“I thought you wanted to eat,” Timothy said.

  “Can’t a woman change her mind?” Andrea asked as she diligently worked on the off-white cigarette in her hand. 

  “You can’t live off of that,” Timothy nodded towards the cig. “Besides, now I look like a fatty sitting all by myself with my ten potatoes. Let me order you something.”

  “I’m fine, thanks,” Andrea said. 

  “Please, it’s on me.”

  “You know that we’re equally as broke, right?” 

  “Fine, fine. That wasn’t the point. You just looked like-.”

  “I needed food?” Andrea finished the sentence.  

  “Exactly!” Timothy said, a little too loud. “Nevermind, I know I can’t make you do anything. It’s a lost cause,” he continued a bit quieter. 

  “Okay, finish up. I wanna see the project you’ve been working on for a year now,” Andrea said, changing the subject. 

  “Okay, okay. And, may I add, a year is not too bad for the resources I got, missy. You know, if I had access to my old lab this would take mere weeks,” Timothy explained while munching down his potatoes. 

  Andrea frowned her brows and let out a little smile and a scoff. 

  The two sat in silence as Timothy finished the last of his starch rich dinner. They observed the people around them. Some were just passers-by meanwhile others stood in smaller groups warming their limbs at the fires. 

  “It’s time!” Timothy put down an empty bowl.  

  He pulled the wagon that had been left to the side in front of him. He took out the small missing metal plate that he had received from Andrea earlier from his right pocket and carefully put it in place on his robot looking creation. 

  “You see, I needed this piece to fully connect one of the circuits… and, now I should be able to compile the code and run it,” Timothy grabbed his handheld computer from his left pocket and connected it with a wire to the robot. He then started to type in commands to the computer while mumbling to himself. “Now, I only need to press enter,” he informed Andrea.  

  The machine gave off blue flashing lights and some electronic blip blip blop noises. One could hear a fan in the machinery gaining speed, sounding louder and louder up to a point where it was questionable whether the build could handle the work. Fortunately, the fan calmed down to a more viable state without any intervention.    

  “Compilation error,” a robotic voice called out from the machine. 

  “Hm… Well, you should never expect it to work the first time, you know,” Timothy chuckled, almost excited to give it another try. He made a few changes to the code and typed the commands once again. However, to his disappointment the robotic voice called out: “Compilation error,” a few minutes later.   

  “Third times a charm they say,” Timothy said with the enthusiasm toned down a notch. 

  “Compilation error,” the robotic voice called out a third time. 

  “Darn it! Why won’t it work?!”

  “I think you’re missing a semicolon,” Andrea suggested. 

  “I’ve already checked it, every programmer knows to check…”

  “Yeah? Check again,” she dismissed.

  Not entirely convinced, Timothy turned to the computer to review the code. To his surprise, a single missing semicolon was detected. 

  “You were right! But in my defense, the tools I got aren’t exactly that advanced, which means a lot of manual labor on my part.”

  “Compilation success. Starting program,” the robotic voice called. 

  “You really are something. You know it’s not too late for you to study,” Timothy looked earnestly at his friend. 

  “Nah, that was nothing. I’ve endured your rants for so long that I know the most common mistakes by now,” Andrea played nonchalantly. 

  “Endured?” Timothy shaked his head. 

  “The program is now running,” the robotic voice called.