Spacetrawler, audio version For the blind or visually impaired, October 15, 2019.
This strip came about through pure organic writing of the situation…. but, we do not live in a vacuum, and immediately after drawing it I thought of “The Luggage” from the Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, a character who I LOVE. A happy mental connection.
Box-bot doesn’t have to worry. Its job is safe.
Yup, it’s got job security.
Box-Bot needs to grow little feet and obsessively follow Emily around offering weapons at ill-opportune moments then.
I wonder what a cupboard bot planet society is like.
I wonder why this is book 9 …? Book 7 was called The Nonpartisan … but there was no real Book 8, or did I miss something?
@MasterChief, the short story of Bikkie and Wezzle was “book 8.” A bit of a crackpot numbering system, I know.
Or, in keeping with the Pratchett motif, book 7a.
Yes, Luggage from Pratchett’s Discworld! He could imbue more personality into ‘inanimate’ objects than what many people have in real life!
I swear your inspiration of some of the weapons Emiy’s tossing came from power drills and nail guns. Admit it, Christopher.
The inspiration certainly doesn’t come from guns, I’ve rarely seen one of them.
I like the line from Miss Congeniality when Sandra Bullock’s character takes all the weapons etc. out of her dress. “What, no armoured car?” says Michael Caine’s character. “It’s in the other dress” she replies.
I can’t decide whether being on a ship controlled by one omnipotent neurotic AI (looking at you, HAL) is more or less scary than being on a ship populated by dozens of powerful but earnest AIs each with control of something important.
On Douglas Adams’ “Heart of Gold,” even the doors had dialogue.
Maybe that’s the key–design the AIs to dislike each other. At worst, they won’t combine against biological sapients. Better, they’ll serve biological sapients in hopes of gaining allies against their rivals.
The coat is a weapon too?
Of COURSE the coat is a weapon — it conceals weaponry and disguises that fact, making it dangerous to approach but you will not know that until—
I don’t want to get into considering the psychology of a secure box AI and how it interprets the meaning in its life. I spent enough time being haunted by the motivations of the potty-bots and don’t want to go through THAT again.
Incidentally, Christopher, in the invented Klingon language, ‘tool’ and ‘weapon’ are the same word. It speaks to the casual approach to violence the Klingons are reputed to have, but it also means that hand drill they have may mean more to them than you imagine. I have found it a truism that there is a corollary in the saying: If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The opposite is also true: If all you are is a nail, then everything looks like a hammer.
@Peter Rogan , I think you nailed the argument.
ba-dump-bump
That’s a big thing with the uniqueness of how among the primates, Humans have the only hand where the tips of the thumb and the fingers can touch.
That gives us the ability to manipulate things easier than the other primates. We can pinch, they can’t. That enables us to hold tiny things. Tiny things are the key to making complex bigger things.
It also enables us to use just about anything as a weapon, with greater effect.
Personally, with one line of dialog, I like box-bot better than potty-bot. Potty-bot’s humor came because it was annoying. I remember in the TV show M*A*S*H when “Maj. Frank Burns” left the show and was replaced by “Maj. Charles Emerson Winchester III”, my big fear was that he was going to be a “Frank Lite”. Luckily, he was nothing of the sort. I’m glad you’re not making box-bot another potty-boxt
For those of you who are fans, there is now a MINIATURE FIGURE of the Luggage.
I know. Because I have one. ????
Box-Bot has the misfortune of just being one hyphen away from sharing a name with the most terrible robot of all time, Boxbot from Gunnerkrigg Court. I hope this Box-Bot will manage to rise above the legacy of his (almost) namesake.