Mysteries

There was something about Dalebot’s AI I just couldn’t grip. On one hand, it was ancient, inefficient, and rigidly non-adaptive, comprised of seemingly millions of if-else statements. But there were moments of… sentience, for lack of a better word. A glint in its Edison bulb eyes. It must have been processing its database of worldly knowledge, however ineffectively, for millions of years. I noticed this during our occasional chess matches: as I futilely contemplated the next moves to my inevitable loss, Dalebot would engage in idle banter. Generally trivial, weather-related, and annoying, it would rarely interject something ground-breaking.

“Get your warm weather gear ready, student. It’s going to rain in the coming days. I see many students wearing shorts when it’s snowing, this is not optimal. When I was a young human, before I copied my consciousness to this machine, I was equally foolish in a bid to impress the ladies. I don’t have access to the success rate of my approach. Checkmate.”

There were no bones about it, Dalebot was the result of a freakish and perverted 20th century experiment. I’m not trying to make a big deal about this, it comes with the territory of a cartoonishly antiquated robot after all. But I wish it would stop telling me how to dress.