The child stepped into the room, humming something under their breath. Suddenly, they caught sight of Sunny and Robert and stopped humming. They grinned and rushed over to Robert, blanket-cape fluttering behind them. "Kaefeaeans!"
"Robby!" appeared on the robot's screen.
Sunny giggled. "You have a nickname, Robert?"
The robot blinked open one eye and grumbled, "Not by choice. Adelia, persistent little kid that she is, simply insisted on calling me that."
"Well, I think it's cute." Sunny smiled and glanced at Adelia, whose fingers were flying across Robert's keyboard. Adelia pulled out a sheet of paper from somewhere in her blanket cape, looked at it, then tossed it onto the table and resumed typing.
Sunny squinted at the paper. "Is that… math homework?" She was mildly surprised to recognize Arabic numerals on the paper, although she wasn't quite sure what the "*" (asterisk) or the "/" (slash) operations were. There were definitely some addition and subtraction problems, though.
Adelia gleefully finished typing, then clicked Run.
"Hey, wait a second!" exclaimed Sunny. She raised an eyebrow at the kid, who smiled cheekily up at her. "Are you using Robert to do your math homework for you?"
Adelia looked back at Robert and clicked on the "Main.java" tab. She read the translation, then laughed and replied. "Maybe. But you won't tell, right? I'm Adelia. Who are you? Do you want to be friends?"
Sunny couldn't help but give an internal "aww" at that. Adelia seemed like a nice enough kid, although cheating was a big no-no… "I'm Sunny. And shouldn't you be doing those math problems yourself?"
Adelia pouted. "Why do boring stuff like that when learning to code is so much more useful? You can just make robots and things do what you want instead of doing it yourself." She scribbled the answers onto her worksheet.
Well, Sunny couldn't really argue with that logic. She hummed. "Okay, but... Can you explain how you– or Robert– solved each of these problems to me? Think of it as helping a friend!" Maybe Sunny could make sure Adelia understood the math, at least.
Adelia rolled her eyes dramatically. "But you're ollllld. Don't you already know how to add and multiply?"
Sunny gasped and pretended to be offended. "Excuse me? I'm not that old. And everyone needs a refresher sometimes!"
The kid flopped onto a chair at the table, cape flaring behind her. "Fiiine." She pulled out a pencil from a pocket and pointed at the first problem. "This is multiplying 56 by 3, so you add 56 three times."
Sunny settled onto the chair next to Adelia, making sure to keep Robert's translation screen in sight. "Okay, so the asterisk represents multiplication?"
Adelia gave Sunny a "duh" expression. "What else would multiplication be?"
"An ‘x' or a dot?" Sunny shrugged. "That's what I'm used to."
Adelia looked at Sunny like Sunny had grown an extra head.
Sunny blushed and said, "Okay, okay, got it. Asterisk is multiplication. Moving on…" She glanced at the second problem. "That looks like regular addition and subtraction. But what about the third problem?"
"That's division." Adelia giggled. "What weird symbol do you use for division?"
"A line with a dot above and below it?" Sunny thought for a moment. "Although on second thought, I have seen slashes used before, like in fractions if you don't have enough space for a horizontal line. Alright, that makes sense. But… 108 divided by 11 shouldn't be a whole number, should it?"
Adelia looked down at the paper. "Oh. Oh!" She shot out of her seat and edited something in her code, then clicked "Run" again.
"Aha!" Sunny exclaimed. "See, this is why you should do your homework yourself. Seems like robots can get it wrong."
"No, it was just my code that was wrong." Adelia harrumphed. "I forgot to make one of the numbers a double, so it printed an integer."
"It's a pretty common mistake," Robert added drowsily.
Sunny sighed. "I hate to sound so clueless, but could one of you explain what a double is? Somehow I don't think it means a double scoop of ice cream in this context."
Suddenly, an enthusiastic voice floated in from the left doorway, and the words, "Seems like I'm perfectly in time, as per usual!" appeared on Robert's screen.
Sunny glanced up eagerly as the brightly-dressed lady who'd first greeted them entered, balancing a large stack of books and a tray of food in her arms. The woman navigated towards the table, the stack swaying precariously, and Sunny held out her arms just in case something fell.
Thankfully, the lady managed to set everything down without any mishaps. She dusted her hands off, then slid a backpack (which had previously been hidden behind the books) off her shoulders. A scroll was sticking out of it, and Sunny immediately perked up, because according to Rule #8, scrolls equaled either ancient maps, forbidden curses, or exotic spells. Before she got a chance to ask about it, however, the lady turned to Sunny and presented her with a book from the bottom of the stack.
Sunny eyed the thick tome, noting its plain, white-and-blue cover and title she couldn't read. It reminded her more of a heavy textbook than a magical book containing the secrets of coding… Still, she took it gratefully. "Thank you, Ms– Uh. Sorry, what should I call you? I'm afraid we weren't properly introduced. I'm Sunny, by the way." Sunny thought about sticking her hand out for a handshake, but she decided it was probably better to use both hands to keep the book balanced, and simply smiled instead.
"Oh, my sincere apologies! I do get ahead of myself sometimes. I'm Professor Polymorphism, or just Polly for short." Professor Polly grinned at Sunny, then turned back to the table and started setting out the dishes that had been on the tray. "Please, help yourself!"
Adelia sneakily grabbed something that looked like a cookie, and the professor tsked playfully at her. "I meant Sunny, Dels." She ruffled Adelia's hair, then took a seat at the table and started organizing the books into piles.
Sunny took an empty plate and started piling it with what looked like macaroni and cheese, salad, and perfectly rectangular slices of bread. As she ate, she kept examining the white-and-blue book. Was that a coffee stain on the spine? It looked like the book had been well-used. "So, this manual will tell me what a double is?"
Professor Polly nodded enthusiastically. "That one should cover the fundamentals! You can look up anything in the table of contents at the beginning of the book or in the index at the end of the book."
"Alright, thank you." Sunny wiped her hands on a napkin that had been on the tray, then turned to the beginning of the book. Variables, If Statements, Loops, Methods, Arrays, Objects and Classes, Exception Handling… All of those words were words that Sunny had heard before, but, like doubles, she suspected they meant something different than the loops in her shoelaces or history class in this world. Anyhow, she couldn't find anything about doubles in the table of contents, so she turned to the index at the back.
Division… Documentation… double! Sunny flipped to the page number listed. It mentioned something about Java using "int" to represent integers, and... "Aha! ‘The double type is used to represent floating-point numbers, which are numbers that have decimal points. These numbers can be positive or negative. Note that a variable of type double can also store any number that can be stored in a variable of type int.'" She looked up at Professor Polly and Adelia. "So a double is just a number with a decimal point?"
Adelia shrugged. "Basically."
Sunny frowned. "Okay, but why would that change the result of your math homework?"
Professor Polly eyed Adelia. "Dels, were you making Robert do your homework for you again?" Adelia squirmed in her seat, and Professor Polly sighed, then turned back to Sunny. "If you do division with two integers, the result will also be an integer. The decimal part will be truncated, or cut off. So you need to make one of the numbers a double to get the correct result."
Professor Polly shook her head sadly. "I've brought this up with the Council before and suggested that we make a single slash give the correct result and have a different symbol for integer division, like that wonderful system our neighbors in Pythonia have, but to no avail."
"Oh. Bummer."
The professor perked up. "Not to worry, however! Java has its own advantages, like a faster runtime. So no need to be gadding off to those eastern lands." Professor Polly started looking around for something. "Speaking of lands…" She grabbed the scroll that Sunny had been admiring earlier and unrolled it with a flourish. "No better time than now for a quick geography lesson!"
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