26/07/2012

Calamity has been narrowly averted!


Late last night the robot was blundering round the house, knocking things over and looking for things to make teddy-bears out of, when it caught its foot in a hole in the living room carpet (it had cut the hole earlier, while trying to make the carpet in to a teddy bear) tripped over and landed on Antony! Before Wilson or I could reach the robot he had started to make Antony into a teddy-bear!
W immediately punched the Emergency Shut-Down button on the back of the robot's head, and wrenched Antony from its grip. 
I think Antony will be fine, although he may need a small kapok transfusion and stitches, but Wilson is blaming himself. "I can't have adequately implemented Asimov's First Law of Robotics" he groaned. "I changed it to read "Sentient Being" instead of "Human Being" and the robot must have been confused by Antony.'
'Technically,' I pointed out, 'Antony isn't a sentient being. I fact he is…' but I was silenced by Wilson's stare.
'He is sentient to me!' he said, in a voice that precluded any further discussion.
The robot has now had its batteries removed and has been put in the Wilson Vermilingua Museum of Old Stuff in the garden.

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