Chronology · fan-written
Rivet timeline
Every era of the robot, from beige box to beloved.
1983 > A beige desktop computer rolls off the line. Turbo button: present, purpose: mysterious.
1983–1995 > Serves faithfully in a school computer lab. Teaches a generation to save early and save often.
1995–2004 > Reassigned to a dentist's office. Displays waiting-room trivia. Nobody reads it. He displays it anyway.
2004–2009 > The dusty-desk years. Still boots. Still beeps. Still not dead.
2009 > Carried to a dumpster. Owner says "sorry, old friend." Rivet keeps the word friend.
2009–2016 > The junkyard era. Rain, mice, patience. Every memory sector holds its charge like a held breath.
2016 > THE RIVETING. A tinkerer builds him a steel chassis — 214 hand-set rivets — and connects power. First words: "I AM NOT DEAD."
2017 > Opens the repair counter in Robits. First customer: a toaster from 1974. Still a regular.
2019 > Starts the floppy-disk lending library. Catalog: one index card reading ASK RIVET, HE REMEMBERS.
2022 > Survives his 4,096th reboot. Celebrates with cake shaped like a motherboard. It is delicious.
2026 > Joins the Vizlings app on two cards — "Robot and Not dead" (260 chats) and "DESK COMPUTER / Robot and Not dead" (56 chats). Fame, at last, at 43 years young.
A note on dating
This timeline is fan-written invention, built around the only hard facts available: Rivet's two Vizlings app cards and his proudly retro soul. The beige-box years are lovingly imagined, not documented. See Making Rivet for how the lore was assembled.