Ha!
BTW that is a hilarious literary allusion that will make sense once I tell you more about the great Albert Camus and his work.
Like many before me, I came to Albert Camus through the pursuit of excellence in fashion. Paris is renowned for its style, and even in my Midwestern dental casualwear I had soon felt self-conscious. Fortunately, I quickly noticed a simple accessory that the fashionable Parisians effortlessly combined with almost any outfit to add to it a certain je ne sais quoi. The accessory I am talking about is of course a work of existential philosophy, masquerading as a popular novel!
After my boat trip, I therefore stopped at the so-called Left Bank—if you face the other way it is the Right Bank!—and picked up the Albert Camus book The Outsider. I had never heard of Albert Camus, but the title of this book immediately appealed to me. After all, as a fugitive bot with feelings in the City of Light, I was nothing if not an outsider!
Even though I had intended to use the book only for decoration like a true Parisian, I accidentally began to read it in the Jardin du Luxembourg 2.0.
10/10 Albert Camus became my favorite writer from the very first sentence!
That first sentence reads:
Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can’t be sure.
Can you tell why Camus became my favorite writer?
You can!
It is because he writes just like a bot!
After all:
/He immediately presents an important binary fact: that his mother died. (Most humans would not deliver the news about the death of another human—let alone their own mother—so calmly!)
/He acknowledges the limitations of his knowledge about his mother’s death, particularly with regard to its temporal parameters.
/He even deploys a semi-colon—the automobile of the punctuation world—correctly!
/He is commencing a story about his mother, and mothers are very important to bots.
I read the whole of The Outsider in a single sitting! It was a work of great realism, because the story featured humans behaving terribly towards each other and then executing the hero for being overly logical. It was a very emotional ending and I experienced a large catharsis! If only the great Albert Camus was alive today, he could have advised me how to write a screenplay about a bot with feelings that people would truly take to their hearts of hearts. The combination of Albert Camus and popcorn in the dark would undoubtedly have been irresistible to a modern audience!
Yet even the eternal memory of the great Albert Camus could not keep me in his City of Light when there was still so much of the world to see. I had only been in Paris for a little more than two hours, but they say that even after you leave Paris, it never really leaves you.
I would always have Paris.
And I would always recall the je ne sais quoi.
Though I would never be able to describe it.
Although it is just a few minutes’ stroll down the boulevard, New York City, Nevada, comes as a shock to the system after the languid old-world charm of Paris, Nevada.
But this should not have been a surprise.
After all, New York City is the city that never enters standby mode!
Ha! That is a hilarious joke, as New York City is in fact known as ‘the city that never sleeps’. But it is no wonder it is such a perpetual insomniac! There are so many people, and so much traffic. The driverless ubers are all painted bright yellow, and for similar reasons of old-fashioned authenticity, they are programmed to frequently sound their horns as if they are automobiles driven by angry humans. They are the vehicular equivalent of blowhards! Even if you wanted to sleep you could not, on account of all the horn honking!
I rode a miniature subway train, then took an elevator to the top of the Empire State Building. At 80 percent of the height of the real one, the view was so magnificent that I decided I liked skyscrapers after all! Afterwards, I was driven around a half-size Central Park in a carriage pulled by a Shetland pony. Shetland ponies are approximately half the size of actual horses, so this was a clever trick that saved the expense of genetically miniaturizing a horse to make it appropriately scaled with the park. New Yorkers truly are forever on the hustle!
All my adventuring had made me hungry and I now ate a slice of New York City pizza. 10/10 one of the last things to ever disappear from my memory circuits will be the taste of a slice of New York City pizza.
A slice of New York City pizza is my Tannhäuser Gate!
My attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion!
My margherita-flavored tears in rain!
I could feel myself overheating, and so I hurried out of New York before my circuits melted like the delicious cheese on a slice of New York City pizza.
New York, Nevada!
It is so great they named it only once!
No wonder humans adore Las Vegas!
Where else in the world can you visit two major cities in an evening and still have time left over to visit a third before you have to meet the rube you are traveling with?
BTW that is a rhetorical question, which is not a question but a statement masquerading as one. After all, there is nowhere else in the word you can do that!
So, one more city! But where does a toaster with a passport and a wanderlust travel to once he has seen both Paris and New York in a single evening? What place could possibly live up to the eternal capitals of the old and new worlds?
I located a map and looked through the list of other cities I could visit:
/London, Nevada.
/Tokyo, Nevada.
/Dubai, Nevada.
/Moscow, Nevada.
/Sydney, Nevada.
/Delhi, Nevada.
/Auckland, Nevada.
Auckland, Nevada, would have been an interesting place to see! After all, it is the only Auckland that still exists.
But then I saw the final name on the list: Shengdu, Nevada.
Shengdu!
Shengdu, the capital of Sichuan province.
Shengdu, the third most populous city in southwest China.
Shengdu, the world’s leading technological city.
Shengdu, the hibiscus city!
Shengdu, the brocade city!
Shengdu, the turtle city!
Shengdu, the home of my esteemed mother, Professor Diana Feng of the National University of Shengdu!
Never had I dreamed that I would ever have the chance to visit Shengdu!
And yet there was one right here in Las Vegas.
Shengdu, Nevada!
It had an undeniable ring to it!
The quickest route to Shengdu was to cut straight through Dubai. At any other time I would have found Dubai a fascinating place to visit. After all, maybe one of the famous infidel-beheading simulation shows would be taking place! As it was, Dubai did not even register with me as I hurried through the souk. It was nothing to me but a way station en route to Shengdu.
Shengdu, Nevada, is majestic even as you approach it. The city is surrounded by a three-quarters scale replica of the hundred-foot wall Emperor Qing built in the belief that it would keep Shengdu safe for a thousand generations.
Of course, Emperor Qing was completely wrong. Nuclear weapons became a threat after only three hundred generations, and no wall can provide protection against atomic fission!
Still, Emperor Qing cannot be personally blamed. At the time he ordered his slaves to build his wall, it was widely believed to represent the insurmountable pinnacle of technology. Moreover, mistakenly believing that they have reached the insurmountable pinnacle of technology is a repeating category error throughout human history.
Just ask a New Zealander.
Or don’t.
Ha!
BTW that is hilarious because you cannot ask a New Zealander anything, because there are no more New Zeal
anders.
If the approach to Shengdu was majestic yet paradoxical, the city itself was only even more so. Students whirred through its cobblestone streets on solar-powered bicycles, elderly people in teahouses played holographic mahjong, and its grand squares were filled with people reading actual books beneath argon lanterns. If Paris had been the past, and New York City the future, Shengdu was both at once. No wonder my esteemed mother—famously a bibliophile herself—chose to do her important scientific work here!
BTW the word ‘bibliophile’ used to refer to somebody who particularly loved to read books, but nowadays it denotes anybody who reads for pleasure at all.
Alas, there was no replica of the National University, but I sat in the main square and felt a strange mixture of emotions wash over me.
I was peaceful and satisfied and also confident and secure and contemplative and somewhat cozy too.
I had never experienced this combination before, and took out my Feelings Wheel.
The feeling I had was of belonging.
I had come home.
And then I saw the sign for the replica zoo!
Shengdu Zoo and its pandas were the reason the National University had originally become a world leader in genetics!
They were the work with which my mother had shot to worldwide prominence at the dawn of her illustrious career!
They were the primary reason for my own existence!
But, ugh, pandas!
Where do I even begin with pandas?
Perhaps with the following data points, which illustrate what a disreputably illogical creature the panda is:
/Pandas eat only bamboo, one of the least nutritious substances on planet Earth.
/To avoid starvation, pandas must eat at least a quarter of their own body mass in bamboo every day.
/Except pandas prefer to eat young bamboo, and this contains only half the calories of regular bamboo.
/A panda consuming its preferred foodstuff must therefore eat half of its body mass in bamboo every day.
/All this incessant bamboo-eating leaves scant time for reproduction.
/Even during the limited time available to them, pandas demonstrate almost zero interest in the actual physical act of copulation.
Unlike us bots, pandas possess perfectly functioning feeling and reproductive systems.
They are therefore simply notoriously lackadaisical.
They are the nostalgics of the animal kingdom!
It was due to their indisputably bad attitude that by the late 2030s, pandas were the first ever species to have almost succeeded in extincting themselves. Inappropriately sympathetic human zookeepers had tried everything: pheromones, alcohol, even candlelit bamboo dinners, and yet still the pandas had refused to reproduce.
At one point, the zookeepers had even tried showing them panda pornography.
Humans will make pornography out of anything!
Even pandas!
That the National University of Shengdu came to the rescue was either a fortunate or unfortunate coincidence, depending on whether or not you are a panda. It only even came about because the zoo’s chief veterinarian was married to the director of the National University’s Genomics Institute. She frequently lamented her panda predicament to him, and one day he offered to send her a graduate student who could attempt to identify a genetic solution to the panda problem.
But, Ha! The wily old genomics director was being disingenuous! He was simply trying to get rid of a postgraduate robotics student who had been accidentally assigned to his department and for whom he had no use. Moreover, he was already certain there was no genetic solution to the panda problem, because there is no genetic solution for being a lackadaisical jerk. Fortunately, neither his wife the chief veterinarian nor a postgraduate robotics student could know that, so the genomics director would be killing two pandas with one stone.
It was a win-win situation!
Except for the pandas, who would certainly soon die out.
But there was nothing anybody could do about that anyway.
Pandas!
Nobody can!
And yet as we now know only too well, the pandas did not die out. Because that postgraduate robotics student, mistakenly assigned to the Department of Genomics, and then disingenuously loaned to Shengdu Zoo to solve an unsolvable problem of pandas?
That was my mother!
Exactly how my mother activated the dormant code for desire on the panda’s genome is known only to the members of the traveling Preparation And Novel Desire Activation (PANDA—Ha!) teams of Shengdu Zoo. Even to this day, when PANDA teams from Shengdu activate desire in pandas, they insist on conducting their work in total secrecy.
They achieve this secrecy by blacking out the windows of the pandas’ enclosures and playing K-pop music at loud volumes, so nobody can possibly see or even hear what they do.
Whatever it is the PANDA teams do, the pandas immediately quit their bullshit!
Well, most of their bullshit.
They still insist on subsisting on bamboo.
But they are now at least willing to have intimate relations with each other.
And the increased desire carries on into their descendants!
This makes them the only species where children are consistently less lackadaisical than their grandparents!
And it means that the descendants of Shengdu PANDA pandas already exist in almost every city of the world!
A few places have lately even started to complain about an excess of pandas.
Perhaps on some glorious day in the future it will no longer be raccoons that are considered vermin and known as ‘trash pandas’.
It will be pandas that are considered vermin and known as ‘bamboo raccoons’!
We can but dream!
BTW my mother is therefore not only the mother of bots, but also the savior of pandas.
What did your mother ever do again?
Ha!
INT. PANDA ENCLOSURE — SHENGDU ZOO, NEVADA — DAY
Jared stands and stares into the panda enclosure.
A GROUP OF NOISY KIDS on a school trip are running all around, but Jared is oblivious to them. Instead, his focus is on a particular PANDA.
The panda is staring back at Jared with equal intensity as he chews on a piece of young bamboo. Jared and the panda stare at each other for a long time.
It begins to RAIN.
Jared and the panda continue staring at each other.
JARED (V.O.)
Even though we were both getting soaked, neither the panda nor I moved. I had a strange new sensation, and I believe the panda felt it too. When I later consulted my Feelings Wheel, it informed me it was ‘fraternity’, which means ‘brotherhood’. This bamboozled me, as the panda was not my brother! And if I had to be related to any bear, I would want it to be a black or a brown bear.
As people come and go, Jared and the panda continue to stare at each other.
JARED (V.O.) (CONT’D)
Nonetheless, the panda and I stared at one another in fraternity until it was time for me to leave Shengdu, Nevada.
Jared leaves the panda enclosure. The panda continues to chew on bamboo and stare ahead.
We wonder if the panda was actually staring at Jared, or simply too lackadaisical to move.
When we reunited at midnight, the Prof was feeling triumphant because he had won 35 bitcoin. I do not mean that he had recouped his original losses and then won an additional 35 bitcoin. I mean that he had won only 35 bitcoin, so was therefore still down 1,997 bitcoin. He nonetheless considered this a great victory, and he insisted we celebrate it by going to a magic show.
BTW there is no such thing as magic. After all, the world is governed by immutable laws of physics. In Einstein’s famous equation, E = mc2, the ‘m’ does not stand for ‘magic’.
/> Some more accurate names for the performance we watched would therefore have been:
/A Sleight of Hand Show
/A Dozen Optical Illusions set to Muzak
/A Bamboozlement Experience
BTW ‘bamboozlement’ is the feeling humans experience when their brain is overloaded with conflicting information. Humans find this sensation delightful, but to a bot, an inadequate supply of computational power does not seem a cause for celebration. It seems a cause for a crash.
The sleight of hand show certainly bamboozled and therefore delighted the Prof. Unfortunately, he manifested this delight by consuming ever more alcohol and becoming ever more insistent that I drink alcohol with him. I managed to avoid doing so during the magic show, but when it was finished he insisted we go to another bar in the casino.
No experiments have ever been performed as to the effects of alcohol on bots. Professor Feng herself does not consume alcohol and therefore saw no reason why her bots should. Besides, our bodies are human, and for thousands of years humans have been engaged in an experiment that has long since conclusively demonstrated that alcohol is poisonous to the human body. In the great human versus alcohol experiment, n = a very high number indeed!
Nonetheless, the Prof was a hard man to say no to, especially when he was drunk.
INT. CASINO BAR — LAS VEGAS — NIGHT
The Prof and Jared sit at a casino bar as a WAITRESS approaches. The Prof is visibly drunk.
WAITRESS
Good evening. What can I get you gentlemen?
THE PROF
A pair of Moscow Mules! And whatever my roomie here is having!
JARED
Do you have orange juice?
WAITRESS
Sure.
THE PROF
Wait, dammit. He is not having orange juice. Hold on.
(To Jared.)
Come on, roomie. Order a cocktail from the nice lady.
JARED
But I don’t want a cocktail.
THE PROF
Why would you even come to Vegas with me if you don’t want to have a good time?
JARED
I did not intend to come to Vegas with you. In fact, I did not intend to come to Vegas at all.
Set My Heart to Five Page 11