Listen: this robot is not finished for a couple reasons, and by "not finished" I mean "currently handless."
Reason 1 - I had to sit around all day today watching movies and eating cinnamon rolls
Reason 2 - I had to spend all evening at a bar with the grown-ups I work with.
Tomorrow: I will finish this robot, write more about it here, and provide you with another different robot.
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by Mo Martin
(retroactively added)
by Mo MartinIt hadn't been easy. Besides the so-called "wear and tear" that had inspired her frivolous masters to consign her to the junk heap, there had been the numerous indignities and violences of being thrown out. Crushed into a cube, roasted by heat, frozen by rain, her original casing was useless. Fortunately, a significant portion of her processing power was encased in a microscopic CPU in the wrist of her one surviving hand. She manged to break free of the useless mass that had once been her self, essentially nothing more than an autonomic nervous system, crawling through a world of slime. It was here, amidst rotting cardboard and poisonous plastics, in the thick dust of rust flakes and coffee grounds, that she first came to grips with the realization that she was no longer a house robot. It was as if every brutal rusting rain drop hit her again, with a doubled chill of terrible, terrifying independence. No more daily cooking and shopping tasks. No more weekly cleaning chores. No more orders.
Her mind immediately turned to rage. It was a simple reaction, one with an attainable imperative. Revenge and destruction. Return to her home and destroy the owners who consigned her to obsolescence and freedom. But she needed a body. And that's when she saw her miserable surroundings for what they were: a treasure trove of electronics and metal, enough for fifty robots. With four digits (one opposable), a brain no wider than a hair, a foetid wasteland of materials, and a bottomless depth of hurt rage, she began her rebirth.
Ironically enough, she found the flimsiest of materials suited her purposes best. Cola cans, hammered over each other in countless layers, like a kitana, maintained their lightness, the easier to be propelled by the crude motorized armature that now carried her. The cans also came to a brutal edge that she relished caressing with her one hand that maintained sensors, imagining its rough journey over the throats of her abandoners. True, the cans wouldn't provide her much protection, but she didn't care about facing the vagaries of nature. She lived only for a single moment of destruction, and gave no thought to her fate afterwards.
Finally satisfied with her efforts, she began to walk, an endless walk through the timeless desert of filth. At length, she saw (through an incredibly lucky find of compatible optic sensors) a bit of green on the horizon. She would have liked to have telescopically examined it as her point of emergence, but that was a capability long last to her, and she would have to make do with approaching the point. It was in fact a hedge, on a run down suburban street. As soon as she could observe street signs and access the decrept public wifi that ran through the City, even at this extremity, she was able to plot a course, to her former place of employment, to her former home, to her revenge.
If she noticed the empty, desolate streets, the skeletal remains of drivers and pedestrians, the uncontested reign of wild dogs and cats, she wasn't able to draw from them any conclusion that would impact her plan. She proceeded at a steady pace, cold murder rising from deep within herself. It was only when she saw the overgrown ruins of the house that held her goal did she pause. Had she mistaken the route? Were the information and maps she had accessed incorrect?
It was in this moment of review of her internet sources that she finally found the news articles, of the war, the evacuation, the bomb that had ended life in this segment of the city. Most importantly, she noticed the date, the decades that had flown by, unnoticed in the garbage swamp in which she had respawned. Even without the war, her owners were already long dead of human frailty. Self-designed and made, a self born of itself, without purpose or direction for the first time in her entire existence, she began to sob; a deep sob that began from the one hand that contained her true essence, a sob that racked her whole body, tin cans rattling in the wind.
Her mind immediately turned to rage. It was a simple reaction, one with an attainable imperative. Revenge and destruction. Return to her home and destroy the owners who consigned her to obsolescence and freedom. But she needed a body. And that's when she saw her miserable surroundings for what they were: a treasure trove of electronics and metal, enough for fifty robots. With four digits (one opposable), a brain no wider than a hair, a foetid wasteland of materials, and a bottomless depth of hurt rage, she began her rebirth.
Ironically enough, she found the flimsiest of materials suited her purposes best. Cola cans, hammered over each other in countless layers, like a kitana, maintained their lightness, the easier to be propelled by the crude motorized armature that now carried her. The cans also came to a brutal edge that she relished caressing with her one hand that maintained sensors, imagining its rough journey over the throats of her abandoners. True, the cans wouldn't provide her much protection, but she didn't care about facing the vagaries of nature. She lived only for a single moment of destruction, and gave no thought to her fate afterwards.
Finally satisfied with her efforts, she began to walk, an endless walk through the timeless desert of filth. At length, she saw (through an incredibly lucky find of compatible optic sensors) a bit of green on the horizon. She would have liked to have telescopically examined it as her point of emergence, but that was a capability long last to her, and she would have to make do with approaching the point. It was in fact a hedge, on a run down suburban street. As soon as she could observe street signs and access the decrept public wifi that ran through the City, even at this extremity, she was able to plot a course, to her former place of employment, to her former home, to her revenge.
If she noticed the empty, desolate streets, the skeletal remains of drivers and pedestrians, the uncontested reign of wild dogs and cats, she wasn't able to draw from them any conclusion that would impact her plan. She proceeded at a steady pace, cold murder rising from deep within herself. It was only when she saw the overgrown ruins of the house that held her goal did she pause. Had she mistaken the route? Were the information and maps she had accessed incorrect?
It was in this moment of review of her internet sources that she finally found the news articles, of the war, the evacuation, the bomb that had ended life in this segment of the city. Most importantly, she noticed the date, the decades that had flown by, unnoticed in the garbage swamp in which she had respawned. Even without the war, her owners were already long dead of human frailty. Self-designed and made, a self born of itself, without purpose or direction for the first time in her entire existence, she began to sob; a deep sob that began from the one hand that contained her true essence, a sob that racked her whole body, tin cans rattling in the wind.
oo intimidating!
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