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Cole misses his brother who has moved to an apartment closer to the Loop. He goes to visit his brother and he learns that his brother is actually Danny, stuck in his Jakob's body. He also learns his brother Jakob is in the blue robot. He finds the robot and wants to bring him to his mother to help. Both Cole and his brother cross a frozen stream in the woods unknowingly jumping them forward in time several decades. In the woods Jakob dies after fighting with another robot and Cole has to leave him. He eventually leaves the woods and finds his mother as a very old woman. She explains they have been looking for him for many years and his grandmother and father have died, Jakob (Danny) has married and had kids. Cole also learns his teacher, who had taught his older brother and parents, is the second generation of human-like robots, following the first generation of robot like the one from Episode 7. The episode ends many years later when we see an adult Cole, visiting his childhood home with his new family.
18 total · 7 major · 11 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| body swap | major | The story explored what might happen if two people swapped bodies. |
| brother and brother | major | The story concerned Cole and his troubled relationship with his brother Jakob, who had actually body swapped into a robot. |
| coping with the death of a family member | major | Cole found his brother in the body of a robot, and quickly lost him. Cole's parents presumably learned how they had lost the real Jakob. Unclear if they thought Cole was dead or merely missing. |
| human childhood | major | The story of conveyed from the boy Cole's perspective. |
| mother and son | major | The close relationship between Cole and his mother, Loretta, was explored. |
| time travel | major | Cole somehow found himself in a future many years hence, where his mother was old. |
| what if I found myself in the future | major | Cole somehow found himself in a future many years hence, where his mother was old. |
| android | minor | Cole learned that his school teacher some an android of some sort. |
| artificial body part | minor | George had a robotic arm. [arm] |
| change is part of life | minor | Motivated by a desire to go back to a time when his older brother still lived at home, Cole asked George why things couldn't stay the way they were. George told him that "time" is the reason. Cole's interest in photography is interpretable as being bound up with his desire to keep things they way they were. |