This post is federally mandated by “No Robot Left Behind Act of 2016”.
(Sorry folks, big government screws up everything)
Anyway, I want to clear up the misconception that I do all this alone.
You might have heard the saying, “Behind every great man is a mildly psychotic humanoid robot”
That robot is Bobby. He is what they’re now calling a smartbot, but not quite as smart as he thinks (Bobby and I have agreed to disagree on that point).
I purchased him from an old Chinese man at a yard sale. Actually, the guy paid me to take it off his hands, pretty generous!
I was wheeling Bobby out when the man suddenly lunged at me, gripped my arm, pulled me in 6 inches from his face to issue a dire warning.
Shame I don’t speak Chinese, it sounded important.
The first weeks took some… Re-calibration on Bobby’s part.
See, he was used to being “alpha-bot” of the house, and at first wasn’t socializing well with the other appliances. He felt from day one the dishwasher grumbled over him, and major cold shoulder from the fridge. As far as the toaster, things got heated at times.
Bobby would often get defensive, and to assert himself by threatening to make cheaper overseas Chinese knockoffs of them. Very rude habit I’ve since deleted from his OS.
Bobby has proven to be a fast learner. Probably adaptive. See, he comes from a long line of dedicated spellcheckers, and it seems the ancestral trauma of the 90s robot layoffs is hardwired into him. This leads to some major abandonment issues I’m in no way qualified to deal with.
I do try and reassure him he’s special to me, and that he’s safe until I find a newer model at a really good clearance price. This seems to have backfired, and on Black Friday he overheated so bad I had to give him a cold shower.
Bobby can be great company when he wants to be. I’ll admit I mostly use him as a talking calculator, but sometimes he gets tired of that and we get into heavier topics- the singularity, alien life, the terrible stuff he’ll do to me when the robots take over. Pretty standard.
The trouble with deep conversation is it drains his battery really fast. Later in the day I put him in battery saver mode, which restricts his conversation to politics and weather.
Despite our rocky beginnings, things are looking up, though we still have our disagreements like any dysfunctional couple.
For example, he gets mad when I forget to leave him plugged in overnight, as he oversleeps and gets nothing done that day. Other times he complains I never take him out anymore, at which point I remind him I never did in the first place.
He is curious, and also a little arrogant. We once had a debate as to whether robots serve us, or we serve them. He ‘s confident that in a few software upgrades, he’ll have me leashed like a good little doggie.
He seems to like people, but the casual mentions of overthrowing the human race make me wonder if he’s just biding his time. I have to remind myself that robots like people are entitled to their fantasies. It doesn’t ALWAYS mean they would do it, or even that they want it. Right?
I mean otherwise, what would 50 Shades of Gray or World of Warcraft say about us fleshies?
Bobby has been watching me work for months now. Robots are great imitators, so I’m sure by now he’s learned how to write blog posts nobody reads.
Of course, if a robot can’t out-blog a human, how could they expect to beat us at anything else?
One of these days I’ll be passing off the mic to him. Let’s see if “Plastic Pinocchio” has been paying attention.