these things happen

He turns on, and off, like a robot.  

Sam found him standing there in the dorm, naked and unresponsive.  After calling his name seven or eight times, the robot finally turned back on from off and looked at Sam from the black.  He looked right at Sam and said, I know I should have clothes on and proceeded to put right leg after left into the jeans crumpled at his feet.  Then the robot crawled into bed.  

The next day it happened at the coffee maker.  He was going through the motions of making coffee.  First he found a filter.  He poured one, two, three scoops of grounds.  Then he filled the glass carafe and raised his elbow toward the ceiling, pouring water into the back of the machine.  There he froze, his arm an inverted V, an immovable mountain.  It held the coffee pot in mid pour.  

The water in the pot stayed level with the earth, only the chalice was tipping.  

He stared at a fixed point, looking through it.  He was the holder of earth things, of water and glass and stone.  He was the holder of breakable earth things.  The room moved around him.  Chairs slid back as other youth stood up.  A fork echoed off the table as it fell from plate to table to floor.   Whole glaciers felt the earth sway one tenth of one tenth of one millimeter.  The water in the tilted pot trembled.  

Several people said his name but no one dared to touch him.  To touch him could cause an avalanche in Siberia.  

Then, without any flare or fury, the robot turned himself back on and the water emptied itself into the machine.  The coffee groaned.  The mountains righted themselves.  The sky sighed.  

The robot sat down and waited. The bodies bussing their tables around him, waited. The earth, spilling all around him, waited.

Only the coffee went on percolating.