Chapter 28 — Wind Village Robot Team

"Is this the first robot we made?" A seventh-grade student who had joined the club two weeks earlier pointed at an old robot placed solemnly on a wooden shelf in the corner of the room. Its wooden frame had turned dark brown over time, its two rubber wheels were worn smooth, and a patch of electrical tape still clung to one corner of the body.

"That's right." Phong replied, now a 9th grade student, much taller than the timid boy who stood repairing fans in his grandfather's yard a year ago. He was instructing a group of new students how to wind motor wires, a job so familiar that he could talk while doing it without looking at his hands. "We called it Uncle Wind, named it from the first days, when the principal asked what this robot's name was but the whole team still couldn't think of it."

"Why is it called Uncle Wind?"

"Because our commune has a lot of wind, and because it can run thanks to the whole team contributing to the wind from all over the village." Gia Han interjected, standing nearby checking the new code for another project of the team. She is now an official member of the provincial IT team, but every Friday, she still spends time returning to this warehouse to work with the younger children.

The room is now much different from the musty warehouse from the first day. The leaky corrugated iron roof was completely repaired thanks to funding from the STEM incubation program, and a brand new wooden table was added in the corner of the room - a gift from Mr. Phu himself, the owner of the car repair shop who lent the team tools during last year's chaotic morning. He donated it after hearing the story from a customer who happened to know the news. On the wall is still hanging the safety procedure sheet Khanh Dan hand-wrote from the first night of the chip fire, now yellowed but no one has taken it down.

Teacher Toan stopped by for a while before leaving. He no longer had to carry a homemade "antenna" fishing rod up to Station hill since the commune had a mini broadcasting station, but he still kept the habit of stopping by the warehouse every Friday afternoon, standing at the door and observing for a few minutes before leaving. "This year is more crowded than last year." He said to Khanh Dan, looking around at the nearly twenty new students crowded around the tables.

"Thanks to the teacher who kept the warehouse key from the first day, now there is a place this crowded." Khanh Dan replied, smiling.

"I just borrowed the lock, you're the one who built this." Teacher Toan waved his hand, but his eyes could not hide the satisfaction of someone who had correctly bet on a new colleague right from the first meeting on Tram Hill.

Nam walked in, carrying a box of new parts he had obtained from his father's auto repair shop - a few small engines from liquidated old motorbikes, which he personally disassembled and carefully classified before bringing them. He is no longer a name associated with review reports, but a student trusted by teachers to be in charge of the practical part in Technology class, a change that uncle Duoc, his father, still occasionally shakes his head in disbelief when telling customers who come to repair cars.

Uyen Nhi, now in eighth grade, was standing in front of a small group of new 6th graders, holding a real microphone - borrowed from the school's equipment room for today's event - introducing the new semester schedule, her voice fluent, confident, without a trace of the trembling that made her run out of the room in tears during the meeting with STEM staff last year.

Outside the school gate, Ms. Xuyen stopped by to pick up Gia Han after the activity, carrying a bag of guavas just picked from the garden, waiting at the almond tree instead of waiting in disbelief like the night she rushed straight into the warehouse nearly two years ago. She no longer asked "what's the point of learning that" - ever since the day she saw her daughter speaking on local television in a short report about the provincial IT team, she pasted a newspaper cutout of her daughter on the wall of her house, showing it off to anyone who came to visit, even though she herself still didn't fully understand what the commands Gia Han wrote meant.

"What are you studying today that makes you come home so late?" Ms. Xuyen asked when Gia Han walked out, her voice no longer had any blame, only the usual concern of a mother.

"I taught sixth graders to write their first program, Mom. It was so much fun," Gia Han replied, taking her mother's arm, and they both walked on the familiar path leading home.

Khanh Dan stood at the door, looking at that scene - the four children were now older, more confident, passing on exactly what they had learned to a younger generation - and she realized that this was exactly the image she had vaguely pictured in her mind on that stormy night last year, when Nam asked her if this warehouse would still be kept after the competition ended.

She thought about the last text message she had received from a former colleague at NovaTech, informing her that the Falcon project's patent had been sold to a foreign company - something that had left her speechless and unable to respond on the night of the Nui Gio team's first chip fire. Looking back now, she realized that those two stories, even though they started from the same blackened circuit board, had gone in two completely different directions: one ended in a sale between strange corporations, and the other was still continuing to live, every Friday afternoon, in the laughter of a group of children who had never known what the concept of "commercialization" was.

"Miss, can Uncle Gio still run?" The 7th grade student asked, still standing in front of the wooden shelf, curious and not taking his eyes off the old robot.

"Try it." Khanh Dan said, walking closer and plugging the power cord into the robot. The small LED light on the front - the only part that had not been replaced over the past year - flashed three times like an old habit, then the robot rolled slowly on the tile floor, following the exact black line someone had drawn from the previous activity, not having time to erase it.

Next to him, another girl in the group of new students - small, wearing glasses, clutching a drawing book in her hand exactly like the one Uyen Nhi had held on her first day - timidly asked one more question, her voice still so small that Khanh Dan had to bend down to hear clearly.

"Miss, can girls do mechanical work? I like drawing machines, but I heard that girls are only suitable for light jobs."

Khanh Dan looked at the girl, then glanced at Gia Han who was standing a few steps away. Just in time to hear the question, she looked up and smiled, walked closer and sat down at the new girl's eye level.

"My name is Gia Han, I was asked the same question in the past." She said, her voice warm. "Now I'm in the province's IT team. Do you like drawing machines? So let me introduce you to Uyen Nhi, she used to only know how to draw, but now she can do much more than that."

The girl nodded, her eyes lit up, and Khanh Dan took a step back, letting the moment happen naturally without her intervention — a circle closing the way it should, without her having to say another word.

The 7th grade student shouted with excitement, running after the robot that was crawling slowly across the room, while behind, Phong, Gia Han, Nam and Uyen Nhi continued their work — no one stopped to look, because for them, that scene had become a familiar part of every Friday afternoon, like the sound of the wind blowing steadily through Windy Pass every day, no one needed to pay attention to know it was there.

The robot finished the short distance, stopped at the end line, the LED lights turned off after a few seconds, and the room returned to familiar sounds: the sound of copper wires clashing together, the sound of typing on the keyboard, the laughter of a group of new students getting used to their first screws in life — the same rhythm that had begun one afternoon when the power went out more than a year ago, and now, no one in this room doubted whether it would continue or not.

Khanh Dan closed the warehouse door behind her as she left at the end of the session, but did not lock it completely, just kept it ajar in accordance with the team's habit - so that anyone who wanted to stop by earlier on a Saturday morning, or later on a certain urgent evening, could freely enter without having to wait for someone to unlock it for them. The afternoon wind blew through the empty schoolyard, passed through the half-closed warehouse door, gently shaking the yellowed safety procedure sheet stuck on the wall, where the robot named Uncle Gio stood on the wooden shelf, waiting until the next Friday afternoon for a new pair of hands to plug it in again, and a small LED light blinked exactly three times, steadily and persistently, as it has always done for over a year, and as it will continue to do for many more Friday afternoons to come.