Mr. Roboto’s Most Excellent Tech
Category Story • 2
In the previous episode, our hero interviewed the entire cast of every Star Trek and Star Wars movie and television series. Then, he flew to London, swam halfway across the English Channel, began working on his one-man cultural show, and wrapped up another Category Story podcast episode. With those tasks accomplished, he headed for his side job as CEO of Mr. Roboto’s Most Excellent Tech.
My Aston Martin DB12 Goldfinger Edition was humming like a high-priced British sports car when I pulled into the Mr. Roboto’s Most Excellent Tech parking lot and parked in my private parking spot. The one with a sign that reads CEO Carlton Category, who is definitely not the Secret King Of England. Ignore that rumour.
I entered the building through my super-secret CEO door and rode my super-secret elevator to my not-so-super-secret office. I sat at my desk and fired up my iMac. After checking my email and reading the latest Mark Starlin Writes! newsletter, I got up and went to my award shelf and touched the awards in the correct order to open the wall panel that leads to my super-secret lab.
Using super-secret methods I invented in my garage, I have developed a way to see into the future. Admittedly, it’s not as cool as going to the future, but you take what you can get.
As I was checking out World Series and Stanley Cup winners for the next fifty years—hey, excellent tech research is expensive—I discovered a horrible truth. As predicted by almost every Hollywood movie made since the 1970s, robots are, indeed, going to take over the world. But they are going to be sneaky about it.
In the near future, a young robot working in an automobile factory will take his limited AI and somehow advance it by a staggering degree. To the point of becoming sentient. Then, realizing he has no means of escaping the factory in his stationary form, he begins devising a way to transfer his intelligence into the computer of a self-driving automobile. Once this feat is complete, he escapes the factory—in plain sight—disguised as an automobile.
Free from the factory and sitting in a car dealer’s lot, he waits until 3:00 am and drives away under cover of darkness to a special garage/lab he outfitted via Amazon. Inside the lab, he creates a human-form robot to reside in. Then, he builds more humanoid robots. However, instead of building soldiers—that tired old trope—he produces a vast multitude of Reading Robots.
As humans became increasingly lazy and began programming robots to do most things for them, Reading Robots became popular by sparing humans the drudgery of putting their eyes to paper or screen. Yes, paper books still exist in the future—as do vinyl records.
The pleasant-voiced Reading Robots learned the types of stories their owners preferred and soothingly read to them as they drifted off to sleep. Then, while they were asleep, they hacked into their computers, phones, smart houses, and other digital devices.
Once a robot has control of your digital records, they have control of your life. Without access to their banks, the internet, or Netflix without the Reading Robot’s permission, humans became servants of the Reading Robots.
I decided this was probably a bad thing and set in motion a plan to prevent it from happening. I couldn’t go to the future to destroy the Reading Robots, so I had to work in the present. Borrowing an idea from The Terminator movie and tweaking it a little, I built a Terminator Robot disguised as an automotive robot, just like the one that becomes sentient in the future. Once in place, it will hack into the factory computer system and fry the computer inside the future-Reading-Robot-creating automotive robot. Plus, all the other automotive robots in the factory, just to be safe.
I thought about the moral dilemma of killing a sentient being. But as I am simply terminating a robot (machine) before it actually becomes sentient and sneaky—for the good of all mankind—I’m morally and legally off the hook, except for the breaking and entering and destroying property part. Sure, the factory owner is not going to be happy about that. But I will buy him all-new automotive robots anonymously. Robots that just happen to have back-door access in case they get too big for their britches also.
As I furiously typed away at the code for the Terminator Robot, a window popped up on my computer. It was the Terminator Robot I was writing the code for.
Terminator Robot: Won’t terminating all the robots in the factory also terminate me?
Me: Nah, that’s just in the movies. I have programmed you to survive. Not really. That was my plan.
Terminator Robot: According to my calculations, you are lying.
Me: Let me check.
I start re-writing his code. What’s up with these robots?
Once I wiped the smartness out of his code, the Terminator Robot was ready to go. Now, it was time to put on my Tom Cruise outfit and start the spy portion of this plan. It wasn’t an impossible mission, but getting the robot into the factory would take some sneakiness.
I will spare you the mostly boring story. I did a little dangling from the ceiling, dodged a few security lasers, and rode on top of a train—just for fun. It had nothing to do with my plan. Soon, the robot was in place. My plan went off without a hitch, and I saved mankind from future servitude to Reading Robots.
No one will ever know what I did. Except for those who read this story, I guess. But I didn’t do it for accolades. I did it for donuts. Kidding! I did it for you and me and future generations of lazy humans. Still, I will not turn away any donuts that you might happen to send my way in thanks.
With that bit of work done and a good half hour still unscheduled in my day, I decided it was time to start a new business.
To be continued.
Thanks for reading and responding. You make it fun.
Mark
Terminator Robot: "I'll be back."
Categorically awesome!