Chapter 1: The Instant Assembly Beam

Sensei stood at the front of the classroom and wrote four words on the board: School Invention Fair.

"Build something that works," Sensei said. "Explain how you built it. You have two weeks."

Nobita's eyes went wide. A rocket, he thought. I could build a rocket.

At lunch, Giant announced he was building a catapult. Suneo said he was building a remote-controlled car with parts his father had ordered from America. Shizuka said she would build a music box, something gentle and pretty.

"What about you, Nobita?" Shizuka asked.

"A rocket," Nobita said, and for one shining moment he believed it.

That afternoon he sat at his desk with cardboard from the recycling bin, scissors that wouldn't cut straight, and a tube of glue that dripped everywhere. The cardboard bent when he tried to make a cone. The glue soaked through and made the paper soft. His hands were sticky. The rocket looked like a crushed can.

He tried again. The second rocket fell apart when he lifted it.

"Doraemon," he said, looking up at the blue robot cat who sat on the windowsill watching a sparrow. "I need help."

Doraemon sighed the way he always sighed when Nobita wanted a shortcut. But he reached into his fourth-dimensional pocket and pulled out a device that looked like a flashlight with a green lens.

"The Instant Assembly Beam," Doraemon said. "Point it at materials. Think about what you want. The beam assembles it automatically."

Nobita's face lit up. "Really?"

"Really," Doraemon said, in a tone that suggested he knew exactly how this would end.

Nobita gathered his cardboard, scissors, glue, paint, and string. He spread them on his desk. He pointed the beam at the pile and thought very hard about rockets—tall ones, silver ones, the kind astronauts rode.

The beam hummed. The materials lifted into the air and spun together like a small tornado. Cardboard cut itself into perfect cones and cylinders. Paint sprayed itself in neat silver lines. String tied itself into loops. In thirty seconds, a beautiful rocket stood on Nobita's desk.

It was perfect. Sleek and silver with painted windows and tiny fins at the base. It looked like something from a museum.

Nobita stared at it. "This is amazing!"

"Don't lose the beam," Doraemon said, but Nobita was already imagining Sensei's proud face, Shizuka's impressed smile, and Suneo's shocked expression.

He took the rocket to school the next day, two weeks early. He set it on his desk carefully. The other students gathered around.

"Wow, Nobita," Shizuka said. "It's beautiful."

"How'd you make it?" Giant asked.

Nobita opened his mouth. Then closed it. He had no idea.

On the day of the fair, Sensei walked from desk to desk. Each student explained their project. Giant demonstrated how his catapult's lever worked and which glue held best. Suneo rattled off motor specifications and battery voltages. Shizuka wound her music box and explained how the pins on the cylinder plucked the metal teeth to make sound.

Then Sensei stopped at Nobita's desk.

"A rocket," Sensei said. "Very impressive. Tell us how you built it."

Nobita looked at the rocket. He looked at Sensei. The classroom was very quiet.

"I… I used cardboard," he said.

"Yes," Sensei said. "And then?"

"And glue."

"How did you make the cone so precise?"

Nobita said nothing.

"What kind of paint did you use?"

Nobita said nothing.

Giant laughed. Suneo smirked. Shizuka looked at him with sympathy that somehow felt worse than Suneo's smirk.

Sensei was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, very gently, "The point isn't the finished rocket, Nobita. It's what you learn while building it."

He moved on to the next desk.

Nobita walked home that afternoon with the perfect rocket tucked under his arm. It gleamed in the sunlight. Other kids on the street looked at it and said, "Cool!" But when he got to his room and set it on his desk, it just sat there.

The Instant Assembly Beam was in his drawer. He could build a hundred rockets now. A thousand. All of them perfect. All of them empty.

He looked at the rocket for a long time.

Then he went downstairs to get a snack, because even failures make you hungry, and the rocket stayed on his desk, beautiful and useless and not his at all.