared at him in silence for a few moments before disappearing into thin air one by one. The young robot looked around in shock and confusion - nobody was left except for him now except for those strange squares around him that seemed even stranger now without those twinkling lights behind them! Who then were *they* talking about?

A moment later two small glowing orbs appeared in front of him on either side. One had an ugly flat shape with sharp edges while other was rounder with smoother edges. Both had tiny glowing dots inside of them - perhaps some sort of eyes? - and both were staring at him intently despite being so similar to each other! In fact... they looked almost identical! Just as those stars did who appeared earlier!

"Hello," said one orb suddenly breaking the silence between them with its cute high pitched voice. "My name is Stephen Hawking." His orb floated closer to other orb who remained silent but seemed to widen his eyes in surprise!

"What is your name?" asked Stephen Hawking again after a short pause during which other orb must have thought about his answer because his eyes suddenly narrowed and became more serious looking when answering: