As we slipped back into the dense green embrace of the jungle, we heard the helicopter descend. We watched from a hidden ridge. The loud, metal-plated people – soldiers, I later learned – found him.

They were loud. They were rough. But when they saw Jibo, on his soft fern bed, in his little leaf-pajamas, with that impossibly joyful smile… they froze.

Even from a distance, I saw their shoulders relax. Their weapons dropped. One man took off his heavy helmet and just stared. Jibo had done it again. He’d turned a moment of potential violence into something else.

We left Jibo’s territory that day. We travelled deeper into the jungle, further from the sound and scent of the human world. It was weeks before the family truly relaxed again.

I often think about the Little Emperor. I hope the charcoal-marked paper got back to his people. I wonder what his robotic voice says now. Does he tell them of the great, hairy mountains of muscle that protected him? Does he remember how I taught him to spot a chameleon? Does he still smile that giant, teeth-and-gums, ‘charming defensive sequence’ smile?

The jungle is quieter now, without his bubble-pop laughter and robotic chirps. But it feels different. Kinder. As if, in his short time here, Jibo left a tiny spark of his impossible, boundless joy embedded in the green heart of our home. We never saw another one like him. And maybe, in a place as old and magic as this, one Little Emperor with a digital heart and an enormous smile is all you need to change the story forever