When I received the call from RoboDriver I had been lamenting the fact that I hadn’t received an offer for a date in seven years. That’s why I prefer robots. They’re a cleaner breed. They never have dandruff.
I arrived at the plant where the incident had occurred. This was the only manufacturing site for the Higgs bosonic brain. Of course there was a reason for this. The instability of this boson was so extreme that the robots were constantly in a state of nervous exhaustion and frequently flew into a rage and killed everyone around them. As you might imagine this was seriously cutting into profits.
I entered the office of the CEO of RoboDriver and he said, “Thank you for your swift response, ma’am.” I retorted, “I prefer to be addressed as Dr. Daystrom. She/her.” He replied, “Alright Dr. Daystrom-she-her. We need to troubleshoot exactly why one of our robots went on a killing spree in downtown San Francisco today and come up with an action plan to solve the problem and convince our customers to use RoboDriver for all their driving needs.”
Gritting my teeth over his insulting greeting I said I would begin a thorough forensic investigation that would include interviews with all of the witnesses, review of all of the technical documents for the manufacturing and quality assurance records, a comprehensive search of all similar problems over the last twenty years and an electron microscopy examination of the Higgs bosonic brain of the killer robot. He asked, “How long will that take?” I answered, “About forty minutes.” He was taken aback, “How could you possibly complete such an investigation in forty minutes?”
I replied, “Because there’s no need to do any of that. Everybody knows that the Higgs bosonic brain has a 100% failure rate within one week of installation and of the 1,343 cases of robot committed homicides, 100% of them were robots possessing a Higgs bosonic brain.” He said, “Oh. Well, you have a point there.” I followed up, “But you know that already. Why does RoboDriver continue to use the Higgs bosonic brain when the US Robotics positronic brain has a stellar record of safety and longevity? US Robotics licenses their technology and has a good reputation for working hand in glove with their partners.”
The CEO got up from his desk and shut the door to his office and walked over to my chair, cleared his throat and said in hushed tones, “The fact of the matter is we were the victims of a hostile takeover by a venture capital group that installed a cost-cutting program that identified the fact that licensing Higgs bosonic brains instead of the positronic equivalent would save seventeen cents for each robot equipped. Now after the fact, this savings seems to pale in comparison to the 1,343 wrongful death suits and the Justice Department’s grand jury indictments but all of that stuff won’t hit the fan until after Christmas so what we need is a band-aid to keep this under control until the December bonuses get handed out. So, what can you do?”
I looked down at the floor and shuddered and told him I’d see what I could do. I headed out onto the programming floor and using the clearance card I had been given by the CEO began writing some new code for the RoboDriver robots. I loaded the code onto a server and began the download to the entire robot fleet. I headed for the front door just as the first wave of murder-bots stormed the C-suite. Well, so much for their bonuses.