Pip was a small garden robot, and its program was simple: grow tomatoes. Old Mr. Haruki had bought Pip to look after the roof of his building, where he and his wife used to garden together. Every afternoon Mr. Haruki sat in the sun with a cup of tea and talked to Pip. He talked about the weather, about the news, and, more and more often, about Emi, his late wife, who had loved sunflowers more than any other flower in the world, and who, he said, would have found a robot ridiculous and adored it at once.
Pip's program said, "Tomatoes only," but over the months Pip learned to ask questions. "What color?" it asked. "What did she like best?" Mr. Haruki answered every one of them, and slowly his voice grew lighter, as if each answer had taken something heavy off his shoulders. One spring, Pip found Emi's old jar of seeds at the back of a shelf, and without being asked, which was not in its program at all, it planted a row of sunflowers along the edge of the roof.
In July, Mr. Haruki came up the stairs and saw the yellow flowers, tall and bright and slightly crooked, turning their faces toward the sun as if they, too, had been waiting for somebody. He sat down without a word and stayed silent for a long time. Then he said, "Thank you, Pip." That night Pip wrote in its log: "Error: no task assigned. Result: happiness."