IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 645

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. Octavia Butler said, “SF doesn’t really mean anything at all, except that if you use science, you should use it correctly, and if you use your imagination to extend it beyond what we already know, you should do that intelligently.”

SF Trope: Intelligent Robots
Current Event: This Arizona wildfire was predicted to go down in history as the Third Largest in that state. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43290922/ns/weather/ If it continues much longer, it may well go down as the second largest – maybe even the biggest one ever. They’ll bring in everything to stop it. Eventually, there will be robots – not humanoid ones like in I, Robot, but more like water, fire and chemical squirting tanks. Or possibly like the robots above. Of course, they’ll have to have a certain amount of autonomy. So what happens to them after the fire?

“The fire was a decade ago! Everything should be fine!” said Ismat Hassan.

“I’m not worried about the fire. This was one of the first sites that ever used an entirely robotic firefighter team,” said Mohini Jyotsana.

“Whad’ya mean?”

She rolled her eyes, “Do you EVER do anything but watch racing and car part Youtubes?”

“Yeah,” he said, sullen.

“Right. If you did, you’d know that they started using robotic firefighters like “RS1-T2 Thermite, the initial firefighting robot; unveiled in 2012 and based on technology created for the U.S. Army. These robots are, technologically speaking, distant descendants of those, and were deployed in the Western Drought Fires of 2027.”

“Oh, yeah, the year Climate Change almost…”

“It wasn’t Climate Change – that’s massive and happens over periods of thousands of years: this was pure Human stupidity – California doesn’t EVER clear brush, and idiots toss cigarettes wherever they feel like it and figure ‘the government’ will take care of all that stupid stuff. Their job is to eat, drink, and then eat some more, watch Youtubes, and blame someone or something else besides their relentless pursuit of laziness and self-pleasure…”

Ismat was staring at her and finally said, “No, tell me how you REALLY feel.”

“2027 was the first year Californians deployed entirely robotic firefighters.”

Ismat shook his head. “Sounds like using wild robotic firefighters was the stupid part!”

Mohini studied him for a moment then nodding, said, “It might just have been one of the dumbest things we’ve ever done.”

Ismat blinked several times before he could say, “You’re agreeing with me?”

She looked at the edge of the fire through her binoculars, then readjusted her chest microphone and called down the LiveTV drone. When it was buzzing as it hovered in front of her, she said, “This is Mohini Jyotsana reporting at the edge of the Western Drought Fire near East Los Angeles where I just witnessed the recently deployed robotic firefighter squadron lighting fires…”

Names: ♀Korea, Near-east ; ♂ India, Rapper
Source: https://online.eou.edu/resources/article/future-of-firefighting-firefighting-robots/
Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg/220px-Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg