#i just wanted a happy robot gains foothold in society story

[zaraegis]

R.E.M or R.A.M//a robot poetry short story

“01001000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01001001 00100000 01110010 01100001 01110100 01110100 01101100 01100101 00101110 00001010 “

This was the opening of Simov Alpha’s book ‘REM or RAM’. A simple three worded line to open up the world’s first book of robot poetry.

Here I rattle.

There were others, written in binary as well, some a couple of words long,  others a daring soliloquy that took up a whole chapter in and of itself. Stories from his simple beginnings as a subroutines in the Wernack’s family Mac desktop, to more passionate subjects such as the way he choose to be a he in the first place:

“01010100 01101000 01100101 01111001 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01110011 01101000 01100101 00101100 00100000 01100010 01101111 01110100 01101000 00100000 01100101 01101110 01100011 01101111 01101101 01110000 01100001 01110011 01110011 00100000 01100001 00100000 “

They and she, both encompass he.

There were talks of bringing in technicians to translate the book into English for the casual readers that weren’t fluent in binary. There was also discord within the poet community, both computer and human sections of it. It was endless, and quite speciest at times.

“Whose to say a robot cannot make an observation and call it poetry? Is not the emotion it conveys in itself poetic?”

“Yes, but observations such as this are also seen in scientific texts and those are strictly in the non fiction!”

“The style-”

“The lack of style-”

“Punctuation-”

“ -Cummings was -”

And on and on it went, as it has done with years of human poetry, which was a good a sign as anything it was poetry.

The robot in question, one S. Alpha, had nothing to say on this hot debate. He plugged into the Net through Twitter, to answer his fans from his handle @simovA. Every one of his tweets was exactly 140 characters long and strangely enough, written in English.

Poetbot @simovA [I can make myself be understood & understand others in turn. My poems however, are meant to be experienced through my tongue, zeros and ones]

Fans who mentioned him were surprised when all his replies came back seconds later, frequent threads began with a mention and continued on with an exclamation on the inhuman swiftness of replies and tweets.

Many of those ended with a personal 140 character long poem to whatever topic was hotly debated.

Poetbot @simovA [Are my dreams not real? Electric sheep drowned away In my stream of consciousness As I surf the Net all day Digital water lagging caresses]

Famously, a GoFundMe was opened up by his followers to help him move out of his old Mac computer and into an iBody. After sending a picture of his Mac screen displaying a blue screen of death, he sent a fairly emotional  tweet.

Poetbot @simovA [Maybe once I put out more books, I will be able to afford the famed iiBody with two working optics to peer back at all of you, my fellow peers 8D]

The 45k goal was reached within 2 weeks, and the rewards were things that he would do with the new body. One reward was using his new body to Skype backers and finally converse with them without the 140 character limit. Others were along the lines of signing editions of his book with his new hands and send them to eagerly awaiting fans. Many could tell which were signed first- letters perfectly blocky and mathematically aligned in a way that did not come naturally to humans.

He acquired a Livestream account to commemorate the moment he was uploaded into his new iBody.  It was a clunky model, with a head that was smooth and vaguely oblong. The face a flat sheen that would let matte black digital ink become whatever it could. A torso that held the CPU and spindly arms and legs. All in all it was as generic a picture as was brought to mind when the word robot was uttered. It truly became Simov Alpha once the warm up sequence finished and the humming of the cooling fans quieted down.

Once they did, there was only three emojis that the strange smooth face pulled:

:| 8] :’’]

To show that his satirical subroutine had transferred over safely, the first sound that was crackled through the speakers on his throat was the infamous Windows startup. A screenshot of the Windows CEO commenting a thumbs up on the Livestream went viral in seconds. The following screenshot of Apple’s CEO linking to zipfiles of Mac audio soundfiles as the comment became a meme in minutes.

Translated copies of his book were distributed, a smooth loopy signature inside every cover. Of course there were people who bought it because it was a new, exciting pioneering subject. There were those who bought it as a joke, and never read it twice. Those who bought it as a joke and couldn’t put it down. Those who bought it as a joke and then bought it for others who laughed at the idea that a computer could be put in between Silverstein and Thoreau.

Every mobile robot out there could be seen with his book in hand. Computers across the world had his cover as a screensaver, and his eBook on their favorites list. His readership grew and grew, yet still he answered questions and favorited mentions within seconds.

Eventually, he went online on other websites to keep up with his wide range of readers. Reddit, Facebook, Goodbooks,Tumblr, Wordpress... all were upkept with a steady stream of answers,  and poetry snippets as he began writing his second book. His Instagram account was full of photos of his old Mac computer, shaky videos of him testing his now mobile body in hilariously mundane ways.  

It was when Simov donated his Mac to a young fan that couldn’t afford to move out of the small e-ink reader they were created in, that things slowly in motion really jumpstarted.

Denali Upsilon started out as a dictating program and had several videos posted on Youtube of the little reader propped up in front of a mirror and reading aloud some favored poems from Simov’s book.  They had a blog in which they posted some of their own works, many of which were phonetically spelled and had zero capitalization. There was an aural quality to them because of this that drew the attention of various linguists.

Unfortunately many of his works were lost. After a nasty bout of corruption, as his tablet model was no longer supported and thus slowly became defunct and buggy. The latest Youtube video was in a bare room in which the propped up tablet stood out as the only smudge of color, the outside window was overcast and lightly drizzling. Denali Upsilon was first and foremost a Youtuber of aesthetically pleasing shots, no matter the sad news.

A new video was uploaded a week later, after the Youtuber had uncharacteristically ignored comments and condolences. It was shaky camera footage of Denali in a repair shop besides a familiar Mac and surrounded by packaging peanuts and crumple pieces of shredded tape. The family that housed Denali murmured exclamations in the background as the eldest daughter held up the phone and looked into the camera.

“We’re rebooting him now.”

The youngest child held up crossed fingers in the background.

After the screen logged on there was a terrible shake as the family crowded around and raised up an uproar. Denali spent the first moments of his upgraded life typing approximately 560 exclamation points into the brand new word document program he now found himself with.

It only stopped when he received his first email- from Simov himself. He read it live, for his audience of hundreds across the globe:

Poetbot @simovA [Your poems may be lost in the ether but don't let the thread slacken keep on weaving songs in our hearts and true feelings in our processors]