HOW THE ROBOCLEANER LOST ITS FLAG: PART 1
by Hazed
I was sitting in Chez Diesel recently, enjoying the peace and quiet while I sipped on my favourite pink frothy drink – the one that comes with the umbrella, and the fruit, and the elephant-shaped ice, and the monkey – when the robocleaner trundled into the bar.
Normally I ignore the metal trashthing; it’s a frequent enough visitor to the establishment that it just becomes part of the furniture. There was a time when I thought it was stalking me, because it seemed to come into the bar every few minutes, clanking loudly as it wheeled itself up and down the steps, but I had a quiet word with the municipal cleanliness department of the Martian authorities and they reprogrammed it to visit Chez Diesel far less often.
But this time, for some reason, I couldn’t ignore the cleaner. It’s not that it was doing anything different, it’s just that I was in a mood where I welcomed the distraction. So I watched the robocleaner as it sucked up dirt from the floor and wiped up spillages from careless drinkers – and I noticed something strange.
The robocleaner was draped in an American flag. How very odd.
There was no point trying to ask the bot why it was wearing the stars and stripes; it can’t talk. Any communication with it has to be done via its programming console, which requires one to understand the commands it responds to, not to mention know the security password.
No, I had to go back to the being at the municipal cleanliness department who had helped me out back when the machine had been pestering me. Camjaz, he was called, an amphibious little chap from Betelgeuse III. He drank in CDs, being a big fan of Phil the Arcturian pianist, and I knew if I stayed in the bar he’d be in before too long. Sure enough, I was right; he showed up later that day, after his work shift ended.
I bought him a drink – a jadeberry vodka martini with a twist of Betel ice citrus, not shaken or stirred but just gently rotated exactly six times anti-clockwise – and quizzed him about the robocleaner’s unusual attire.
He flapped a flipper at me, and puckered up his face in the shape that was his equivalent of a frown. “Oh, don’t get me started on that dratted cleaner and his flag,” he grumbled. His voice was deep and gurgly, due to his froglike physique, but I could tell he was annoyed.
A raised one eyebrow quizzically, encouraging him to explain. Which he did. “It was several years ago, when the Martian authorities decided to celebrate the old American holiday, Independence Day, on July Fourth. We hung up bunting, had a big old party with fireworks, and everyone dressed up. Somebody had the bright idea of decorating all the municipal droids, and so the robocleaner was draped in the flag.
“We had a fun time, and then when it was all over the bunting came down and the costumes got packed away. But somehow, we overlooked the robocleaner. Probably because it moves about so much, in such a random pattern, you never know where it’s going to be. So it hung onto its flag.”
He gulped down the remains of his drink, then looked at me expectantly. I summoned a waitdroid who brought him another martini. He continued his story. “From time to time one of the council employees would come across the robocleaner doing its rounds, would noticed the flag, and would try to remove it, but it wouldn’t let them take it off. It seemed to have become strangely attached to the flag. No idea why, it’s not programmed to care what it looks like; some kind of glitch in its programming I guess.”
“Well, I don’t suppose it really matters if it chooses to glam itself up a bit with the stars and stripes,” I said.
“Oh, but it does,” Camjaz replied. “We can’t have cleaning robots developing a sense of self. Next thing you know, they’ll be demanding rights and refusing to work without payment. It’s the thin end of the wedge, a slippery slope, the path to perdition.”
“Well, surely the robocleaner gets switched off occasionally for maintenance. All you need to do is wait till its inactive, then take the flag off it.”
“Easier said than done. It’s only inactive when it’s in the droid maintenance hole – and that’s not accessible to me, or any other sentient beings. Only droids can access it, and the maintenance droids can’t be programmed to do anything other than proper maintenance. Removing a flag off its back doesn’t count.”
And that’s when I had a bright idea… which I will tell you about next week.
