Quine dipped her metal brush into a pot of silver paint. She perfectly copied the shiny brass gear onto her canvas, line by exact line. "Now paint a place you have never seen before!" a round friend cheered, waving his metallic arms. Quine dropped her brush onto the floor with a loud clank.
She stared at the bright white canvas. Her robotic lenses clicked loudly, zooming in and zooming out. She held a new clean brush perfectly still. She looked across the wooden floor and then up at the brick wall, searching for a new place to copy. The tall friend waited quietly, inner gears whirring softly in the room.
Quine dipped her brush into a pool of glowing blue paint. She slowly drew one perfectly straight, rigid line across the canvas. She quickly wiped it away with a squeaky rag, letting her mechanical shoulders droop toward the floor. "I can only paint what is right here," Quine whispered to her friends.
"Then don't look!" the round friend shouted. He splashed a pot of sparkling purple paint right onto the middle of the easel. The neon colors splattered with a wet smack, and Quine snapped her metal eyelids tight. She grabbed three paintbrushes at once and started swirling them through the glowing puddles without opening her eyes.
Quine spun in a circle, sweeping her arms in wide, messy arcs. She mixed the wet colors into wild new shades on the canvas. When she finally opened her eyes, she gasped. A swirling, sparkling galaxy of neon stars covered the once-blank painting. Her friends crowded around the masterpiece, their lights flashing rapidly in sudden amazement.
Quine pointed a paint-splattered robotic finger at a clustered spiral of glowing painted stars. "Let's go visit this one next," she chirped cheerfully. She pulled a fresh, empty canvas onto her easel. She didn't scan the workshop floor this time; she just dipped her metal brush and began to invent.
