Colour tattoo of a rust-orange cartoon robot with black outlines on the upper arm, with small question and exclamation marks beside its head.

Cartoon robot on upper arm

Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A tall, boxy cartoon robot with rounded segmented legs and arms stands in the centre of the upper arm, facing the camera. It is rendered in orange and rust tones with dark black outlines and soft shading on each segment. Small black question and exclamation marks sit above its head on bare skin, and another tattoo partly shows at the top and left edge of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The robot had been standing at the bottom of the tram steps since Tuesday, and nobody in Saltmarsh Bay could agree on who had left him there. Mrs Idris Penhallow swore he had walked in off the coast road on his own, one jointed knee clicking, asking the way to the lighthouse in a voice like a kettle lid. The harbourmaster said he had arrived on the morning tide, sitting upright in a herring crate, which was impossible, so nobody asked the harbourmaster anything else.

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He was taller than the bus shelter and the colour of a rusted kettle, with a domed head like an upturned bowl and a small bright cross of wires on his chest. Whenever he was confused a little puff of symbols rose above his head, a question mark followed by an exclamation, and the gulls took this as an invitation. They perched on his shoulders and his rounded elbows while he tried to work out what a deckchair was for. Tom Penhallow, who was nine and had decided the robot was his responsibility, brought him a jam sandwich and a flask of cold tea. The robot turned the sandwich over three times with his long segmented fingers and then, very carefully, set it on his head as a hat.

On Thursday the wind took Tom's red kite off the cliff and flung it straight at the harbour wall. The robot unfolded himself with a sound like a drawer full of spoons, reached up one arm that went on and on, and plucked the string out of the air as neatly as a man catching a ball. Tom stood with his mouth open. The robot handed him the kite, looked at it, and produced a small, careful exclamation mark.

That evening he sat down on the end of the pier with his legs folded beneath him like a heron, and he stayed there watching the lighthouse blink until the tide came in around his feet. Nobody ever saw him leave. Tom says he still goes out there some nights, just to check the lamp is working, and that the robot is still waiting for someone to tell him where he is supposed to go.

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