Part XXVIII: Huygens, The Asshole Robot

Taking a rest from the wonders of 2nd Life, Torchy and I decide to check out a featured place on SL's website. We were perusing the Arts & Culture section and came across The Robot Museum. It sounded like a shiny place to rest up before checking out that first "seven wonder" on our list that we skipped over.

We teleport over to the museum and notice their generous use of the color red. Someone must have gotten a good deal on primary colors. No one was around when we beamed in so I decided to change clothes. Hopefully shame is not programmed into these robots and they won't mind me stripping for a second. These shorts were starting to get funky.

After a righteous change of clothing, we strolled on in and started taking in the metallic culture. Robots from lots of Sci-Fi lore were on display. I checked out Star Wars, Lost in Space, Terminator and an entire wing devoted to Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots. The place was pretty cool with lots of interactive material to be accessed, which I did not. I'm a mover, not a shaker.

We were happily minding our own business when this half-naked avatar, by the name of Chirayu Denimore, came running into the joint yelling, "Are there any robots here!?!?"

I thought this was a rather strange question to yell in a robot museum. Hell, there was a robot at the beam in point to greet you. What drug was this guy on? Maybe the one that doesn't allow him to see robots.

So he runs up to me and asks, "Is there any robots here?" His grammar aside, I was unsure how to answer him at first. Surely he had to know where he was at. I simply replied, "Yup."

Then he asked, "Could you show me?"

OK, Mr. Denimore was starting to boggle me. Was he just another weirdo, like me, out asking people weird things? Or, was he a crazy person? That was apparently Torchy's cue to chime in. He suggested we have fun with this bloke.

Even though it's gotten me into trouble before, I'm going to take Torchy's advice. I tell Denimore, "You're looking at him."

He responds by asking, "You're a robot?"

I say, "Yup."

He raises a valid point. "You look like a human."

I tell him, "I'm advanced. I'm an A-HOL 1138 model. Why else would I be carrying around a sentient torch?"

He asked, "Are you jerking me?"

I responded, "No, that would require an LUV L769 model....MUST KILL ALL HUMAN! *buzz**click*...."

"Oh, sorry about that," I say. "Program malfunction."

He stormed away and said, "Look, dude. I need to find a robot and I don't need clowns like you getting in my way."

I said, "That's robot clown to you."

This was the most bizarre fun we've had in a while so we followed Mr. Denimore to delve further into his mystery. I caught up with him eying Robby the Robot up and down. I asked him, "What do you need a robot for, my fleshy friend."

He says, "For school. I need to find a robot avatar."

This was the breakthrough that I needed. It cleared up a lot of questions. He was simply shopping for a costume. What his "project" for school was, I could only wonder. That didn't interest me much.

I asked, "Do you possess any legal forms of tender?" He said, "No."

"Then my pathways are suggesting the logical course of action would be going to the Free Mall," I advised him.

He said he had tried and found all kinds except a robot. Apparently a robot suit is a little different and hard to come by. I said, "Wow. I never knew. But then again I don't bother with organics and their troubles that much."

He said, "Whatever, freak," and took to the skies. I thought he had given up and transported to other places. I noticed a couple more people had beamed into the site. I thought I would go up and say "hi" to them before I took off.

The two were named Paulski and Deidre. I walked up and they said "hi". I said "hi" back. They asked me how the museum was and I told them it was pretty cool. Deidre was telling me this was her first time to the place when, out of the blue, Denimore plops from the sky into the middle of our conversation. Apparently he had not left for good.

He starts asking the two if they knew where to find a robot. They seemed as confused as I did when Old Shirtless posed me the same question. I told them, "He's crazy. Don't listen to him. He tried to sell me things and thought I was a robot."

Denimore became angry and said, "What? YOU said you were a robot." I told Paulski and Deidre, "See what I mean. He's going to try and sell you ad space on his porn site next."

Paulski says, "I don't want to buy anything, thank you," and Deidre agreed. Mr. Denimore was getting very frustrated and said, "I'm not selling anything! Don't listen to this clown!" And then, all of a sudden, Denimore starts doing a muscle flexing gesture in my direction. The very same one I pulled on a crowd of campers when I was in the nude. I guess with no way to harm me or do anything about it, he felt it was the only thing he could do to vent his escalating anger with me.

Not one to back down from a gesture-off, I handed him a solid Boo! By now Paulski and Deitre had no idea what they had gotten themselves in the middle of. They did what any normal person would do. They slowly backed away.

At the point when Denimore was serving me the karate chop gesture, Deidre turns to Paulski and says, "Anyway - time to walk around. Nice meeting you, Paulski."

And while Denimore is being dealt my hula dance, Paulski turns to Deidre and says, "You too," and quickly walked away.

We were alone again and Denimore was giving me the evil eye so I said, "Way to scare those nice folks off, you large ugly bag of mostly water."

He replied, "Get lost!"

I said, "Harsh. Does that mean you don't want to go looking for robot costumes together?"

He asked, "Why did you tell them that stuff!?" To which I replied, "I told you I was an A-HOL, didn't I?"

He again commanded, "GET LOST!"

He started to beam away and, always enjoying the last word, I said, "But. I was here first."

And then he was gone. Wow. I never thought being a robot would be so much fun, Torchy. We must do it again sometime.

I hope Mr. Denimore does OK on his school project. If not, he can tell his teacher that some android asshole caused him to be late on it.

...