Bao could not stop spending her shells.
She did not spend them on anything big. That was the annoying part, they went on a bun here and a ribbon there, and at the end of every week she had no shells left to spare
So she went down to see Cogsworth.
Cogsworth was a wooden robot that stood at the bottom of the market and had stood there longer than anybody could remember. He was made of wood. He had a box in his front and a key in his back that nobody had ever turned. He was not alive the way a frog is alive, but he was not a chair either.
You put something in the box. You told him a day. He gave it back on that day.
He had been doing this for forty years. He had never once got it wrong, and he had never once given anything back early.
"Market day," said Bao, and counted forty shells into the drawer.
"MARKET DAY," said Cogsworth.
The drawer shut.
On Tuesday the plum seller came through with three baskets of plums that were going soft and he wanted to sell them off for cheap. Bao wanted to buy the lot to dry them and sell them in the winter.
She ran to the bottom of the market.
"Market day," said Cogsworth.
"I know what I said. I need them now."
"MARKET DAY ONLY."
"There are plums. They are cheap. It is a good idea and I thought of it myself."
"MARKET DAY."
"Cogsworth."
"MARKET DAY," said Cogsworth, pleasantly.
Bao went and found Moolah.
"Break him open."
"I could," said Moolah. "Then you would have forty shells and no Cogsworth. And on Friday you would come back down here and ask whoever built him to build you another one."
"That is not the same."
"It is exactly the same. It is what you asked him for on Sunday." Moolah looked up at the wooden face. "He cannot tell Sunday Bao from Tuesday Bao. That is not a fault in him. That is the request you ordered for and got."
The plum seller went past with his cheap baskets and somebody else bought them.
Nutsy put eleven shells in that drawer once and got eleven shells back on market day, which surprised everybody in the Pond except Cogsworth.
On market day the drawer came open by itself.
"BAO, TODAY IS MARKET DAY" said Cogsworth.
Bao still uses him. She puts in what she means to keep and not one shell more, because she has learned that Cogsworth is not on her side and is not against her either.
He is only very, very good at one thing.
Margin Note: The thing that will not listen to you on Tuesday is the thing that will not listen to anybody else on Sunday.
The Honest Bit: Cogsworth is a smart contract. He does exactly what he was built to do, he does it for anybody who turns up, and nobody can change him afterwards, including whoever built him. That is exactly why he can be trusted, and exactly why a mistake inside him is permanent. There is real money sitting in machines like Cogsworth right now because somebody set the day slightly wrong, and there is nobody to ask about it.
The Question of the Day: Moolah offered to break Cogsworth open and Bao said no. Say why, in one sentence, without using the word shells.
Try It: Find any contract on BscScan and open the Contract tab. That is Cogsworth with his back off. Notice that you are allowed to read exactly what he will do before you put anything in his drawer, and that almost nobody does.
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