Obfuscate (verb): to confuse; to bewilder

“What in the world is that?!”

Astounded, mesmerized, and perhaps a bit afraid, the young man stood halfway down the staircase and beheld the roomba with stars in his eyes. His gaze did not shift as the small vacuum robot rounded a corner, chirping a cheerful note as it disappeared.

“It’s a roomba,” his roommate answered, barely covering his grin with a hand. There was a pause in the engineer’s sentence as he carefully reworded the technology to understandable terms. “It… detects dirt on the ground and cleans them.”

The teenager released his tight grip on the railing handles and bounded down the rest of the steps in two flying leaps. It was a wonder he didn’t fall flat on his face and splatter all over the ground—he had been burrowed in his room for the past two months, with food and water delivered to him, and probably forgot what grass looked like.

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I am a willing prisoner, he had declared as he closed his door to write his novel. A blank room is as much inspiration as the world.

Maybe it was true. Vanishing like that had made him the most popular author in the city—his imagination transcended far beyond the normal world.

Turning the same corner, the gifted author scampered behind the roomba, only to let out a surprised whoop.

“He’s gonna run into the—!”

His body shot forward with shocking agility, but the roomba only hummed merrily before navigating the bookshelf and continuing on its mission.

“...Wow. That must be magic.” The young man had a hand in his hair and an awed smile splitting his face, as if he were a parent watching his child take their first steps. “How is that even possible? Explain to me, at once.”

His roommate chuckled fondly at his friend’s unique speech. Heading off towards the dining room, the engineer and the author began a heated discussion of the roomba’s intelligence over a dinner of two bowls of cold cereal.