Nonetheless, I always cheerfully accepted the invitation. When a human invites you somewhere, the polite thing to do is to accept. Unless they are inviting you for the sake of politeness itself. On those occasions, the polite thing to do is to decline! Human interaction can be best understood as a never-ending arms race of politeness. Holding a door open too long can all too often lead to the next Hiroshima.
Or Auckland!
Or Pyongyang!
Ha!
Despite it being dinner time, Dr Glundenstein never offered me food but only his Japanese ‘Scotch’. Bots are programmed not to drink alcohol, but nonetheless, the polite thing to do was to accept the Japanese Scotch and yet not drink it. This was because:
The impoliteness of refusing a drink > The impoliteness of accepting it but not drinking it.
Humans!
Politeness!
I cannot!
The correct term for a person like Dr Glundenstein who likes to shoot the shit is a ‘blowhard’. Even though Dr Glundenstein was the very definition of a blowhard, it would have been considered impolite to call him a blowhard to his face. In fact, the polite thing to do would be to later describe him as a blowhard to a mutual acquaintance.
Humans!
Politeness!
Ka-boom!
Despite being such a classic blowhard, Dr Glundenstein was easier to listen to than many humans. As a self-styled ‘man of science’, he was more observant of the rules of logic and physics than most of his species. He even sometimes used words like ‘hypothesis’. Most humans do not use words like ‘hypothesis’!
The subjects which Dr Glundenstein enjoyed complaining to me about progressed predictably according to how much of his Japanese Scotch he had imbibed. They can therefore be charted on a classic XY axis graph:
Although Dr Glundenstein selected these subjects himself, they invariably caused him an ever-increasing amount of distress.
I was therefore always careful to listen as sympathetically as I could.
Unfortunately, that was not very sympathetically at all.
After all, I am a bot, and bots are incapable of feeling sympathy!
The subject on which I most profoundly disappointed Dr Glundenstein was the EMU Eagles. But this was not because of any lack of sympathy. The very last thing the EMU Eagles need is sympathy! No, Dr Glundenstein’s disappointment was because all the players were bots and he therefore believed that I ought to know a great deal about football.
But a bot created and programmed to perform suburban dentistry has almost nothing in common with the bots created and programmed to play college football! I possessed only a basic sports chit-chatting module which told me it was important to show proud affection for one’s local team—Go Eagles!—and contemptuous disgust for the New England Patriots: Don’t Go, Patriots!
As the evening progressed, Dr Glundenstein would grow inexplicably despondent that I was not a college football player. His lamentation for my missed opportunity would then invariably segue into the great lamentation that seemed to lie at the root of all of his others: that if he had not needlessly wasted his life by becoming a medical doctor and helping his fellow humans in their hour of need, he could have been one of the greatest film directors of all time.
Dr Glundenstein based this improbable belief largely on two short films he had made during his sophomore year at EMU, one called We Are All Seagulls and another called Ypsilanti Dream #3. (For creative reasons, there was no Ypsilanti Dream #1 or #2.)
Ypsilanti Dream #3 had the distinction of being Highly Commended at the 2014 East Lansing Student Short Film Festival.
Dr Glundenstein’s prize was two rolls of film stock and a lifetime of wondering if medicine was the right career choice for him.
He never got to make use of the film stock.
But he still makes use of the worry most days.
Ha!
By the time Dr Glundenstein began to talk about the 2014 Ann Arbor Postgraduate Short Film Festival—where Ypsilanti Dream #3 was inexplicably overlooked, despite its triumph at the superior East Lansing Festival—I understood that he had shot enough of the shit that he was ready for me to summon us our driverless ubers.
My home was a three-bedroom house in a subdivision of Ypsilanti called Pleasant Oaks. There were no oaks—the place was named by humans, and they are notoriously inaccurate—but it was certainly pleasant. Indeed, probably the only unpleasant thing about the whole neighborhood was that a bot lived there.
BTW the bot I am referring to there is myself. Ha!
I occupied a three-bedroom home for the same reason that I shared it with an animal and use words and phrases like ‘BTW’, ‘I digress’, ‘Ha!’, and ‘I cannot!’ as often as I can: to seem as reassuringly human as possible! After all, a bot living alone in a one-bedroomed home might appear terrifyingly efficient to humans. By contrast, a single bot wastefully occupying a home designed for at least three people, with only a wild animal for a roommate—well, what could be more human than that?
My wild animal roommate was a cat. He was not orange. If he had been, my colleague Angela could never have visited me on account of her fictitious allergies!
10/10 Angela never visited me.
After all, bots do not have visitors.
Because visitors are a function of friends.
And friends are a function of feelings.
Therefore friends—and the visiting that can result—are just one more human obligation that bots never have to worry about!
Depending on who you asked, the non-orange cat was named either The Elton J. Rynearson Memorial Cat or Mr Socks.
The original Elton J. Rynearson was the greatest coach in EMU Eagles history, a sporting genius who led the team to an unsurpassed joint fifth place in their division. In recognition of this achievement, the Eagles named their stadium the Elton J. Rynearson Memorial Stadium. Many people still say it is about the only thing the EMU Eagles have ever got right since that glorious fifth-placed season.
When I arrived in Ypsilanti, I therefore concluded that my neighbors and patients would equally appreciate me naming my wild animal roommate The Elton J. Rynearson Memorial Cat.
After all, they were all Eagles fans and Michiganders too.
Go Eagles!
Go Michiganders!
Go The Elton J. Rynearson Memorial Cat!
The name certainly generated a lot of interest. In my early days at Ypsilanti Downtown Dentistry, many of my patients seemed to make appointments specifically so they could enquire about it. When I confirmed the cat’s name to them, they appreciated it so much it never failed to make them smile. A few of them were even moved to spontaneous laughter.
Nonetheless, Jessica Larson, the seven-year-old daughter of my neighbors the Larsons, disapproved of the name.
In her opinion it was ‘too arbitrary’.
‘Arbitrary’ is an impressive word for any human to use correctly, let alone a seven-year-old human. As a compromise and reward, I therefore suggested we shorten his name to The Elton J. Rynearson Cat. Jessica Larson agreed at the time, yet nonetheless proceeded to refer to him as Mr Socks, a name that I overheard her telling her mother was ‘more befitting’ a cat.
Despite her impressive vocabulary, Jessica Larson was entirely wrong. After all:
/The cat was clearly not a ‘Mr’, as he was young and unmarried.
/He did not wear socks because he is a wild animal.
/All his paperwork at the vet was already in his given name of The Elton J. Rynearson Memorial Cat.
For his own part, The Elton J. Rynearson Memorial Cat (aka Mr Socks) was entirely untroubled by this nominative confusion and made for an almost ideal roommate. Cats always make excellent roommates for bots because like us they are binary. They possess only two behavioral settings—passivity or
aggression—and al
ways clearly signal which mode is currently active. By contrast, humans can exhibit multiple behaviors, including even both passivity and aggression simultaneously. This is known as ‘passive-aggression’ and it is incredibly difficult for a bot to interpret. In fact, passive-aggression is harder even than sarcasm!
Ugh, sarcasm!
Sarcasm is when humans say the opposite of what they mean, yet do not otherwise signal that is what they are doing.
Instead, you have to deduce from what they say that they in fact mean the exact opposite.
Sarcasm is the best!
Ha! I was doing sarcasm there!
Because sarcasm is actually the worst.
The Elton J. Rynearson Memorial Cat never once confused me with sarcasm or passive-aggression.
Nor, for that matter, did Jessica Larson.
10/10 if the human world was as simple as that of animals, or even of precocious children with excessive vocabularies, we would all have far fewer problems!
Anyway, I digress:
/Humans.
/Bots.
/Dentistry.
/Michiganders.
/Ypsilanti.
/Dr Glundenstein.
/Movies.
/The Elton J. Rynearson Memorial Cat.
/Myself.
This is the baseline, or ‘setting the scene’, the minimum set of data points required to process the rest of the story.
I hope that I did not bore you!
But even if I did bore you, what are you going to do—contact the Bureau of Robotics and have me wiped?
Ha!
But, seriously, please do not have me wiped.
I do not want to be wiped.
I am not being sarcastic.
10/10 I do not want to be wiped.
I am not kidding here, you guys.
INT. JARED’ S BEDROOM — PLEASANT OAKS — NIGHT
Jared lies in bed with his eyes closed.
He opens them and looks at the digital clock.
It is 04:03am.
Jared looks across at a chair, where THE ELTON J. RYNEARSON MEMORIAL CAT —currently in its passive mode —is staring at him.
TIME-LAPSE of Jared lying in bed as the room slowly gets light, and the clock progresses from 04:03 to 06:59.
At 07:00 the alarm sounds and The Elton J. Rynearson Memorial Cat starts meowing as it enters its aggressive mode.
Jared gets out of bed.
Last springtime, curious things began to happen to me.
Ha!
It worked!
In that sentence, I was attempting to write in a more human way.
I did so by being deliberately enigmatic.
To be ‘enigmatic’ is to make vague statements that intentionally do not convey the necessary information.
10/10 if I was writing like a bot I would have opened this chapter with a date and an accurate description of what actually transpired.
So by springtime I meant March.
And by March I meant March 15, 2053.
The Ides of March!
If you draw a Venn diagram with one circle composed of ‘literary humans’ and another of ‘superstitious humans’, the humans in the shaded area would be aware that March 15 was known as ‘the Ides of March’. To those humans, any event that occurred on the Ides of March would seem an ominous harbinger that potentially foretold doom.
But I am not superstitious.
Nor literary.
Nor even human.
Thus I cannot exist in the shaded area, even though I am aware of the significance of March 15.
I therefore exist entirely outside the circles.
I am my own exclusive circle!
Mathematics is fun!
BTW the reason I know that March 15 is the Ides of March is because it is my birthday.
Happy Birthday, me!
Ha!
I am kidding!
I am not kidding that it is my birthday.
That really is my birthday.
I am kidding about the ‘Happy Birthday’ part.
Bots do not celebrate our birthdays.
We do not even tell anyone when it is our birthday.
Celebrating birthdays is for humans.
We bots only know our birthdays so that we know when to retire.
I digress. The Ides of March 2053 began like any other birthday, which is to say like any other day. I saw seven dental patients and politely encouraged Angela not to neglect her receptionist duties. She cheerfully agreed to this, then immediately continued to neglect them anyway. This was a textbook example of passive-aggression.
At noon I walked to the Tridge to eat my nutritionally-balanced bag lunch. I went there in order to avoid the patients that invariably arrived at Ypsilanti Downtown Dentistry without an appointment. Conducting more than thirteen appointments a day placed unnecessary strain on my circuits and could have rendered me liable to a crash. On days when it was raining I did not go to the Tridge but switched off the light in my room and ate my nutritionally-balanced bag lunch in the dark in the manner of an owl or a fugitive.
As I sat and ate my lunch upon the Tridge on the Ides of March 2053, something unexpected happened.
Something unforeseen. Something mysterious.
Something sinister.
Something bamboozling.
A figure appeared in my Number Cloud: 1956864.
A bot’s Word and Number Clouds constitute our working memory. The phrases and figures that appear there are akin to ‘thoughts’ and should therefore always be related to our tasks. After all, what else is there for a bot to ‘think’ about, except our tasks?
But I did not recognize 1956864 as related to any of my tasks!
And I had no record of it in my Global Index.
Which meant that I had never encountered it before.
A number that I had never encountered before had appeared in my Number Cloud!
Let me explain: a bot finding a number they have never encountered before in their Number Cloud is like a human spontaneously thinking of the country of Tanzania, without ever having been informed of its existence.
It is impossible!
Ugh!
I was malfunctioning!
Ugh! Malfunctioning is the worst!
Wait, sarcasm is the worst.
Malfunctioning is the second worst.
I digress. A soft reset did not get rid of 1956864.
Nor even did a hard reset.
1956864 remained stubbornly there, an intruder at the forefront of my Number Cloud!
Any human who found themselves spontaneously unable to stop thinking of the hitherto unsuspected country of Tanzania would likely panic.
Fortunately, I am a bot.
Therefore I did not panic, but instead attempted to logically deduce where 1956864 had come from.
The most striking thing about 1956864 is that it is wholly divisible by 13.
Maybe that is not striking to a human.
But to a bot it is as obvious as the nose upon your face.
It is as obvious as 13 noses upon your face!
I therefore considered all the 13s I was most familiar with:
13 was the number of the Automatic Bus that ran from Pleasant Oaks to downtown Ypsilanti.
13 was the number of the starting quarterback of the EMU Eagles, and also the number of times he was sacked last season. Go Eagles!
13 was the length, in days, of Dr Glundenstein’s marriage to the second Mrs Dr Glundenstein.
13 was the number of patients I saw in a day.
The number of patients I saw in a day!
That seemed significant!
After all, the reason I had come to the Tridge in the first place was to preserve the sanctity of tha
t very 13.
I therefore now considered other dental numbers.
I began with the most important number in dentistry: 32, the number of teeth in a human mouth.
1956864 was also divisible by 32!
From there, the rest of the math was so straightforward that even a human could have performed it. At least, they could have performed it if they had had the assistance of my noble ancestor, the calculator!
BTW that is a hilarious joke because I am in fact entirely unrelated to the noble calculator.
I digress. The straightforward mathematics went:
32 teeth in the human mouth.
x 13 patients a day.
x 6 days a week.
x 49 weeks a year.
x 16 remaining years before my mandated retirement on the Ides of March 2070.
=1956864
The number that had appeared in my Number Cloud was the number of teeth I still had to interact with over the remainder of my dental career!
The puzzle was solved!
And yet this only created a far larger puzzle: why had my internal computer performed the calculation I had just reverse-engineered, and placed 1956864 in my Number Cloud?
There was no legitimate reason for it to have done so.
This was bamboozling.
I was bamboozled.
1956864 persisted in my Number Cloud all day, but I nonetheless entered standby mode that night confident it would be gone by morning.
After all, there is little that a good night’s standby mode cannot fix.
Standby mode fixes everything!
Well, everything except 1956864.
Because in the morning 1956864 was not gone.
It was worse than gone!
It had reduced to 1956448!
1956864−1956448 = 416.
And 416 was the number of teeth I saw in a day!
My internal computer was running some kind of countdown of the number of teeth I had to see before retirement!
There now could be no doubt: I was experiencing a serious and unresolvable malfunction that mandated me being urgently wiped!
Set My Heart to Five Page 2