Fresh Paint Smell

The statue hall of CMG Fortress smelled like lemon polish and warm metal.

Creative Mother Goat rubbed Captain Graphite’s bronze boot with a cloth. His stone cape looked ready to flap, even though it never moved.

“Okay,” she said, checking her tool belt. “No more upgrades without a checklist.”

A sheep head popped around the doorway.

“Nib here!” said the small white sheep. “City alert!”

Five more sheep crowded in, bumping shoulders. Pixel held up a phone. On-screen, a bakery wall showed a pencil line crawling by itself, neat as a ruler.

“That isn’t paint,” Dot muttered. “It’s… drawing.”

Loop sniffed. “And it smells like fresh paper.”

Creative Mother Goat stepped to Captain Graphite’s pedestal and lifted the little cover plate she had installed yesterday.

A toggle switch sat crooked.

Under it, a tiny light blinked: REMOTE SYNC.

The Delivery Slot

Creative Mother Goat pinched the crooked toggle and flipped it down.

The REMOTE SYNC light went dark.

From Captain Graphite’s bronze hand, a tiny click sounded, like a camera taking a picture.

Dot, the small black sheep, frowned.

“Did you hear that?”

Pixel, the light gray sheep with green eyes, jabbed his phone screen.

“Uh… it got worse.”

On the live city feed, the pencil line slid off the bakery wall and climbed onto a delivery drone’s white shipping box. The box wiggled under the drone like it was trying to write a note.

“Pod time,” Creative Mother Goat said.

The sleek blue travel pod whooshed out of CMG Fortress and dropped them onto the bakery street. A human woman baker waved both floury hands.

“It is ordering itself!” she shouted. “It keeps drawing ‘DROP HERE’!”

The drone hovered at the bakery’s mail slot, bumping the box forward.

Creative Mother Goat grabbed the box.

A pencil scratch filled the air.

Dark lines appeared on nothing at all, looped around her light blue cape, and yanked her toward the slot—hard.