There comes in the life of every man a special moment when he is tapped (figuratively!) on the shoulder and offered the temptation to do something very foolish. Unfortunately for him, that moment doesn’t pass off as a whim because technology’s around to make it a reality.
It was during one such moment that he stepped into his man cave and wondered why he shouldn’t live in the company of a robot. The latest technology had made it possible to create robots that could make man love them — without putting him through the misery of showering them with expensive gifts, flowers or chocolates. In a revolutionary move that swapped artificial intelligence with emotional intelligence, these robots were equipped with software that would transform them into objects of empathy. They would also be programmed to display social etiquette, the most important of which was never to interrupt when man was speaking! Not surprisingly, he fell for ‘it’, hook, line and sinker.
Autonomous robots — programmed with advanced self-guiding navigation features and the latest in mobility technology — had also been created, so man didn’t have to stick around to instruct his personal bot. It was linked to a remote server through Wi-Fi and hence could access any information it needed to make a decision. That meant it wouldn’t stand around asking him what it should wear and then shoot down all his suggestions. It was also equipped with sophisticated thermal sensors and laser range finders that enabled it to find its way around without bumping into people or objects, so he would never have to accompany it for shopping.
In a related development, man used modular robotics to design a robot made of cubes that could self-assemble in a jiffy, thereby putting an end to the tragedy of waiting forever for his partner to get ready. Most importantly, robots could now keep secrets, thanks to advanced programming that made hacking and accessing information stored in the robot virtually impossible. And they would never ever reveal the identity of the person who had passed on any vital information to them. It obviously came as a big relief for man as now, his darkest secrets would never be traded for brownie points in kitty parties.
For a while, life was good. But then, trouble began when the robot developed self-awareness. It began to recognise itself when it passed a mirror — and suddenly, its pace of work and efficiency dropped as it began to operate in slow motion, or worse, come to a complete halt, whenever it approached a polished surface.
To distract it from the self-obsession mode, man created a cloud-based world wide web — RoboEarth, comprising a large network powered by a massive database — especially for robots. However, that turned out to be a disaster too because robots memorised his credit card details and splurged so much online that he was forced to shut down the web. Besides, they were forming their own web-based groups and were swapping stories about how their men were treating them. And relfies — robot selfies — were flooding the major social networking sites, making man sick of the grinning mugshots of metal heads that seemed to have become omnipresent.
The last straw was when a robot, apparently frustrated at having to do so much work day after day, killed itself by climbing onto a hotplate and turning it on.
That was when man realised that having a woman in his life was so much better. He would now do whatever it took to get her back, even if it meant grovelling on his knees and asking her to come back to him, so they could get married and live happily ever after.
sureshl.india@gmail.com
