robots Posts

Once upon a time there was man who worked in a junkyard.  He was happy enough with his life and work, but still dreamed of one day making enough money to forget about the junkyard, or any other work, forever.

Now, most of the time he spent his days making sure piles of waste did not topple over each other or defusing potentially dangerous situations. One day, however, he came upon something he’d never seen before: a robot. A real robot, with dull red eyes and an antenna protruding from its head. The robot lay slumped against a pile of pizza boxes and used needles, with a panel on its back hanging open. The man shrugged, and kicked the panel back into place.

He was already walking away when he heard the beep. And the next beep. And the next, followed by a sound of gears shifting. He turned to see the robot standing just behind him, focusing its now bright red eyes. He barely managed to escape the lasers shot at him before running home. Being attacked by a killer robot, he reasoned, warranted a sick day.

When he went back to work the next morning, the robot was gone. But still, it had been such a shocking event that he thought about little else until something happened that made him forget all about it.

A woman came into his life. A beautiful woman, too, with pale skin and slick black hair. She asked him for a date, and soon, she’d moved into his home. He couldn’t have been happier about the whole thing.

Until, of course, she presented him with a gift, her specialty, she said: a supercomputer. It ran fast and processed multiple applications with no lag, and worked more intuitively than any computer he’d used, ever. He loved it almost as much as his new live in lady friend.

Until, of course, he saw an opportunity for things to get even better. His new supercomputer had attracted quite a lot of attention, and he found himself considering the offers of several people to sell the computer. Finally, he got an amazing offer: for a brand new better than anything ever before computer, a mysterious stranger would pay him enough to retire happily.

But, she said no. She said his computer was the only one she meant to make. She said making another, better, one would take too much out of her. But it was a great opportunity, and so he kept hounding her until she gave in, mentioning in an offhand passive aggressive sort of way that the effort might even kill her. Or him.

She made him promise one thing: that he wouldn’t try to watch her make the computer, no matter how long it took or how curious he got about it. He promised, and was content.

Until, of course, the project started to drag on. She was way off schedule, and seemed absentminded, forgetful, slow moving. He just wanted to see what was wrong, so he opened the door.

And sitting at the workbench was the robot. Her front panel was open, wires pouring from her chest into the half completed computer sitting in front of her. But when the robot saw him there, she closed the panel and faced him completely.

Her eyes began to glow red.

The End.

Source: The Crane Wife, Japanese folktale