How Notík Lost the Letter O

On a shelf in a little room lay a small silver notebook computer. His name was Notík, and he used to be very hardworking. He helped write letters, showed pictures of kittens, and played lullabies when rain drummed outside.

But then everyone stopped noticing him. A pile of crayons grew beside him, a green button wandered underneath him, and dust settled on his lid so thickly that you could draw on it with your finger.

Notík tried not to complain. Computers are not supposed to whine, after all. He simply glowed with a tiny green light and waited for someone to open him.

One evening, there came a: click!

A key with the letter O sprang from Notík’s keyboard. It did a little somersault, bounced off a crayon, and rolled behind the cupboard.

“Oh no!” whispered Notík. He wanted to write the word “home,” but only “hme” appeared on the screen.

He wanted to write “good night,” but it came out as “gd night.”

“That sounds like the name of a dragon with a cold,” he sighed.

Notík was sad. Without O, his words seemed full of holes, like a sock after meeting a cheerful puppy. And because he was dusty and a little lonely, he felt that no one would even notice his trouble.

Just then, a little girl named Anna came into the room. She was looking for her green button because she wanted to make it into an eye for a paper owl.

When she bent down by the shelf, she noticed Notík.

“Oh!” she said. “You’ve been here all this time?”

Notík lit up just a little.

Anna carefully opened him. On the screen, big letters were glowing: “HELL, ANNA.”

Anna tilted her head. “Hello, Anna?”

Notík gave a happy beep.

“You’re missing your O!” cried Anna. “And you need a proper cleaning too.”

First, she took a soft cloth and gently wiped the dust from his lid, his screen, and his keyboard. It felt so nice to Notík that it seemed as if all the little wires inside him had straightened themselves out.

Then Anna knelt down on the floor. She shone a little flashlight behind the cupboard. She found the green button, two building blocks, one sock that was probably on an outing, and at last, the little O key too.

“There you are!” she said.

The letter O was a little dusty, but whole. Anna wiped it clean and gently clicked it back into the keyboard.

Click!

On Notík’s screen appeared: “THANK YOU.”

“You’re welcome,” Anna smiled. “I just won’t leave you alone under the crayons again.”

She sat down beside him and wrote the first sentence of a new fairy tale: “Once there lived a little computer who thought he could not do anything without one letter.”

Now Notík could write all the words again: comfort, cat, cake, sky, and good night. And he discovered that the most important word of all was home.

From that evening on, Notík stood on a clean table beside a little lamp and the paper owl with its green button eye. Every evening, he helped Anna make up one new short fairy tale.

And when a letter sometimes misbehaved, Notík was no longer afraid. He knew that all he had to do was ask for help.

Then Anna closed Notík, his little light quietly went out, and the room sank into peaceful darkness. Outside the window shone a round moon, just as round as Notík’s found letter O.