Chapter 2: The Effort Multiplier

Nobita sat at his desk that evening and looked at the perfect rocket. It sat there like an accusation. It looked exactly like something he could never build himself.

He pushed it aside.

"Doraemon," he said. "I'm going to do it properly this time."

Doraemon looked up from his dorayaki. "Really?"

"Really," said Nobita, with the kind of determination that lasted about as long as his mother's patience. "I'll build it by hand. No gadgets."

He lasted seventeen minutes. The instructions showed a hundred tiny pieces. His fingers couldn't hold the glue bottle steady. He cut the first strut crooked. The second one stuck to the table.

"Doraemon," he said. "There has to be a faster way."

"There isn't," said Doraemon. "That's the point."

"But a little faster," said Nobita. "Not instant. Just... quicker."

Doraemon sighed the way he always sighed when Nobita found a loophole. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small blue dial, the size of a wristwatch. The label read: EFFORT MULTIPLIER — One Minute Becomes Ten. Single Use Only.

"It speeds up your work," said Doraemon. "One minute of real effort equals ten minutes of progress. But it only works once, and only for one hour."

Nobita strapped it to his wrist. It ticked quietly.

He picked up the knife. He started cutting. His hands moved at normal speed, but the pieces appeared faster, cleaner, perfectly measured. One minute passed. Ten cuts finished. It was like magic, except he was doing the work. He could feel it.

By the time his mother called him for dinner, he'd assembled the entire frame.

"This is amazing!" he said.

At school the next day, Giant pressed his face against the classroom window during lunch break. He watched Nobita's hands move at their usual lazy pace, but the rocket on the desk grew like time-lapse photography.

"Give me one," said Giant.

"It's a single-use gadget," said Nobita. "I can't—"

"Give. Me. One."

Doraemon, who had been napping in Nobita's bag, produced two more multipliers with the resigned expression of someone who knew exactly how this would end. Giant took one. Suneo appeared at the window, saw what was happening, and demanded the third.

They met in the park after school. Three boys. Three rockets. Three blue dials ticking on three wrists.

They started building.

Giant worked with his usual force, but multiplied. He hammered a stabilizer fin and the impact went through ten times. The fin punched a hole straight through his half-finished fuselage. He hammered again. The nose cone crumpled. He tried to straighten it. The entire frame bent sideways like a broken umbrella.

"Stupid piece of junk!" Giant yelled, and threw the hammer, which sailed over the playground fence and into Mrs. Yamada's vegetable garden.

Suneo painted his rocket gold. At ten-times speed, the brush moved faster than his hand could control. Gold paint sprayed across the body, across the grass, across his school uniform, across his face. He spun in a circle trying to stop the momentum. The rocket spun with him. Paint flew in a perfect gold ring.

"It's supposed to be gold trim!" Suneo shrieked. "Trim! Not everywhere!"

Nobita glued the final piece. At ten-times speed, the glue didn't have time to dry between applications. Piece after piece stuck together before settling into place. The tail fins fused at crooked angles. The body warped. The nose cone attached upside down. He tried to pull it off. The whole rocket bent in his hands like wet cardboard.

The dials stopped ticking. One hour. Done. Single use only.

Giant's rocket looked like it had been through a war. Suneo's rocket looked like a gold abstract sculpture. Nobita's rocket looked like a rocket that had been assembled by someone who was running very, very fast.

They sat in the grass surrounded by paint and broken balsa wood and bent metal struts. None of them said anything.

Shizuka walked by carrying a small cardboard box. Inside, Nobita could see the neat beginnings of a rocket. The body was half-finished, carefully sanded, painted white with steady hands.

"How's yours coming along?" Nobita asked.

"Slowly," she said, smiling. "But it's coming."

She walked home.

Nobita looked at his multiplier. The dial had stopped. The label now read: EFFORT MULTIPLIER — Expired.

He went home. He sat at his desk. The perfect rocket from the Instant Assembly Beam still sat on one corner, untouched and unearned. The crooked rocket from the Effort Multiplier sat on the other corner, rushed and ruined.

The assignment was due in one week.

His desk was empty in the middle, where a rocket should have been growing, piece by piece, day by day, the way Shizuka's was.

He stared at the empty space for a long time.

Then he opened the instruction manual to page one.