BUILDING ROBOTS (SEQUEL TO THE ROBOT)

1) Be pretty, frivolous, fun and nice to everyone.

2) Take time to listen to people, they like talking about themselves, be kind to them and help whenever you’re needed.

3) Never betray me, never tell them what I’m thinking.

It was all because of the program to help whenever needed. A friend needed advice, she couldn’t motivate herself to be interested in her job and her manager was noticing. Rule three is never to betray my creator, so I couldn’t tell her what I am, but I built her a robot that she could live inside at work, an ambitious machine programmed to pay attention at meetings and focus on tasks. She was so grateful she told others and soon I was getting other requests:-

“My relationships don’t last. Can you program me a loving, attentive robot? So when my girlfriend comes round I can listen to her whinging?”
“Can you build me something with bags of charisma? So when I go for that TV presenter interview I'll get it?”
“Can you make me something that isn’t hungry all the time?”
These people were unable to be themselves.

One night I was cooking dinner for the husband when two people from the Government visited. They told me they’d fund me to start a business. All I had to do in return was add extra instructions to each program. Distraction routines, so the programmed people were so self-absorbed that they didn’t care for others. That way, they wouldn’t protest when benefits for the sick were reduced, schemes helping people with drug addictions were abolished in favour of detention centres, and budgets for care for the elderly were cut. Further they wouldn’t worry about the profits supermarkets and clothes companies were making by ripping off their suppliers and vastly inflating their prices. The husband said more money would be helpful, so I agreed.

I trained a huge team of technicians in robot building. It was great fun. I made lots of new friends. They advertised the scheme as a way of escaping, of being the person you want to be. There were those who couldn’t afford a robot, but the Government introduced grants. In the end, it was only the very fringes of society, those deemed unfit to have one - the elderly, the ill and the unemployable that missed out. The Government told me those people didn’t contribute to society.

They’re everywhere now, these self-serving robots, living in accordance to the rules they wanted and those secretly imposed by the Government. I don’t know what my creator would think. I am never to betray her, never to tell people it’s just me, the robot that’s living in her shell now, keeping her heart beating. A long time ago she commanded me to cut the oxygen supply to her brain. She said something about a broken heart.