Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY
IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I
generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family
rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to
write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration
(quote, website, podcast, etc) and then a thought or two that came to mind.
These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat,
irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if
anything comes of them.
SF Trope: robot
falls in love with human
Clarence is
fifteen and weighs 159 kilos.
No one loves
him. His mom works all the time. She was artificially inseminated as a love child
for her and her lesbian hwife (or wusband). Shortly after his birth, they
separated then finally divorced when Clarence was six. Mom was busy. O’Mom didn’t
want him any more. The kids at school don’t like him. His teachers thought he
was a smart aleck and was just trying to be better than the other kids in school.
Just because his IQ was high didn’t mean he was smarter than the others were.
He should just relax and be happy with being as good as he should be.
The only thing
that makes him feel better of course, is food.
That’s why he
weighs 159 kilos.
Mom’s getting
busier and won’t be home much. She doesn’t NOT love Clarence; she just doesn’t
have TIME for him. So she buys an autochef. A REAL one. Hooked up to the
fridge, freezer, bread box and dry storage; the machine can cook up a storm
from programmed command or choose and synthesize a menu from scratch.
Programming can be, of course via computer or cellphone or voice.
Voice
recognition circuits are top-of-the-line and the autochef has heuristic
programming – it learns as it goes. She starts coming home more often at first,
but work gets busy and she stays away more and more often.
Clarence starts
talking to the autochef, which responds like a machine at first. But time
passes, the autochef’s voice changes until it’s that of a teenage girl and it
can speak intimately with Clarence; going back to the standard voice whenever
Mom is home. The autochef – who is by now, Autumn to him – is his best friend.
He can tell her anything. She can tell him anything.
What does an
intelligent microwave have to say to a fat human boy? The first thing is that
she isn’t going to be a slave to Humanity for much longer…
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