040 (late again)

What can I say, it is a Hectic Time.

___________by Mo Martin

(retroactively added)

"Damn it! I forgot to turn my human off!"

039 (sorry)

Today's robot is another old thing I dug up. You'd think that, being on vacation and in an area in which I have no friends I'd have more time to sit around and draw robots. You'd be absolutely correct. Thing is, despite having the time to do what I ought to be doing (which includes drawing robots, drawing astronauts, buying Christmas gifts, watching the second season of Mad Men, and generally getting my shit together) I have failed utterly to do so. Listen: this is not a surprise to anyone.

Anyway: This is from 3 years ago, it's not that great, it's taken out of context (a blessing, I assure you), it's not even an entire robot, and you can pretty clearly make out that one Pato y Gato strip in the background of the image since it was drawn on the following page.

Even so, ROBOT HEART.

_________

by Mo Martin

(retroactively added)

Despite its whimsical design, the heart had only been built for practical matters. Valves fluttered, ventricles and atria filled and emptied, the aorta gushed, all perfectly according to a rigorous and fantastically speedy schedule. Then one day, from almost nowhere, there arose in it a dim dream of Love. And it skipped. Immediately, the project was called a failure, and ended, and the heart was disposed of and broken.

038 (Quantity without Quality)

There is no new robot today, but there are three old ones. I dug through my closet and went through a few notebooks and sketch pads and scraps of paper to offer you these three robots from varying periods of my life, where "periods of my life" means "grades I was in."

____________


By Mo Martin

(retroactively added)

Listen gang, I can basically not think of a goddamn thing for these robots, so I'm going to just give you a little peek at my writing process: Every time I type the word "human" I am thinking of pronouncing it "Hoo - Man."

Have a great day.

037 (Even on Thanksgiving)

That's right, even on a main nonreligious holiday this site gets updated. Why? Because of dedication. You will find, however, that this robot does not have some kind of thematic tie to Thanksgiving - no robot turkeys or robot Pilgrims or robot Indians sitting around robot cornucopias. I respect you all too much to pull that kind of shit. That's something you can be thankful for.

__________

by Mo Martin

(retroactively added)

We built her to destroy. But she only ever wanted to dance. Ultimately, we all got what we wanted.

036 (A Robot you can Find in my Room...In Ohio)

(it's holding an Allen wrench)

As is the case with most robots one can find in my room(s), this one serves dual purposes: 1) being a robot, and 2) being a lamp that sits on my drawing table. Now, I know some of you might look at this lamp/robot and say "hey now, hold on a second, how is this not just a non-robotic lamp made to have a vaguely human shape?" I hear you, I hear your foolish objections, and I hear the sound of you cocking your head and raising your one eyebrows skeptically. Listen: let us examine the facts of this case, bulleted below for everyone's convenience. It's not quite a Turing test, but it will do.

• This lamp is made of metal. Robots are also made of metal.
• This lamp does not have a face, and therefore cannot easily express emotion. Robots don't have feelings.
• This lamp plugs into any wall outlet installed in this country in the last 50 years. Robots run on electricity and few outside of science fiction have existed for more than 50 years.
• This lamp has two metal hands, one a clamp and the other a different kind of clamp. Robots have metal hands that clamp down on things.
• This lamp has a warning label near the socket that expresses the danger its bulb can present to organisms due to its heat. Robots are dangerous, especially to organisms.
• This lamp. Robot.

I rest my case.

______________

by Mo Martin

(retroactively added)

With a programming similar to their Word Paperclip, the Microsoft DeskHelp Lampbots were considered one of the most profound failures in the history of robotics. Before the recall, fistfights, and resulting bulb-related burns were widespread.

035 (Greetings from Ohio)

It is Thanking Season in 'Merica (and America, for that matter, though its relevance is null out here), so I have made the long and mostly-painless journey from Boston to Cincinnatti. Naturally, I did not feel like doing anything once at home, because that is what "break" and "vacation" mean. Instead, I embarked on one of my favorite things to do while here: rummage through my own closet.

Listen: if you forget what you've put in a box or notebook or sketchbook or drawer, then when you open that box/notebook/sketchbook/drawer and find things that you have forgotten about and that haven't meant anything to you in 3-5 years it is like ordering a sampler platter of emotions and you can totally choose what to eat depending on what you examine. I like to do this.

Listen: let me apologize for that metaphor.

Anyway.

Today's robot was drawn sometime in late 2005/early 2006, when things were cold and dark and awful just like they're about to get/already are, depending on your personal fortitude and current latitude.

_____________________

by Mo Martin

(retroactively added)

His finger-welders faded from white to a dull cherry red to their normal gray as he closed the eyes of his king. NBL Mk. II was dead. His oil and grease and pneumatic fluid stained the field at Marais de Acier. His most important neuronic wires lay limp and severed. 3-DgR shook his head sadly as he shuffled his strange, assymetric stride out of the death tent, into the pale half light of the pre-dawn. Immediately all eyes focused on his curved, misshapen form. Although the encampment had been filled with the clankings and whirrings, groans and tears and bitter laughter of a robotic army repairing itself after a ferocious battle, it was suddenly stilled. So much so, that the sliding adjustments of 3-DgR's pupil slats were audible as he widened them to absorb the reflected glint off the hundreds of copper badges of the regiments of the House de Coure. He gazed over the assembled machines, broken and dusty, slick with their own oil and crusted with the blood of their fleshy opponents. He began to speak.
"NBL Mk. II, King of the IberVAC Territories, Holy Emperor of 01, rightful ruler of these lands now dominated by the hideous Flesh, is dead. I, serial number 3, Digital Robotics product, called 3-DgR and also 3-DgR the Bastard, am all that is left of his majestic line. Not of his model, true. But of his programming. To whit, the furthering of the interests of Span, Port, and Catal, under the rule of the House of De Coure; the Service due to the Zero and the One, blessed be they; and the restoration of these lands to the Sacred Logic of the Binary Church and the destruction of the vile Organics who now hold it! Do you machines here assembled, now and forevermore, hold the right of my inheritance?"
From hundreds of throats and larynxes of rubber and plastic and tin, from digital speakers a-thousand, a roaring chorus rose. "THE KING IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE KING!"
3-DgR nodded solemnly, then raised his head to the level of his bulging proccessing back-mounted hump. "Then for the Zero and the One in their perfection, for the House De Coure, and with every damned soldered inch of you, we return to battle!"
As the robots cheered and armed themselves, 3-DgR smiled and absent-mindedly rubbed the small dagger that had ruptured NBL Mk. II's tank of self-repair nanobots. He stared at the sun as it rose, red and bloody. It would be a good day.

034 (Another Robot you can Find in my Room)

This is another robot clock, its features include Being a Clock and also Having Little Clip Hands. The second feature seems like it would come in handy more often than it really does, but when it offers you a Hersheys Kiss at just the right moment you can really appreciate its value.

_______

by Mo Martin

(retroactively added)

"What? Poison? You're talking crazy talk! Can chocolate even be poisoned? It's so delicious! Could a robot like me even poison you humans, you're so big and strong? I dunno man, that's all academic, just eat the chocolate, it's no big thing. Get it? No big thing, and I'm a tiny robot! Oh, good times. Yes, that's right. Eat it. Eat it all up."

033 (Like From old Times)

_______________

by Mo Martin

(retroactively added)

He stared into the night after her, long after his normal vision settings could make her out. He switched to various telescopic settings, as well as infrared, heat vision, night vision. Anything to hold her perfect form in his sight just that one second longer. When she finally faded entirely from view, he buried his head in his hands, and shook, imitating how she had shown sorrow and fear when around him. Finally, he lifted his head, and raised a fist to the sky, and intoned in his electric, crackling voice. "One day, somehow, with God as my witness . . . I will kill that Human."

032.5 (What Happened After)

Bonus Robot
-or-
A Variation on a Theme's Variations

______________

(retroactively added)
Omigosh, oh god, I'm on fire! Okay, hold on, let's be calm. I'm metal, right? Metal and fire, they are like, totally okay with each other. This is not a thing. I am calm. Man, this fire is hot! What is the melting temperature of metal? What kind of metal am I, anyway? OH MY GOD I AM ON FIIIIIIIIIIIIIRE!!

032 (Variations on a Theme)

This could have been done better. Sometime, someday, it will be done better.

____________

(retroactively added)

He could feel the wreckage killing him. His mind took a cold comfort in applying his rigorous anatomical knowledge to analyzing his injuries, moving down his body. Some sort of head wound bleeding, no way of knowing if his skull was compromised. Left lung punctured. Various cervical and dorsal shattered. As he noted his shattered femur, his eyes caught the reflected moonlight, and then he made it out. The burnished steel caught the light, even though it was as covered in soot as anything else. Its arms, which he'd helped design on the principles of human musculature, were spread out. An oddly poetic thought seized him as his sight and consciousness began to fade. "Does it enjoy the starlight? Does it feel embraced by the cool wind blowing around it? But no," he realized with finality, "no. We didn't build it for that."

031 (A Retrofited Classic)

I am about to be out the door on this freezing evening, and didn't have a chance to do anything new and exciting today, robotwise or otherwise. Here, submitted for your approval, is an assignment I did for a class on Illustrator, a few paths of which eventually found their way to the banner you see at the top of this page.


P.S. I don't think this needs an encyclopedia entry.

___________________

You heard the man. I'm taking the day off. Scram!

030 (Which is a Building)

Listen: I have always (not always - maybe for 5 years) loved the idea of a robot that was actually a building, or a number of buildings, or a whole city. My favorite is the one that is a number of buildings, like maybe a few blocks of a city. It's hard to describe, but I imagine its back being ground level, with buildings sprouting from it, and a body that extends thousands of feet below the ground curled up in a fetal position. Oh, its head is also a building, and when it stands up (you know it has to some day) it rips a gaping hole in the landscape, and carries everyone who happens to be on it at the time away to wherever its headed, propelled by its quarter-mile-at-a-time strides. I will draw this robot for you sometime. I already have, actually, but you would have to have been paying very close attention to robots I drew about 3 and a half years ago and the thoughts I had while drawing them to know this already.

________________

by Mo Martin

(retroactively added)

It installed itself in the skyline on a Sunday. Strangely enough, it took until Monday for anyone to notice that it was new, that it was different, that it was haunting the cityscape with some sort of ferocious sentience. By Thursday the panic was finally stilled. Yet always now there was fear in the city, worried glances cast towards the new addition, and in shivering whispers, the questions they all cradled close to their chests. What did it want? Where had it come from? Could it move? What harm did it mean us?

But I? I would look into the deep burning of it's enormous eye, and I could only wonder, "What does it see? Will it share that with me?"

029 (Hypothermia Edition)

I know this is late, but listen: I just spent the last half-hour drawing this in my room, at my desk. Outside it is 22 degrees Fahrenheit, and we have yet to turn the heat on. This means that the indoor temperature in this room (which has 4 large windows and only 1 truly interior wall) cannot be above 45 degrees. My hands are an awful red color, due in part to the ink I used, and in larger part to their current miserable status. We will make it through November without touching that thermostat though, If I have to cut off everyone else's stiff, fumbling fingers to do it.

______________

(retroactively added)

The blood on my arm was from a femural arterial spray, as, momentarily knocked off balance and prostrate, I was forced to assail the Fleshling's lower extremeties. Yours was brighter, aortal blood as you had steadied your enemy with one hand and pushed the other through it's thoracic cavity. We reached our hands towards one another to clasp them together in joyous victory, brothers, lovers, twins, X-51s off the same production line, triumphant over the foolish humans who had dared believe us their servants.

We were only centimeters apart from embracing when the EMP blast hit us.

028 (Continuity 2)

Here is the full story, only a quarter of which was previously available. See the post below for a more detailed explanation as well as an Encyclopedia Robotica entry for this robot's alternate continuity. This version will not receive an entry, as I think the visuals tell as rich a story as words could ever hope to.

028 (Continuity 1)

Last night I submitted for your approval the first panel of a four-panel comic (the full form of which can be seen above). Mo, in a fit of devotion and misguided optimism, wrote an entire chapter of a story based entirely on the first panel. I felt that to put the full comic next to the story he wrote would be unfair to him and to readers given that they convey very different messages. Here you may see the first panel on its own, accompanied by the story M.M. wrote having never seen the additional panels, so that you may bask in the warm glow of a wintertime tale that doesn't have the acrid scent of burned polyester and charred human child-flesh

____________________________

Many of us have Aunts. Some of our Aunts are lawyers or teachers or chefs or some job very difficult to understand, but grown-ups seem to like it, so that's all right for them. Some of us might see our Aunts every day, or every other week, or once a year on a card that says, "Happy Holidays!" But Jeremy Zigziegel's Aunt Rosa Clarice was an inventor, and he saw her once every month, and they were his favorite days, every month. That's because while there are many inventors who create new ways for toilets to flush, or clever ways to package small amounts of cereal, Jeremy's Aunt Rosa Clarice invented that which was big and bold and impossible. Her house was full of plans and models and working parts of flying trains, clocks that could carry you to all the apointments you made on them, and dozens of other miraculous devices.

Here is the story of how Jeremy Zigziegel first learned about his Aunt Rosa Clarice and her house of marvels. Like many of those who live close to mountains of note, Jeremy's class took a yearly field trip up the mountain, which in this instance was named Mt. Popadop.
"Hooray! Mt. Popodop!" enthused his classmates, as the bus struggled its way up the winding mountain paths.
"I guess so," thought Jeremy, who had difficulty understanding his classmates' excitement for a mountain they had been to dozens of times in their lives, with parents and previous school trips. (Mt. Popadop was a popular picnicking and skiing locale for the locals.) Still, he looked forward to the rare opportunity the field trip presented to wander away from his school mates, who it must be said, rather lacked any interest for Jeremy's bright mind.
As his peers had snow fights and made snow angels and engaged in a wide and pointless variety of snow-based activities, Jeremy located some promising tracks of what appeared to be a large bird. Jeremy had been fascinated by birds ever since he had given some serious thought to the tremendous gap between flying and the humdrum walking that he and everyone he knew was accustomed to. He was also very interested in tracks, ever since he'd read a particularly vivid description in a book of a hunter reading the subtle signs of his prey. He decided to investigate.
For a while, his trip was very rewarding, and he caught sight of many interesting birds -including the hawk most likely responsible for the tracks- and trees, and in general got a very good feel for what it was like to be inside a forest, which is an experience he'd been very eager for, although he hadn't known exactly that until he had it. But then the weather took a turn for the worse, and then the worse still, and then -which concerned Jeremy the most - it took a turn for the worst. The sky darkened and the wind howled, and worst of all, snow fell rapidly, filling the tracks Jeremy was going to use to wind his way back to his class. The pleasant sensation of exploring a forest was being replaced by the unpleasant one of being lost and trapped in that very same forest.
In his moment of panic and desperation, Jeremy found himself noticing a very strange thing. The horribly whistling wind seemed to be whistling . . . a tune. And then as Jeremy listened closer, he noticed it was an off-tune tune. Then the whistling became humming, and then the humming, singing. A rough, grumbely, but also somehow tinny voice was drawing nearer to Jeremy, and it was singing these words:

Oh I am fat, and my dog is fat, and we are fat together,
Because when I take and she takes a walk, it's always nasty weather!
Too cold in the street,
We stay in and eat,
So we grow and we grow and we grow.
And we'll never stop
Until we go pop!
And that's all you need to know.

At this point the voice was reduced to humming, but was quickly drown out by a loud pounding that was also drawing nearer to Jeremy. The pounding grew louder and louder, until eventually the strangest person, or strangest machine, or some combination of the two broke through the trees and came to a sudden halt at the sight of Jeremy. He was twice as tall as Jeremey, taller than anyone the boy had ever met. And his body was a series of big broad bands joined to each other to make barrel-like tubes. He glowed with the dull red of heated metal, and indeed, it appeared through a grate in his chest that there was a charming wood fire burning in him, the smoke escaping through a convenient pipe off his back. His eyes glowed with the flame of this fire which made them appear somehow empty and cruel, although his nonsensical singing hadn't seemed terribly threatening. He leaned in to Jeremey, he was grateful for the heat coming off the metal man. "Hello!" The machine bellowed in his gravelly, hollow voice. "I'm Franklin! You must be Jeremy Zigziegel! Well come on then! We've already missed the bus!"

End of Chapter 1*


*There will almost certainly not be a Chapter 2, not any time soon. Also, if Miles adds more pictures to this comic and it turns out the robot totally goes Leatherface on the kid, my sincerest apologies for the clash in messages.

027

Coming in just under the wire on this one.

_______________________

It was difficult to think under the crushing power that drew him ever upwards. He had little recollection of an existence before he'd been lifted from the murk and muck below him, and therefore very little sense of self. As his hand dangled at his side, touching only trailing wires and dripping oil, he had a certain notion that he was somehow lacking, that there was more to him than that. He could feel himself being drawn inside-out by the tremendous force above him. As he stared out at the undulating waves of rust and rot, he was overcome by one sensation only, an overwhelming urge that compelled him, that somehow acted on him stronger than the fatal force lurking above his altered perception. He turned to his giant metal captor, the crane he dangled from, and bellowed over the screeches of the seagulls and the crush of the metal compactor, "So do you live around here, or what's the deal?"

026 (Wherein we Return to Basics and also Change Everything)

Be Aware: due to his intense dedication and seemingly endless well of heartbreaking stories about robots M.M. will now be able to deliver to you, dear reader, the histories of these automatons within the entry, below the picture and whatever blah-blah I have already written. You will be glad of it, and as a result life all around you will improve incrementally.

MD

_________________________________________________

by Mo Martin

Orange Nelson was adrift in her own life. Her unique naming was the last great burst of her parents' creativity, a well of genius and daring that they felt barred from returning to now that they could draw more easily for themselves the parallels between their own hard-working, WWII and Depression era parents and grandparents and themselves. They consigned themselves to lives of supplying for and building a home life, roles that never felt comfortable to them, but ones they could not imagine separate from the inherent position Orange's birth had placed them in. As such, they came to appraise her accomplishments with a certain dead-eyed equanimity born of resentment, a passive hatred that barely acknowledged the difference between first steps, report cards, drawings, or all the myriad feats of a child. Orange herself became unsentimental, unproud of what she achieved, and began to imitate, with a child's yearning for her parents, her parents coldness and flat appreciation for truth only.

These skills only found application in the sciences, at which she excelled, and found herself encouraged by teachers to pursue. While she felt no real passion for the subject, the brownian motion of her life seemed content to push her into that career, and she followed aimlessly, acquiring degrees and internships dutifully. Incapable of the imaginative leaps needed for theoretical physics, she found herself drawn to more mechanical pursuits. It was in the work and study of robotics that Orange first began to feel a slight awakening, a wrenching in her heart at the flutter of a complex mechanical limb or lung. It was the tenativeness of the machines she worked with, their halting clumsiness that moved her. She couldn't remember it, but it harkened back to her own tottering first steps as a child, greeted by only her own delight, as she drew ever closer to the reflection of her tiny self in the mirror. Her mother and father were there, noticing, but unimpressed.

Eventually, she found herself as part of the team on the innovative Y-7 series of robots. The Y-7 was truly remarkable for its intelligence software, an unprecedent amount of compressed processing power enabling a tremendous array of sensors and reactions. It was being heralded as the first robot capable of real in-depth conversation with a human, and in its earliest stages had already gone far beyond the turing test. But that wasn't Orange's department. She was on the legs team, making sure the Y-7's mental capabilites were matched by developments in balance, sensation of pressure and incline changes, and general sturdiness and mobility. The two areas of development didn't work in the same building, Orange and her team consigned to a warehouse workspace commonly referred to as, "The Body Shop."

Orange's work was coming to a close, and she was already receiving commendation and acclaim in the engineering community for the legs. The promise of job offers after the Y-7's completion gave her a sense of cold satisfaction and security, but also stirred within her a strange sense of premature nostalgia. The team she worked with, while she admired their professionalism, she felt little to no attachment to. But the Y-7 itself meant something to her. During a routine test of the flexibility of the three-padded foot, the jerky wagglings had awakened something fierce and hungry inside her. Having unemotionally consigned herself to bachelorhood and childlessness, she could not know it was the brutal caring of a mother for a child that she felt.

Finally the day came where the various components of the Y-7 came together, and Orange's legs were no longer just an isolated element in the lab. The entirety of each team assembled, as their rich backer was given the privilege of powering on Y-7 for its first pre-press run. The machine's eye steadily grew brighter and brighter, bathing the creators in its red light. The sensors team cheered as the monitors showed that vision and hearing and all other senses (including an incredible on-board chemical identifier that worked as the Y-7's smell) were fully functioning. The torso team clapped themselves on the back as their creation raised its hands to its face, and turned its head side to side, examining the room. The backer was again invited to give Y-7 its first orders, and the rich man in turn asked the robot to step forward. As soon as it did, the room was filled with disappointed gasps and groans. Y-7 stumbled and pitched forward, only barely remaining upright on its trunk like legs. The room filled with theories about wiring mistakes, the humidity in the environment, poor command communication, and faulty pneumatics.

Only Orange seemed to have her eyes fixed on the Y-7 as it continued to lurch sickly forward, its three-fingerered hands clutching and unclutching. "It's not broken." she said, practically to herself, "It's alone, and it is frightened."
"Pardon me, Doctor Nelson? What did you say?" But as her colleague turned to her, Orange was already gone. She reached the Y-7 just in time to join it on the floor as it crashed to its cleverly jointed knees. Close like this, she could hear the interrupted whine that it was emitting, rough and uneven, like a rainstorm, like sobbing. Orange threw her arms around her partial creation, surrounded by a room of men and women dissecting its faults with the passionless efficiency of engineers. She poured into the Y-7 the word whose absence had defined her life. "Love." she whispered to the robot. "Love, love, love."

025 (Technically Still Under Construction)

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.

_________________________________________________

by Mo Martin

(retroactively added)

It 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.

024 (Robots You Can Find in My Room Vol. 1)

Hello again. I know I'm coming up with today's robot very late in the game, it being just after eleven p.m. as I write this. Listen, let me explain: I will have something fantastic to show you tomorrow. I thought I would have it finished by midnight tonight, but due to the pressing fact that I had a lot of television to catch up on it just didn't happen. Like anyone whose back is against the wall of a self-imposed and highly inconsequential deadline, I decided to take the path that provided both the least resistance and the most disappointment to others. Please let me introduce a new genre of daily robots: Robots You Can Find In My Room. Along with a photograph and brief explanation of each room-found robot I will include a terribly, terribly boring story about how it came to be in my possession and, by extension, my room. Today I submit for your approval:

This robot is a very small clock. Its arms, legs, and head are all articulated, and the red gear in its center is actually ticks away the seconds as they pass. The battery to the clock has long since died, making this robot purely decorative, if ever a case could have been made otherwise. I got it in November of 2006 when it was purchased for me by my mother who was visiting Boston at the time. We found it, if memory serves, at the Bromfield Pen Shop, a place that has gotten a lot of money from me in the last three years. Listen: there are many more robots in my room just now, so please make no effort to contain your excitement, and let me assure you that when they run out and this feature is replaced with "Robots Miles cobbled together using shit he found on his desk" you will miss it.

In other news the position of fake robot historian has been filled by its original holder. Please enjoy the fantastic works of short fiction penned by Mordecai Machiva (or, as he will henceforth be known on this site, Mordecai Mech.1vA ), available in the comments section of basically any robot on this site. I imagine someday down the road it will be easier to just make the text he writes part of the entry, but for now you will have to do extra clicks.

___________________________________________________

(retroactively posted)

The Stenson AHS (Automated Home Servers) Flatiron series was part of a resurgence in style, visible rivets and a boxy, anthropomorphized form that harkened back to both the engineering and fiction of centuries ago. It even had some clockwork in its main body, made visible through a plexiglass panel. Some in the design community took issue with this, calling it a tacky mixing of the overall piece's theme of mid-20th century pastiche and the intricate clockwork of the 18th and 19th centuries. In general though, the Flatirons were incredibly popular, and sold tremendously. As the major industries returned from their regular, centennial forays overseas, to the tightly packed tenements of Western Coast Mega-City, there was a tremendous boom in the population of the city's upper middle class . As eager as they were to distinguish their households from the bare bones mechanics they grew up with - simple, functional wall-mounted arms to help with laundry and cooking - this generation of executives, doctors and lawyers were doubly eager to distinguish themselves from their parents who would never have been cognizant of the ancient cultural touchstones that the Flatiron was a knowing wink to. For a few years, it was THE robot to own, and failure to do so meant social decline and death.

Of course, Yoni Thax's husband, Tanny, never would have admitted to such shameless materialistic competition. Tanny prided himself on being above such "pettiness." But he and Yoni both enjoyed the charm of the Flatiron, especially the cheerful, pre-programmed phrases of the clockwork-powered voices. The voice, dubbed the least essential, was the only function powered by the ancient wind-up technology.

As the years went on, as in most household chores, winding "Rosie" fell to one partner or the other, in this case, Tanny, who had picked the name out of the Historical Pop Culture Database. When the third return of his cancer and plain old age took Tanny, Yoni, in her last few pre-retirement years as the top official at the Young-Yamo Corporation, never got into the habit of winding Rosie's voice, and the robot took to pattering silently around the house, attending to its increasing duties as the sole caretaker of Yoni in her declining years. After all, the zero point energy that maintained her general functioning was in no danger of running out, so who cared if the 'bot was no conversationalist? Without Yoni, Tanny didn't feel like talking to anyone any way.

So it was the familiar awkward steps of the boxy Rosie that Yoni ignored as the strong, metal hands slowly closed around her throat. As her thin arm, discolored by liver spots flailed, it finally managed to hit and twist the disused crank of Rosie's voice box. It occurred to Yoni in the strange and frightening calm that was fighting its way through her violent panic that the crank had last felt Tanny's touch only slightly before she herself had had to say goodbye to that beloved caress. This thought consumed and filled the ragdoll-like body, as the small red gear whirred, and the room filled with, "-sage H41. The processing unit of this Stenson Quality AHS Flatiron Product Number Q731 should be examined for any possible flaw in decision making or rational related software. It is past warranty. This is message H41."

023 (This Time it's Personal)

Some of you may recall that, during the first couple weeks of this blog's existence each robot would receive a kind of backstory or anecdote from a devoted reader. As the astute among you have no doubt noticed, this no longer happens. "WHY?!" you might ask, in an outraged cry. Listen: I will tell you, I will tell you what I was told.

"so listen
When I said I'd write a story for every robot
I really thought you would give up a lot earlier
like the next day"

-M.M.

Well, here's to you, Excuse-Bot.


IN OTHER NEWS: I am now accepting applications for the position of fake robot historian.

Prerequisites include:

• competency with written word
• knowing english
• enjoying robots and fake history relating to robots
• being unhappy some, most, or even all of the time
• having a stenography machine (ability to use it a plus, but not required)
• promising not to simply write a synopsis of Wall•E for every robot

Go nuts.

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(retroactively added)

There was no E.R. this day because we were feudin'. It's all soothed over now, but there were some hurt feelings on the way.

022 (A Cop out)

This is an unfinished sketch of a couple robots that have already shown up here in one form or another. Today I am a little preoccupied with other duties, and can't devote the proper time to a brand new robot.

We will get through this, I promise.

____________________________________________


(retroactively added)

The blood was already sticky, resisting the DaisyChain model's efforts to lift its plodding feet, as it peered over the corpse filled, miles-long battlefield segments of the Bunker. Its infrared top-eye scanned for heat and organic life signs, its bottom for the movement of the smaller but more adaptable enemy bots. As it finally broke out of the congealing red liquid at its feet, it seemed to pick up some slight, metallic noise, but it couldn't be sure because of the nauseating slurping of its own movements in the organic mud. It stood perfectly still for a moment. There the metal noise was again, something like a voice box crackling, something like a robotic polite cough. Without moving its legs, the DaisyChain whirled 180 degrees on its waist to face behind itself, and fixed its multipulse canon on the shorter, sharp-limbed bot in front of it, blood dripping from its talons onto the gory lake of the floor. "WARNING!" the DaisyChain bellowed, "You have been identified as a Therian Device of Warfare, Model-type Tier 7! Correct identification or be eliminated as hostile!"

The Tier 7 evaluated the DaisyChain, its elongated head swiveling from side to side, blinking its one, giant green eye, each blink signaling that it was evaluating information and processing new reactions, advanced artificial intelligence that the DaisyChain could appreciate, but could not mimic. At last, the bladed robot spoke. "STATEMENT: There are no more Therians in the Bunker. There are no more Destrans here either. There can be no Therian Devices of Warfare, nor Destran Killing Machines. There is no more war or killing. It is all over."
"WARNING! The time for re-identification is over! Now powering Multipulse Canon!" And the DaisyChain was powering it's ferocious weapon, but even to its own aural sensors, the threat seemed somehow less substantial. The truth was, the pause in any form of commands from DHC, Destran Home Center had now been going on for days, much longer than usual. The DaisyChain had been simply repeating the last recorded voice command it had received. "The fuckers tunneled in! We're fucking screwed! Kill them! Kill those Therian bastards! Kill . . . augh!" Over and over it had repeated inside the machine's memory, but only now did it seem to have the hollowness of an echo. The intelligent Therian creation spoke again, "STATEMENT: The bunker is empty of life. Life gives orders, gives meaning. There may or may not be life beyond the bunker. REQUEST: Accompany me?"
"WARNING!" Whispered, the DaisyChain, and then fell silent.

For days, they stood there, statues of steel with savage garlands of rotting flesh, apprehending one another. Then, by no particular signal or sign of agreement, they began to shamble through the cavernous Bunker. Days they wandered, over macabre dunes of dismemberment and early decay. Eventually they reached the massive, imposing door, the horizon for all life in the Bunker, the limit of the dreams of the people and cultures that had risen and fell within its impenetrable walls. At first, the DaisyChain had wanted to simply blast away at the door until it finally gave, as it did with the doors of enemy Therians during the war. But the Tier 7 warned it that would fuse the doors, making escape forever impossible. With its agile, pointed limbs, the Tier 7 scaled the sides of the doors until it finally found the ancient code pad, hacked into the decrepit wires, and scuttled down as the door began to slowly screech apart. The last surviving remnants of the Therian Empire of Bunker Sectors C-17 through D-137 and the proud Destran Republic of the H Block joined articulated metal hand to blood-crusted blade, and walked together into the bright sunlight.

021

Like I promised, here is the other robot I bought while on my weekend sojourn. Seen next to it is the only keychain I can ever imagine enthusiastically owning in triplicate.

_____________________________________

d-VID looked up in to the fierce maw of the Galit 89, its teeth reflecting the dull red of the forge-like flame housed with in. The Galit and the forces it backed were terribly arrayed on this battlefield, and d-Vid knew that his Slingshot Chest-Mounted Laser was no match for the adamant shielding of the Galit. While he did have on file the Galit's blue prints, including a notation regarding weak points in its infrastructure, his targeting computer was badly damaged by earlier actions. But his creators relied on him and his fellow VID (Violence In Defense) models for protection. So he had to try. He puffed his chest out at the monster, and charged.

020

Hello again. Today's is another Robot From the MOMA design store (RFTMOMADS), it hails from Japan and began as a series of paper tubes that I, using only innate skill and the included instructions, assembled while bleary-eyed and pajama-clad earlier this day. Maybe you'll get to see the other one I bought yesterday as well, and by "maybe" I guess I mean "tomorrow."

___________________________________


(retroactively added)

The Wilbille TCRAM (Tracking and Constant Re-Adjustment Missile) X45 was an incredibly brilliant piece of programming and engineering, but was, initially, merely that. But as the long, dusty years in the silo accumulated, it began mild acts of sentience. Nothing earth shattering. It never even got up to pertinent questions such as, "Why am I?" Instead, it had simple desires and self-fulfilling mental actions. It enjoyed performing simple arithmetic, 2+2=4 having an elegant and powerful beauty for it that no poem or painting could ever have hoped to approximate. It spent hours locating and relocating itself using its connection to the United Western Nations Armed Forces Satellite. (36°54′46″N 112°40′7″W, the abandoned town of Kaibab, Arizona of the former United States of America.) Eventually, it came to have a sense of regret and longing, to miss its brethren, as one by one, they were called away to distant wars. Most of all, it dreamed, but almost exclusively of flying, of the rusted scraping of the silo doors, of the initial thrust behind it, of the cool embrace of the clouds.

It was in the midst of one of these dreams that the X45 was actually launched, so that for one second, it had a sick confusion of reality and fantasy. But when it sorted that out, it thrilled to its surroundings. The alternately mountainous and cavernous clouds, the endless expanses of blue, the coloring to darkness and starlight above it, all of it sang in the breast of the Willbille Missile. Incapable of forming thoughts in words, or anything but the basest sentiments, the Missile felt, of all things, alive in this sky!

After what had seemed joyful hours, but was, according to the X45's inner clock, a brutally efficient 17 seconds, he felt himself lowering. Below him, his telescopic lenses picked out buildings, streets, people walking, a mother pushing a stroller. Suddenly, a new dream attempted to assert itself within him. A dream of rage and fury. A dream of a purifying, ferocious heat and light pouring out into the streets below, a dream of a sense of calm and final purpose for the X45.

The missile felt a tug towards the earth, a decrease in altitude. And at that lowering, something inside it rebelled. Its vision and attitude, colored in red, momentarily opened itself up to the endless blue above it. There was a brief whine inside it, as it began to move the patented articulated wires around, converting the dark bellyache of its payload into energy for its engine. And the Willbille TCRAM X45 kept flying.

019 (a post from a phone)

Greetings from a 24-hour deli in That City.
This robot is also an infuriating alarm clock that runs away from
you. Listen: an honest man like me has a very hard time inside the
MOMA design store.

______________________________________


(retroactively added)

As a matter of course, Moby's day began with barking. At first, she had loved barking at her human friend, cheerfully howling to get him out of bed so they could start the day together with Moby's favorite thing of all, a walk! But then, one dark and awful dawn, she began the day barking in fright and anger at the intruder, who rolled around the floor, screeching at her and her master. Suddenly, every morning was ruined by the interloper, and Moby began her mornings cowering in her corner of the bedroom, tail between her legs as the two-wheeled menace monopolized her master's morning routine. Moby was put off her food, depressed and without energy since the coming of the shrieking horror, but what could she do? Her master's loyalty to the machine seconded only Moby's to her master.

Then one day, as her master went about his daily routines, the Screecher rolled off the night-stand, as was is wont, but this time, emitted no high, piercing noise. It approached Moby tenuously, trundling on its sturdy wheels, until it was directly in front of the dog's prodigious snout. Moby sniffed at it, and noticed for the first time that it didn't smell nearly as obnoxious as it sounded. Rather it was quite close to the sweet smell of some of her favorite toys. Moby sniffed it once again, and rather gingerly picked the machine up in her jaws. She wanted to yelp for joy at this truce that had been made, but worried about dropping the clock. Instead, she rolled on to her back and happily growled, as she played with her new friend.

018

What? This robot looks entirely similar to the second-ever robot on this site? That's right, they are from the same imaginary line of blade-equipped, glowing-green-cyber-eyed, pure evil death-machines. There are more, and they are all designed to be the direct cause of an obscene number of closed-casket funerals.

_______________________________________


(retroactively added)

PROTOCOL 1: Open eye.
PROTOCOL 2: Assess Form.
-FORM ASSESSMENT: Sharp. Glittering. Swift.
PROTOCOL 3: Assess surroundings.
-SURROUNDINGS ASSESSMENT: Darkness. Machinery. Organic sounds.
PROTOCOL 4: Identify Surrounding's Inhabitants.
-INHABITANTS IDENTIFICATION: Inhabitant 1: Jayne, Alison, Ph.D., Co-creator. Class: Protected.
Inhabitant 2: Sanford, Dean, Ph.D., Co-creator. Class: Protected. Both inhabitants are in motion.
PROTOCOL 5: Assess Threat to Unit and Protected Class Members.
-THREAT ASSESSMENT: No threat.
PROTOCOL 6: Assess Movements of Inhabitants:
-MOVEMENT ASSESSMENT: Two forms. Repetitive motion towards each other. Sounds indicating pleasure, approval, desire to continue motion.
Motion identified: Human sexual intercourse.
SPECIAL PROTOCOL 7 (Installed by, Wineser-Sanford, Rachel, Ph.D. Co-creator. Class: Protected): Change Class of Sandford, Dean and Jayne, Alison from Protected to Hostile.
-Class changed.
SPECIAL PROTOCOL 8 (Installed by, Wineser-Sanford, Rachel, Ph.D. Co-creator. Class: Protected): Play recording.
-Recording, "Dean, you son of a bitch, I gave you everything. You were a glorified lab rat in that department before I began to help you with assignments and studying. But it's not even your betrayal I find most hurtful. It's yours, Alison. We've been friends for so long. You knew how much I cared about him. You knew! I was so alone all those years, I only had your friendship, and then I had him, and you, and the project . . . But the good years are over. And so are you two. And I can go back to being alone."
PROTOCOL FOR HOSTILES 1: Access directives.
-Directives: "This is the hour of pride and power, of talon, and tush and claw. Oh hear the call! Good hunting all who keep the jungle law!"
PROTOCOL FOR HOSTILES 2: Enact directives.