The Brave Little Toaster

“What is it?” asked the blanket. “Why are you all so quiet?”

“Hush,” said the radio. “It’s time for The Swap Shop.”

“What is The Swap Shop?” asked the blanket.

“It’s the program on listener-supported radio station KHOP,” said the toaster excitedly, “that is going to find a new home for us! I told you not to worry, didn’t I? I told you I’d think of something!”

“Be quiet,” said the lamp. “It’s starting.”

The radio turned up its volume so that all the appliances in the living room could hear. “Good afternoon,” it said, in a deep, announcer-type voice, “and welcome to The Swap Shop. Today’s program opens with a very strange offering from Newton Avenue. It seems that someone there wants to swap— now listen to this list!—a Hoover vacuum cleaner, an AM alarm clock/radio, a yellow electric blanket, a tensor lamp, and a Sunbeam toaster. All this in exchange for… well, it says on the card here: ‘You name it.’ What’s most important, I’m informed, is that you should have a real and genuine need for all five of these fine appliances, since their present owner wants them to be able to stay together. For sentimental reasons! Now I’ve heard everything! Anyhow, if you think you need those five appliances, the number to call is 485-9120. That number again, 485-9120. Our next offer is not quite so unusual. Seems there’s a party on Center Street who is offering, absolutely for free, five lovable black-and-white—”

The radio tuned out KHOP. “Didn’t he make us sound super!” it exclaimed, forgetting in its excitement to stop speaking in the announcer’s voice.

“Come over here by the telephone,” the Hoover urged the radio. “You’ll have to talk to them. I’m just too nervous.”

All five appliances gathered about the telephone and waited for it to ring.

There are two schools of thought about whether or not appliances ought to be allowed the free use of telephones. Some insist that it is flatly against the rules and should never be done in any circumstances, while others maintain that it’s all right, since it is only another appliance one is talking to, in this case a telephone. Whether or not it’s against the rules, it is certainly a fact that a good many appliances (lonely radios especially) do use the phone system regularly, usually to contact other appliances. This explains the great number of so-called “wrong numbers” that people get at odd times. Computerized exchanges could never make so many mistakes, though they end up taking the blame.

For the last three years, of course, this issue had not mattered very much to the appliances, since the phone in the cottage had been disconnected. Ordinarily, the Hoover would probably have opposed the notion of any of them using the phone, as it did tend to adopt the conservative attitude. But first there had been the absolute necessity of calling Jiffy Dry Cleaners and having them pick up the blanket, and that had established a clear precedent for their phoning in to KHOP and offering themselves on The Swap Shop. And now here they were all gathered round the telephone, waiting to talk with their next master!

The phone rang.

“Now whatever you do,” warned the Hoover, “don’t say yes to the first person who happens to call. Find out something about him first. We don’t want to go just anywhere, you know.”

“Right,” said the radio.

“And remember,” said the toaster, “to be nice.”

The radio nodded. It picked up the telephone receiver. “Hello?” it said.

“Is this the person with the five appliances?”

“It is! Oh my goodness yes indeed, it is!”

And so the five appliances went to live with their new mistress, for as it happened it was a woman who’d phoned them first and not a man. She was an elderly, impoverished ballerina who lived all alone in a small room at the back of her ballet studio on Center Street in the oldest part of the city. What the ballerina had swapped for the appliances were her five lovable black-and-white kittens. The appliances’ former master never could figure out how, upon returning with his wife from their summer vacation by the sea, there had come to be five kittens in their apartment. It was rather an awkward situation, for his wife was allergic to cat fur. But they were such darlings—it would never have done to put them out on the street. In the end they decided to keep them, and his wife simply took more antihistamines.

And the appliances?

Oh, they were very happy. At first the Hoover had been doubtful about entering service with a woman (for it had never worked for a woman before, and it was somewhat set in its ways), but as soon as it realized what a fastidious and immaculate housekeeper its mistress was, it forgot all its reservations and became her greatest champion.

It felt so good to be useful again! The radio would play beautiful classical music for the ballerina to dance to; and when she became tired and wanted to sit down and read, the lamp would light her book; and then when it grew late and she’d finished her book, the blanket would give off a steady, gentle warmth that kept her cozy all through the long, cold night.

And when it was morning and she awoke, what wonderful slices of toast the toaster would toast for her—so brown and crisp and perfect and always just the same!

And so the five appliances lived and worked, happy and fulfilled, serving their dear mistress and enjoying each other’s companionship, to the end of their days.

*

The story first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (August 1980):