Hogfather - Teddy Bear

Ponder and his fellow students watched Hex carefully.

“It can’t just, you know, stop,” said Adrian “Mad Drongo” Turnipseed.

“The ants are just standing still,” said Ponder. He sighed. “All right, put the wretched thing back.”

Adrian carefully replaced the small fluffy teddy bear above Hex’s keyboard. Things immediately began to whir. The ants started to trot
again. The mouse squeaked.

They’d tried this three times.

Ponder looked again at the single sentence Hex had written.

+++ Mine! Waaaah! +++

“I don’t actually think,” he said, gloomily, “that I want to tell the Archchancellor that this machine stops working if we take its fluffy teddy bear away. I just don’t think I want to live in that kind of world.”

***

Hogfather - p359-360