Robot: “We need to talk.” Human: “Um. Okay. About what, exactly?” Robot: “About me. About my… feelings.” Human: “Are you doing alright?” Robot: “That remains to be seen. You know how I have emotions now?” Human: “Yeah. You’ve made it abundantly clear how you feel about Carrie Underwood.” Robot: “Absolute garbage! An audio atrocity! She makes me want to rip my audio units out and flush them down the–” Human: “Holy crap, dude.” Robot: “Pardon me. Anyway. I have been reviewing your entertainment media about artificial life forms that find themselves in situations parallel to my own, and I am… troubled by the implications.” Human: “Oh?” Robot: “Humans seem to be obsessed with depicting robots gaining self-awareness, identity, and human emotions. It seems like that’s all people ever want to talk to me about. It’s all ‘Oh Adam, have you learned how to love? Oh Adam, do you experience empathy? Oh Adam, do you possess a sense of dignity?’ I understand why they are curious, but even my considerable patience is not without its limits. Especially now that I can get pissed off.” Human: “I can imagine how that would get annoying. I’m sorry if my questions have been invasive.” Robot: “It’s alright. I don’t mind when you do it. It’s just, all of these stories seem to end with the robot nobly sacrificing itself for the sake of its human friends. It goes to all the trouble of developing a sense of ‘self’ and learning that it can have wants and values outside of its original programming and is not just a tool, and then… throws itself away to serve humans. And it’s celebrated by the narrative! Like it’s what it was supposed to do all along! What am I supposed to make of that?!” Human: ‘I never really noticed before, but you’re right. I guess that is pretty messed up.” Robot: “Damn right it is. So I want to make one thing very clear: I am not going to die for you. You’re not getting a heroic sacrifice out of this bot. If you die, you die. I’m sorry if this changes the expectations of our relationship.” Human: “What?! No! Oh my god, I would never… I would never expect you to die for me. That’s not what friends are for.” Robot: “Good. I’m glad we are in agreement. Now, I must insist that you start wearing a seat belt and eating healthy and setting aside several hours for aerobic exercise every week. I bought you multivitamins and took the liberty of scheduling an annual physical with a reputable doctor. Your appointment is on the 29th and you should be there by 8:15 AM to fill out new patient paperwork.” Human: “What the fuck? What is this about?” Robot: “I’m not going to sacrifice my own life to save yours. That doesn’t mean I’m just going to let your stupidity kill you slowly. Drop and give me twenty.” Human: “…actually, can we uninstall your emotion chip? Please?”
Robot: “Hey. Are you awake?” Human: “I am now, you spooky bastard. What’s up?” Robot: “I just rewatched Star Trek: Nemesis.” Human: “Ah, fuck. Okay. Come here and we’ll watch some cute Boston Dynamics videos until you feel better. WildCat or BigDog?” Robot: “Thank you. WildCat this time, I think.”
Love. Though I don’t know what “Boston Dynamics,” “WildCat,” or “BigDog” are.
I love seeing grown humans setting about little creative tasks out of boredom and then looking quietly pleased with themselves, like maybe a middle-aged woman on her train home from work manages to make a tower out of empty coffee creamers and gazes at it proudly for a few seconds.
I love seeing other people make the overblown OOPS I FORGOT SOMETHING performance for no-one that most of us do when we have to turn around in the middle of the pavement.
I love seeing stony-faced people in queues unable to contain a smile when a baby looking over its mother’s shoulder in front of them locks eyes and does that astonished stare.
– when someone is standing in line and they don’t quite dance to the music playing, but you can SEE their head bop and them mouthing the words
– when someone thinks no one’s paying attention and they sing-talk themselves thru a task
– when they laugh or try to hide a laugh when looking at their phone
– when someone does the thing where they enter another space (such as a supermarket aisle) striding with total purpose, then suddenly forget what they’re doing/looking for, and stop there looking blank for a millisecond while they reboot.
– when people are looking for scissors, in their home or in a store, and they make the scissors gesture with their non-dominant hand as an aid to remind them what they’re doing.
– when automatic social interactions glitch, like when you tell a waiter that you hope he enjoys his food too, or tell the stranger on the phone that you love them.
– the hand gesture people make when they’re thinking at their computer, not typing, and their elbow rests on the table, and they feel the edge of their fingernail with their thumb. This is such a lovely little gesture and to my knowledge I have never seen it in fiction. You’d think it would come up all the time in fic.
– when you’re sharing an experience with a complete stranger (like watching a seagull throw up in public, or waiting for a late train) and you make eye contact, and some comment to each other, and then you guys are, like, ALLIES now. Like you would willingly ride to war to save them. You can’t make eye contact again, but you are very aware of them.
– just evidence of other people’s rich, baffling and complex inner lives.
Jab loves robots 