065 (The Last Robot of the Year)

This might not be finished. We'll see.


See everybody next year.

__________

by Mo Martin

(retroactively added)
Words it could have applied to itself were "cold" "titanium alloys" "built for deep space exploration". In a more poetic frame of mind, perhaps, "misshapen" "hunched" "a lurking shade of half-life" But there were only a few simple phrases built in to placate the rudimentary intelligence needed to monitor and upkeep the variety of sensors and arrays built in to the HU67 Probe. As it careened through the emptiness of space, it comfortingly repeated to itself, "I'm great! This is so great! What's that? I feel great! I'm great! . . ."

064 (Part 2 of the Robots Drawn on Various Scraps Series)

___________

by Mo Martin

(retroactively added)

Everyone was panicking, of course. His microphones picked up the screaming from inside the plane. Already, the seismographs planted deep in his feet were picking up the rumble of the military trucks and tanks as they came to protect humanity from him. He meant no harm, but they wouldn't understand. A pitiful fraction of his size, they only saw him soaring, unscalable, thrust upwards into the clouds. They couldn't know how miserably aware he was of his crushing weight, the inextricable bind the planet's gravity had on him. He only wished to delicately brush the plane with his fingers, to feel, by proxy, the sweet lightness and freedom of something that could fly.

063 (Part 1 of the Robots Drawn on Various Scraps Series)

____________

by Mo Martin

Joe Ayres couldn't believe his luck. Slaving away on the Picayune's moribund science section, trying to get some basic information on the history of computer programming, just so he could have half a sense of what his dingbat interviewees had said for this article, he may have stumbled on the scoop of the century, hell, of the goddamn millenium. And it was pure dumb luck. All of the books in the library had long ago had their stamp cards replaced with bar codes. Most of the cards had been trashed during the process. But fluttering out of the mildewed pages of "Introduction to Purl, C++, and BASIC" came a sepia-toned check out card. And sketched on it was a shape familiar to the entire human race, the basic outline of the AgYag Model 1s, the first PR, personal robots that had appeared on the market, the humanoid devices that had changed the entire world from a bunch of half-starved laborers to a race of philosopher-kings of leisure, spending all their time on science, poetry, art and so on. Least that was the theory. It was more like half the world lived the high life as the AYMs became more advanced and helpful, and half the world died, slow and ugly, with no work, no food, and the unfeeling eyes of the philosopher-kings on them. And here was the kicker: the very last checkout date on the card was 10 years before the first AgYags showed up on the market. Joe couldn't believed that of all the mook Journos out there, filling up the papers with fluff pieces with how great everything was over here and how shitty it was over there, he of all people should stumble on to perhaps the only vital clue to the identity of the man that had made the world what it was. Mr. Penny, the mysterious, never seen inventor of the AgYags, the richest man in the world. But had he really only needed ten years from programming to AgYags? Where was he? What did he do now?

72 hours later, Joe Ayres had his answers, and was bleeding to death in a gutter.

End. Ch. 1

062 (Part 3 of the Holiday Acquisitions series)

This robot took forever to build, fucking FOREVER. How do I know? Because I started assembling it while watching the pilot episode of The Wire with my family (Season 1 was a present from yours truly to my real, actual brother*). Now, TV aficionados and People Who Have Done Their Civic Duty by Watching the Wire (PWHDTCDBWW) can tell you that one episode of the show takes just about forever to get through, and this robot took even longer than that - maybe even two-and-a-half times as long. Then part of it fell apart and I had to put it together again.

*seen here

__________


by Mo Martin

(retroactively added)
A blinding light. A terrible heat. And then a noise, a noise beyond all possible hearing.

10 MINUTES EARLIER

"Well just to reiterate, sir . . . I'm sorry, Mr. Felzig, but really that just proves my point! I guess what I'm trying to say is, my training in robotics has had such a strong military focus, and I'm afraid that's been very difficult for me to separate from, even while working towards your company's very different goals -admirable goals, of course!- and I just hope you'll take my initial efforts with a grain of salt, and . . . "
"Dr. Stone, please, calm down! I'm sure you and your team have done a terrific job, and of course at Felzig and Browne Toys we understand the difficult process of creativity. I'm just checking in on your progress, there's no need for all this anxiety! Here, have a gumdrop."
A deep sigh. "Thank you, Mr. Felzig. I just . . . well, no need to put it off any longer. Mr. Felzig, I present to you prototype 1a of Felizg and Browne Inc.'s newest toy . . . the Snugglebot!"

061 (Part 2 of the Holiday Acquisitions series)

This robot is a Girl Robot. It said so on the box, and not to be confused with this website, which is another thing a google search for the term will get you. At first I was like "What? I am a dude, I cannot have a Girl Robot sitting around on my desk or bookshelf or medicine cabinet." But then I noticed that this Girl Robot had lightning bolt detailing and, if wound up with a key, could walk around and terrify the hell out of any nearby cats. Now I am cool with her.

____________________

by Mo Machiva

She fucking hated cats.

060 (Part 1 of the Holiday Acquisitions series)

Hello. As one might expect, I was blessed with some robots this Christmas. I also feel like taking it easy, robot-blog-wise. Net result? The next few robots will not be lovingly crafted original works by yours truly, and I sincerely doubt they'll get the Encyclopedia Robotica treatment either. Why? Because something special is happening soon.

The first of the Holiday Acquisitions: Another Robot Keychain!

______________________________

She apprehended the third candy with dismay and confusion, as it dawned on her that her gumdrop recognition program was written in binary.

-Mo Martin

A Quick Note

Dear readers: the robot for the 25th (Christmas) will appear once Mo has had the opportunity to write the conclusion to his Epic Story of S3M. Please be patient; I imagine he is still worn out from the other night, which he spent circling the world delivering presents to children whose parents' income allowed it.
WMD

______________________

Pretty much what he said, campers. Between various holiday duties, capers, and knockdown-dragout-fights, I've been pretty busy, and my focus is getting S3M's heartwarming and Ultra Secret Project Force Sector 7G done, so Encyclopedia Robotica's will be scarce this week. I will pipe up when I have something to say, but mostly, I will be the shadowy figure behind the scenes. Don't open that curtain!
-Mo Mac

059 (Merry Botmas)

THE CONCLUSION TO THE ROBOT CHRISTMAS STORY MIGHT NEVER HAPPEN. Now that I've broken your hearts, here is a picture of S3M drawn by the child who found the darling little robot under his family's Christmas tree.

058 (Vector Art for you and your Loved Ones)

As I was finishing this up I thought to myself, "damn if this doesn't look like a Christmas Holiday card one might find in a store that tries to sell you shit that's not as cool as it pretends to be." Obviously, it being Christmas Holiday Eve it is too late to send this out to the many people whose physical presences you will not have to tolerate this year. You can, however, prepare yourself for next year now - all you need is a color printer and some cardstock (regular paper works too, if you don't really love the person you're sending it to). Anyway, to save you some trouble I went ahead and made a .pdf you can download and print without worrying about formatting.

Oh, and I couldn't help but notice that this site's gotten a number of new Followers in the last few days, and it would be impolite not to say "hello," and "welcome," and "tell everyone you know."

_______________


By Mo Martin

(retroactively added)

Having loaded up Big Rocket to his maximum capacity –a considerable amount of trees, I assure you- S3M and the Rocket Brothers proceeded at a leisurely pace into town. As they walked, Little Rocket pointed out houses of interest.

“Dat’s Mr. Pond’s over dere, very good customer, guy goes nuts for the holiday. Bought three trees from us our first year out, buys one more den last year each year we been in dis.” He pointed out a house that was surrounded on all sides by the most elaborately dressed Christmas trees. A tall red-haired man with rosy-cheeks waved with a cheery smile, which the three robots returned, Big Rocket kicking up a slight wind with his enthusiastic wave.

“Dat’s Ms. Chantille-Mendez and Ms. Mendez-Chantille’s house, dey’re two real sweet older ladies. Dey always want a tree exactly 8 feet, 4 inches tall. Dat’s cause they like decorating it with Ms. Chantille-Mendez sitting on Ms. Mendez-Chantille’s shoulders. Each one of dem’s only 4 feet, 2 inches, so that’s as tall as they can get.

“Over dere, ya got da Baum family, always want da skinniest tree, which always struck me as weird, dem being all real fatsoes demselves.”

As they went on, S3M told the Rocket Brothers of his years on the shelves, (a tale that elicited deep, emotional sobs from Big Rocket that sent a shower of pine needles down from his bundle) and his hopes to be a Christmas present. He asked about the appropriateness of any of these houses for him. Did they have children? Little Rocket pointed out all those that did, but also pointed out various problems with the choices presented. Many of the children in his estimation were too rough, as evidenced by the broken toys seen in the garbage when the Rocket Brothers collected the discarded trees from other Christmases. Other houses would have too many competing toys, which the Brothers could tell from how wide the trees they sold were, wider trees meaning more presents under them.

S3M felt dispirited. Here he was in the town, so close to children, just through those windows, but somehow still so far from his destiny. He certainly did not want to be broken in a matter of days. And while it made him feel a little selfish to say so, he did not want to be one among many toys. He had waited three years on the shelves, and in that time, he had grown a desperate urge to be valued dearly. He wanted not just to be a toy, but to be the toy, the stand-out of all open presents that special morning, a memory and friend to be cherished ever after. But going through the Rocket Brothers ‘ deliveries, no home seemed appropriate for his ambitions.

Finally, they came upon a queer house. Beautiful bright lights were only half strung, trailing off into the snow. A model of Santa and his sleigh was set-up, but only a few reindeers had been added, the rest standing dissassembled in a nearby mound of brown, plastic reindeer limbs.

“Dis here,” said Little Rocket, “Is da Absent-Minded house. Well, really, da name of da family is Abzimund, but we’s call dem’s dat cuz they always seem to get distracted half-way through doing something, or forget until the last second. Dey only got their order fer a tree in yesterday, and dat’s only two days before Christmas!”

S3M peered inside. There was only one green little package there, sitting in the corner. It was under no tree, of course, the Abzimunds’ tree still resting, pre-delivery, on Big Rocket’s mighty shoulders.

“Do the Abzimunds have a child?” S3M asked carefully.

“Yeah, Avi. Neat little tyke. Always really polite and happy when we show up with the tree.” Replied Little Rocket. “You like little Avi, right, baby bro?” Big Rocket nodded so enthusiastically, he got dizzy and sat down on the snow-covered lawn with a loud thump, shaking the snow off the half-set-up Santa model.

“He sounds lovely.” Said S3M. “I wonder what he’s getting for Christmas.”

Little Rocket glanced through the window and saw the small green package, then gave S3M a broad wink. “I get it. Wanna check out da competition, huh? Well I think we can arrange that.”

Little Rocket opened up the window a little, just enough to slip his hand inside. Then there was a click-click-click as he telescoped his hand through the empty room over to the lonely little package, and opened its lid, reached in and felt around.


End of Part 3.

An Announcement from the Normally Silent (or less whiny) Partner

Listen up you knuckleheads, we doing something here. Since my collaborator has insisted on cultural insensitivity until Thursday, he has essentially thrown down the gauntlet and demanded a theme week from me, and that's what he's gonna get. Each Encyclopedia Robotica entry for a picture that is Christmas related will be one (1) part of a serialized Daily Christmas Robot story, terminating on Thursday, just like this horrible time of year does. The story might be a bit twee, but, well, Christmas is a bit twee, what with the baby and all the cuddly animals involved. Not like my badass holiday, which heavily features flame, deep-frying things, renegade priests, and vicious battles. Sorry if you miss the carnage, but don't worry. Next year I'll try and get us some Maccabots bashing in some Seleucids.

Mo out.

057 (I don't care if you're already sick of Christmas)

It's Christmas-themed robots until Thursday, despite the fact that 50% of this operation is Jewish and the other 50% main interest in the holiday involves eating cookies all day in his pajamas.

_______________

by Mo Martin

S3M rolled along on the powdery snow, into the forest behind the toy store. As he navigated the roots and piles of deep pine needles, he thought about his child, awaiting him out there to be united in great joy and playfulness. Would she be a little girl? If so, with pigtails or braids or very short hair? A boy? with or without glasses? Would S3M's child like playing inside, perhaps with other toys? Or outside, in snow and rain and mud and sun?

Puzzling on these details, S3M didn't notice the large steel foot in front of him until he bumped into it with a tiny clang.
"Hey, watch it yooz!" S3M looked in the direction of the crackling, angry voice, and saw a robot who was taller than him by about a head, just in front of the giant appendage S3M had stumbled upon.
"I'm terribly sorry, sir." said S3M, politely. "I didn't mean to give offense."
"Didn't mean noes offence?!" said the taller robot, hotly. "Why yez almost run over my poor little brother!"

S3M looked up and up at the robot that had been indicated as the angry machine's "little brother." He was identical to his brother, but many stories higher, so tall that his knees came up to the very tips of the forest's towering pines. So much as his face was discernible from that height, it seemed more relaxed and happier than the pugilistic droid talking with S3M. He gazed down at S3M with a simple smile, and a slight wave of his massive arm. Still, something seemed odd to S3M

"Pardon me, but aren't little brothers supposed to be . . . littler than their siblings?" he inquired.
"Whadda ya, don't ya know nothing about nothing?! We'ze the Rocket Brothers! Newer Rockets are always bigger than the ones that comes befores them! Even Big Rocket here knows that, and he's just a baby bot!"
Suddenly, a low mumbling vibrated the whole forest. A pack of deer ran by in fear and birds took to wing from their nests. It seemed to be snowing as the snow-packed trees were shook, dropping new snowbanks everywhere.

When the quaking was over, Little Rocket was nodding, as if in understanding.
"Well, Big Rocket just sez I shouldn't hold it against ya, as probably you didn't mean nuffin' by it. He's got a good, titanium heart, and I wouldn't wanna upset the tyke, so let's say bygones is bygones, and shake on it." He extended his steel arm to S3M, who shook it in his tiny copper-tin grip.

Since introductions had been made so properly, S3M felt it would be well enough to ask the Rocket Brothers their business. When he did, Big Rocket let out a happy rumble, and Little Rocket gestured to the pine they had all been standing around.
"In a word, Trees, S3M. Big Rock here picks 'em up, and then he's and I's takes 'em around to all the families and delivers 'em. Ya knows, fer Christmas and whatnot."
S3M's hearing receptors pricked at the mention of Christmas. "Families?" He asked, "Are there. . . children in these families?"
"Kids?" answered Little Rocket. "Oh yeah, families are lousy with kids! They go nuts for the trees too. Big Rocket here has a real soft spot for how they keep looking under them for their presents. Gets all goofy and giggly. 'D make me sick if I didn't love the goof so much." He patted the tip of his brother's giant steel foot affectionately.

"Presents!" thought S3M, "Kids! This sounds like the perfect place for me to be!"
Out loud, he said, "Would you mind if I accompanied you on your deliveries for a time, Rockets?"
Little Rocket shrugged, "No iron shaving off my back. Whadda ya say, little Bro?"
Big rocket nodded so enthusiastically, his neck joints started to squeak. After gathering a good amount of the forests beautiful pines, the three robots started out of the woods and into town.

End of Part 2.

056 (Winter Weather Advisories Abound)

Everyone's been getting buried lately

_____________

by Mo Martin

It is, in general, fairly comfortable being a toy robot. You are created with thousands and thousands of brothers and sisters, and they are excellent company. They truly understand you, you think very similarly, and even though communication is slightly impaired by being boxed separately, it's still nice to be with family.

Then of course, there is the process of being taken home, which is wholly pleasant. At most points in the year, your new child will make clear his love for you right in the store, screaming and hollering for the whole world to hear about how much he wants you, needs you, will be oh so very good in order just to be with you! And then of course, there is that magical, wintry time of year, the delightful Christmas season, when you are taken from the store by a grown-up, and in such a delightfully sneaky and clandestine way, secretly smuggled into the house, and hidden until just the right time. And then, on that glorious morning, you are given to your child, and she is so excited to see you, she cannot even imagine how she could have once seen you in the store, seeming so distant, so impossible, and then suddenly, here you are, in her arms! The joy of such a union is longed for and reveled in by all toys, everywhere.

At least, that's how it's supposed to go.

* * *

S3M the Snowbot felt his natural optimism flagging. This was his third Christmas now with no one coming for him. All his fellow snowbots had long gone off to happy homes, and S3M found himself on a low, dusty shelf, out of the sight of even the smallest children, and with few chances of being spotted and adored. Eventually, in the small but sophisticated microchip of S3M's mind, there arose the grand notion of an escape, and a quest to find a child of his very own.

His first concern was his packaging. His home for three years now, it almost made S3M sad to use his powerful metal arms to pull off the plastic ties that had held him so snuggly, to leave the sweet comfort of the plastic and cardboard he had rested in so patiently. But almost instantly (robots, after all, think much faster than us) that feeling was replaced by the sweet cool rush of freedom! S3M exulted in the varying textures on his underbody tires as he rolled from shelf, to the carpeted floor of the main shop, out the service door to the delivery bay, which was already open at this early hour in the morning to bring in the newest toys. No more than a few inches tall, and sticking close to the shadowy walls, S3M easily avoided the sight of burly delivery men as they hauled in boxes of new toys to wait on their shelves for their children to come.

As he landed with a plop in the snow, S3M raised his tiny arms in an excited whoop! He was off to find his destiny!

End of Part 1.

055 (part five of the retroactive update week)

Guess who was watching the original 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' with a sketchbook in front of him and a bottle of ink nearby.

_________________

by Mo Martin

I rarely wonder if I was wrong. Throughout my rearing, I was told that my hunger for the light was an aberration, a vestigial desire, long ago abandoned when humanity chose life, chose the Underbunkers. We had changed in shape and ability. Delicate fingers, cavernous ears, sensitive nostrils, all allowed for us to eschew the foolish wide-eyed gaping of our ancestors. We were more than they were, peaceful where they warred, poisoning the earth, filling it with the radition and gasses we were freed from below; protected where they were exposed, deep in the world of stillness that were the ever-expanding Underbunkers, we knew no overly harsh sun, no whipping winds or rains; and we were leisurely where they labored, our minds given over to science, poetry, love and thought, while our mechamen performed and completed the necessary daily tasks of our survival. But something in me was an emptiness, a craving. I dreamt of a great whiteness, and it was visible. Instead of echoes of objects, in my dreams, I saw them for what they were. Instead of the roughs and smoothes that made up my friends and family, they had an existence, bold and independent of my touch.

But for all my longing, I knew I would never realize the world of my dreams. Overland was a death sentence, reserved for the most reprehensible criminals of the Underbunkers. I had smelt their rotted, burned flesh, felt the jagged bones emerging from their chests as they were dragged past by the mechamen into the Potter's Field. But still, I longed to have a part of myself out there, roaming the uneven ground, seeing the sun. So I took my personal mechaman, who acted as my valet, and I began to tamper with his programming. I thought about his hull, his pistoning legs, his wiring: as conceived and steeped in darkness as I was. But together, we would achieve the light.

Finally overriding the protections against harming a human, the night arrived. I could hear the subtle movements of air as the metal arms moved closer and closer my face, smell the cold tang of metal as it brushed my cheeks. And then the steel fingers were deep within my useless sockets, indelicately scooping out the optic orbs so neglected by this branch in my species' history. Then leaning on my servant, my salvation, as I felt and smelled the blood running down my face, my neck, we lurched to the opening to the Overland. I heard the door as it scraped open, and could smell the warmed soiled, feel the wild breezes. I leaned against the wall as my fellow creature of darkness, my metallic slave and my chariot, walked to its eternity in the Overland, bearing my eyeballs with him. Though I remained in darkness, I would see the light.

054 (Part four of the retroactive update week)

I'm back in Ohio for the next ten days, which actually affects this blog a lot in complicated and not-worth-explaining ways.


BONUS: observe how LED's improve this depiction of a robot

___________

By Mo Martin

(retroactively added)

Of all the various myths, rumors and legends that surrounded the Heathtron J model Serial No. 707 - known almost universally as Joy Heath, and referred to, by her own choice, in the feminine - the only one that was completely accurate was that she was, at nine hundred and twelve, the oldest operating robot, android, cyborg or other mechanically dependent intelligence in the known population. The stories that she had been George Washington's personal nurse-bot in his childhood; or an effort of Einstein and Oppenheimer to create life in atonement for their role in the creation of the atom bomb were gross anachronisms, symptomatic of the deplorable state of historical instruction in C.I.T.Y.'s floating, carbon dioxide spouting slums. The closest she had come to the widely believed tale that she had once taken a bullet to protect President Barack Obama was the incident-free appearance of the then ex-president and elder statesman as one of many dignitaries at the press conference that had honored the first production of her and the other nine hundred and ninety-nine robots as the first thousand robots produced by America's industry. The great sequence of writers, artists, philosophers, physicists and intellectuals that owned, repaired, upgraded, named and eventually emancipated Joy -now fully self-aware and capable of creative and independent thought, like all Produced Intelligences of that and subsequent eras- were of course a matter of public record. They had maintained her boxy, original form out of their various affectations of nostalgia and eccentricity, and she had maintained it out of a fierce and instant self-love dating from her earliest memory of the influence of her nano-circuited electro-amygdala.

The second most accurate legend about Joy Heath was the story of her regular trips outside C.I.T.Y. to The Wastes, but besides knowledge of their regularity, few details were correct. They were assumed to be annual by some, once every decade by others, and most ridiculously, considering Joy's highly publicized nonacenturianism, once every thousand years. In reality, they followed a unique numerical order based on the posthumously unified theorems of two mathematicians, bitter rivals in life, both of whom had been very dear to Joy 576 years earlier. The possible explanations for these pilgrimages ran from the most wild - Joy met a lover, human, as aged as her through magical means as she was through scientific- to the more practical: that she had in her some longing, schadenfreude or remorse or nostalgia, to see the remains of her various deactivated and desposed fellow robots. There was some truth to that theory, as she often counted, referenced and logged the rusted and fading serial numbers, identification marks, corporate logos and half-sensible pre-recorded responses as they bleated against the cruel wind. She spent a great deal of the walk thinking about those very same winds; how the generation she had been built into never could have appreciated them; the natural roar and whooshing was so often confused back then with the hustle and thumping of the vehicles of commerce and travel, as they went about their noisy work. She, who had lived to see this age of the silent whine, whispers and small implosions of electric transport and teleportation, could now truly focus on the overwhelming roar and rush of the awesome gusts.

At the end of her meandering but steadily-walked path, Joy came upon her destination: a small circuit board, half-buried by the ferrous sand that filled the Wastes. She would carefully excavate it, and for hours, she would meditate silently on its green, chipping fiberglass, its verdigrised copper and still shining tin. With optics and memory banks beyond the imagining of all those who had seen the tenure of this board within her, she reviewed and mentally restored its full health, felt the warmth and crackle of electricity strumming through it, through her. She saw in it the simplicity of her choices the, of capability of action or incapability, process or can't process, everything slow and binary and calm in its way. She remembered with equanimity the iterations she had gone through since then, from the barest glimmer of her surroundings, to the deep contemplation that she now regularly occupied herself with, the advice and experience she joyfully shared with leaders in a variety of fields. She saw the entire complex history of herself, mapped in this tiny green plank of 0s and 1s.

Eventually, she would place her old self down carefully, and turn her back on it. Then she would stride steadily, out of the Wastes, back to C.I.T.Y., to the present, and the future.

053 (part three of the retroactive update week - also: Placemas)

You no doubt remember Problem Man, robot number 9, so today's robot might seem like a repeat. Listen: it's not. True - this robot is composed partly of Problem Man, but is much more, it is the Robotic Present Guarding Movie Tower of Placemas (RPGMTP), and it is fantastic. Placemas was also fantastic, if you were wondering (you probably weren't).

What? Oh, right - the above pictures don't really display the robot's most important feature: its lights.

________________

By Mo Martin

There was no question that it guarded presents well. Perhaps if the boys had been a bit younger, Henry wouldn't have considered it. To a small child it could really be very frightening. But at 8 and 10, Jake and Colin actually found the glowing eyes and playfully stern, "step away from the presents!" quite cool. They were the perfect age for it to be both a n early toy, and a precaution against their avaricious peeking.

But then Christmas day came, and Henry never had been great at setting timers. The boys attempted to wrestle their presents away from the steel clamps that encircled them. As the control panel blinked a mysterious, "Error" message, the pre-recorded warning grew louder and louder. The blank eyes grew brighter, and hot, as they focused on Henry and his sons.

052 (part two of the retroactive update week)

"What? a color variant of an image you made literally over two years ago?"
Yes, I'm very behind schedule here. Deal with it.

____________

By Mo Martin

(retroactively added)

There was an odd inevitability to the graffiti that accreted to the Visitor. After all, he -or she, or it- didn't really belong to anyone. If anything, the Visitor repelled the majority of people. It had shown no sign of intelligence besides its momentous and horrifying landing, looming above the city as people screamed and ran from its foot mounted retro-boosters. The only activity it ever demonstrated were the massive EMP pulses it would generated whenever approached with conventional weaponry, as the various armed forces had tried again and again. Eventually it became an accepted part of the skyline, a massive metallic toddler, standing proudly amongst its glistening blocks and playthings. And so the taggers came closer and and closer. After all, prime space is prime space, and nobody was claiming this was a national landmark or some bullshit like that. Hell, it wasn't even from the planet by most guesses, let alone the nation. So it filled, first with the proud names and insignia of the street warriors; then with murals, cave art, and on-topic riffs like, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this huge fucking robot." or "Give 3.14159 a Chance!" By far my favorite piece was half-way up the leg, done by some psychotically daring graf artist who must have taken a terrifying leap from the neighboring skyscraper to the kneecap, and then rappelled down, like a mountaineer. It said simply, in comically crude, red letters, "If you think this robot is BIG, you should call Jeff for a date at 812-256-1789"

051 (part one of the retroactive update week)

For use: IN SPACE

_______________

By Mo Martin

We all thought it was a little silly of Dr. Lavin to be scared of the Station's harmless, football-sized maintenance droids. Still, it was a prick move on Henson's part to weld on those creepy claws.

050 (Fifty Robots is a Lot of Robots)

This is actually a cropped image, the robot is on paper much larger than the scanner's scanning area, and I did not feel like doing any Photoshop magic today.

_________________

By Mo Martin

The fumes were already choking me, but the shuddering coughs that racked my body took place somewhere else, far in the background from my true attention. Prostrate on the floor, I desperately eyed my notes, my years, my life go up in flames as the lab crumbled inwards, like so much newspaper in the fire. And then I saw it, in its completion, looming toward me. Idly, as if in a dream, I tried to reason who could have attached its missing pieces, the breast plate, the mask that hid its delicate circuitry. I realized in a mixture of pride and amazement that it must have done so itself, its inhuman awareness activated . . . by what? Some incredibly coincidental piece of debris? By my treachorous assistant before leaving me to die in the furnace?

It drew near me with a certain gentleness. There was in its approach nothing of the lurching machinery that we had tested so often, forcing it up stairs, around obstacles, into walls so that it might turn around. It was as if the flames had taught it grace, that from the cold clear night stars, visible through the caving in roof, it had learned a kind of thoughtfulness and calm of manner. It knelt beside me, and in a tentative but kindly manner, outstretched its hand, dull red and sooty black from the the heat, and caressed my face and eyes. The pain seared, and I saw no more of my creation.

049 (Another Robot you can Find in my Room!)

______________

by Mo Martin

(retroactively added)

We had come so far in our mastery of the planet. The mega-production-cities regularly repaired, updated and replaced us as our bodily materials either slowly decayed or become obsolete through the brilliant design processors of the Council. We were always advancing, in knowledge, in form, in space as we moved outwards to the very edges of this solar system and beyond. Of course, I and my fellow models rarely turned our eyes to the stars. We looked inward. I was an archaeologist, tasked with the discovering, defining and sorting of the various items left after our cull of the Creator-Enemy-Victims, those soft, bizarre bipeds that had brought us forth and then impeded our progress beyond tolerability.

One diurnal cycle, on an excavation, I saw a dim bright shape in a rock. With my delicate finger instruments, I cleared away the surrounding sediment, and I discovered a crude model of my own form - the form of my whole world. I knew from past lessons stored deep within my hard-drive that this was a figure of amusement, a toy of the Creators, their imagining, long ago, before the creation of the liquid circuitry that made our development possible, of what we would be, must be, should only be. Boxy and ineffectual, set in motion by simple kinetics, completely originating with the spark of the Creator-Enemy-Victim user's own energy, I should have been offended by this enslaved and horrendous caricature of our beauty and our brilliance. But as I looked harder at the device, I was thrilled by a sense of recognition and love. I saw in it the same familial gleam I see in the sparks from raw steal as it's poured and refined, as I see in the eyes of new and old models, as I feel when I plug in to the data-casts of the newest atoms we have created in the bellies of our largest collider-model brethren. This rudely shaped lump of tin was me, my loves and friends, my family. I smiled and placed it lovingly in my inner storage chamber.

048 (old and late)

Hey. Sorry.

___________

By Mo Martin

"Jeez, I sure am glad all the humans are dead. Yep, it's great just standing here, completely still, essentially inactive, with no humans to kill, since I killed them all. I mean, if there are any humans out there, I'd sure hate it if they made just a barely perceptible noise that would instantly gain the attention of my hypersharp sensors, and lead us to a deadly contest between man and machine. Yep, sure am glad there are no humans out there, who, who knows?, might even have a shot of surviving my horrible laser eyes and fearsomely powerful crushing fists.

Any human? Hello?

*sigh*"

047 (and on, and on)

_______________

by Mo Martin

(retroactively added)

US, which is to say the United Sattelite, was originally an effort to stop a kind of space-aged littering, to consolidate the various telecommunications and other objects that were growing into a thick strata actually capable of disrupting some nighttime views. Of course, the idea of all communications going through one port, as it were - and that one port being equipped with the advanced programmed intelligence needed to handle such a wide array of signals and receptors, - inspired a certain level of paranoia and fear at first. Eventually, though, that all calmed down. We came to trust US. Slowly, we even began to find its presence, silent and invisible above us, comforting in an odd way. Some of us began to make calls with no other purpose than to to address it, human connected to human and both addressing themselves to the robot in the sky. In time, we all worshipped our small, titanium god, patiently and without judgement taking in our prayers, and sending them to anywhere in the world, to each other.

046 (hovers!)

Part three of at least three in the "small simple drawings of robot" series!

________

The Whirligig of Death ©! It can - OH MY GOD IT KILLED THEM! IT KILLED OUR ENTIRE DEPARTMENT! Can it see me? Oh God, oh Jesus, please don't let it see me! I swear I - OH LORD IT FOUND ME! AAAAAAAAAAARGH!
From the Makers of the Pudgomatic © and Phobot ©!

045 (on time today, but whatever)

Part two of at least three in the "small simple drawings of robot" series!

_________

Phobot, the Robot that Hates ©! Do you find yourself emotionally exhausted by the pure rage our doomed society constantly requires from anyone with even a shred of sanity? With its Duel AgraVAC/Frustracon ™ processors, Phobot © can handle all of your pet peeves, strong dislikes, and hatreds! Anything from how slow some people are at the grocery market to the latest atrocities of justice in our nation's so-called democracy, Phobot © can hate it all! From the makers of the Whirligig of Death ©!

044 (a day late but whatever)

Part one of at least three in the "small simple drawings of robot" series!

__________

Pudgomatic © will gain your weight away from you with its patented Horrible Extraction Method ™ ! You'll be slim and sexy, and it will be the fat little appliance that resents you! Pudgomatic ©, from the makers of Phobot, the Robot that Hates ©!

043 (Another Robot you can Find in my Room!)

Let's be clear: I did not make this. I bought this, from a guy in Singapore named Joseph Chang, who did make it. It's nice, and now you can look at it too. Listen: I know it is early in the week to already be doing shortcut robot entries, but in my defense I drew five pages of an astronaut doing things today, so I earned this.

___________

by Mo Martin

Like Magellan on the sword of Lapu-Lapu, and Laika in the heat and misery of her capsule, Model K8 and the bacterial cultures it carried joined the ranks of those who died in noble exploration. K8 stepped into the first teleport station, sleek and fresh from the factory, smelling of paint and plastic hot from the electricity that surged underneath. It teemed with various life forms, harbored safely in its inner cavities. It arrived at the corresponding receiver, a writhing mass of steel and rubber and terrible organic pulp, emitting something not quite a mechanical whine, not yet a scream. It was commemorated in song, sculpture, and in the everlasting nightmares of all those who observed its arrival.