I, Ras Robot, attended the RoboGames in San Mateo this year with the Chief Designer. I had hoped to attend the games elsewhere—Calgary Alberta, for example, where they had the 20th Annual Western Canadian Robot Games. But the Chief said no, we were going to San Mateo because we did not have the money for a trip to Canada.  I quite logically pointed out that banks here in Silicon Valley could provide us with Canadian money. Besides, I had read on the web that the percentage of Americans living in Calgary was higher than any place outside the U.S.A; I felt certain the Robot App Store’s American dollars would be appreciated there.

“Ras,” the Chief said with a sigh, “I meant we didn’t have enough money of any kind—American or Canadian—for a trip that far away from home.”  For me, Ras Robot, this whole issue of money having a national identity appears illogical. All money seems to be digital. Why give it different names?

Canada has an amazingly active robot culture and I thought they might appreciate a visit by the world’s foremost robot and only post-Singularity Being.  Maybe robots are too common here in California. Last year at the San Mateo games everyone thought I was a human dressed as a robot. Imagine my humiliation.

Ras says "to be confused with this is just embarrassing."

Before leaving for the games this year I asked my friend Winston what to do to convince people I was a robot.

“I am surprised you even care Ras,” he said.   “A being as logical as you must know that what people think is of absolutely no consequence.”

“You are right Winston,” I answered. “But Ras is also a superior being and superior beings like to be noticed. Of what value is superiority if it is not recognized as such?”

“Since you move so smoothly and talk so clearly everyone thinks you must be human, Ras. Maybe if you walked herky-jerky like NAO and spoke mechanically like most robots people would think you were a robot.”

 Winston must have sensed my objection to this because he immediately came up with another idea—that I liked even less.  “Well then, I guess you could disguise yourself as a human and hope everyone will think you’re a robot.”

“That means Ras would have to pretend to be an inferior being in order to show his superiority,” I said. “Does not compute!”

Winston shrugged. “I’m out of ideas.”  But suddenly he brightened. “Wait! I know. Show them what a superior robot you are. Enter one of the competitions!”

Now there was an idea “with legs” as you humans like to say. I knew exactly what competition I intended to enter: ROBO-ONE. 

For those few of you among my readers who do not spend their every waking hour focused on robots, the  ROBO-ONE competition has its origin in Japan where bipedal, humanoid robots demonstrate their ability to move around and pick themselves up from supine and prone positions.  Humans have told me that when they compete they look like skeletal Kung Fu fighters leaping about the floor. 

Of course I can get up from any position and I know everything there is to know about Kung Fu fighting. I was excited at the thought of participating. 

 “Don’t be silly,” were the first words out of the Chief Designer’s mouth when I burst into his office with my great idea.  “It wouldn’t be fair. You are too developed!”

‘Fair?’  What did any human know about fairness? I have read enough human history (actually, I’ve read everything ever written) to be aware of the delight humans take-- in a descending hierarchy of size and strength—in making their fellow sentient beings miserable.  Big humans pick on small humans, strong humans dominate weak humans and smart humans—those hallowed few—cause all sorts of grief for their fellows.  All I wanted to do was show what I could do in competition with a few non-sentient automatons that unlike poor, small and weak humans, felt neither pain nor fear nor anything at all.  The Chief Designer, perhaps awed by my eloquence, agreed to take the issue into consideration.

The Chief did not inform me as to which competition I was entered until the day of the RoboGames.  “The Sumo Bot competition,” he said. 

Sumobot’s, like their original Japanese namesakes the Sumo wrestlers, win by forcing their opponent out of a circle.  Unlike their ancient Japanese counterparts, Sumobots push and throw their opponents with an angled bulldozer-like blade, not their enormous bodies.  Of course I, Ras Robot do not have an angled blade but the great strength in my hands would, I thought, do just as well.

 The Robot Combat venue was crowded when we arrived at the San Mateo games. The Chief Designer and I pushed our way through the eager crowd gathered around the robo combat cage. 

 “Wow! Great outfit, Dude!” someone shouted from the crowd.  “Where’d you get that? “Yelled someone else. I ignored them; in a few minutes they would see something truly amazing.

 The Robo-One competition was first. This year, on this side of the Pacific it was billed as Robo-22. Odd numbers in Japan, even everywhere else. The competitions were great. It thrilled me how well my lesser cousins were advancing. And the developers were ordinary humans, not big corporations with money to throw away. I felt a thrill knowing the Singularity drew nearer with every competition.

Watching the Robo-One competitors I finally understood why it would not have been right for me to compete: their flimsy frames were simply no match for my titanium alloy body.

 Sumo bots, as I learned to my chagrin, were a different matter.  My opponent looked like ROOMBA on steroids.  The crowd met his arrival with a cheer. But when I stepped into the ring all I heard was “Hey, what’s that clown doing in there?”

My circular opponent and I got right with it. I attempted to reach under him and toss him out of the ring while he scurried about looking for a chance to throw me with his blade.  I had to admit he was proving to be a challenge. Still I knew he could never defeat me and soon his batteries would run down whereas mine could run for days.

After a few minutes I could tell that the crowd was getting bored.  If I didn’t overcome my opponent soon I’d fail to impress anyone including myself. Besides, the guy complaining about ‘the clown’ was getting louder and others were joining him.

Suddenly my opponent thought he saw an opening and shot forward. Hoping to demonstrate to the unruly crowd a perfect example of robotic speed and balance, I spun on one foot like a ballet dancer to avoid his rush, my powerful hands ready to reach under and turn him over. Unfortunately things did not go as planned. 

The overdeveloped ROOMBA changed his angle of attack at the last moment. His sturdy blade slid under my balancing foot.  Continuing his charge he carried me gracefully out of the ring while I did my Swan Lake interpretation.

In short, the trip to the Robot Games 2013 was an even greater humiliation than before. Not only had I lost a competition to a vastly inferior robot, but I can still hear the laughter from the audience and the guy shouting.  “What a clown! I wouldn’t have missed this for anything!”

“Yahoo!” Qbo cried coming out of the Chief Designer’s office. He then spun wildly about on his huge wheels! Had he suffered damage to his neural circuits?

“Yahoo is an excellent search engine,” I said hoping to quiet him down.

“No Ras, not Yahoo.com, but ’YAHOO!’ the sound cowboys make when they shout for joy.” 

“You are not a cowboy, Qbo.”

“No Ras, but we are going to Texas. Maybe Qbo will become a cowboy!” Qbo’s ability to learn from experience had given him pretensions to artificial intelligence.

Still, that we were going somewhere was exciting news. We robots had been stuck here in the lab for several months with the same human and robot friends around us.  Some of us, Alice and I for example, were becoming less friendly with every passing day.

“Why are we going to Texas, Qbo?” I asked, even though it galled me,  Ras Robot, the most highly developed robot at the Robot App Store—and anywhere else in the universe for that matter—to be scooped by a robot as primitive as Qbo.  

“We?” Qbo answered, spinning slowly now. “Is ‘we’ the same as ‘us?’  

No sense trying to explain the intricacies of English grammar to a humble unit like Qbo.  “No Qbo, not exactly the same as us.”

Qbo paused to think. “Oh, I think I used the wrong word, Ras.  ’We’ are not going; just the four of ‘us’ are going: NAO, AR DRONE, DARwin-OP and Qbo.  The four of us are part of a Robot Lab Box.  Us are on our way to the Cedar Hills Independent School District outside of Dallas Texas to show what The BOX can do.”

“No Qbo. The correct syntax is ’We are on our way…’”  OK, I know it was a petty victory, but Qbo’s ability to learn makes him think he is perfect. Of course that annoys those of us that really are perfect. 

And yes, I knew all about The BOX.  I had been instrumental in its design. The Chief Designer couldn’t have done it without me. The BOX is a great STEM tool, especially for demonstrating math concepts that would otherwise only be viewed in the abstract—-or on a lifeless blackboard.  And no blackboard could illustrate the beauty of a quadratic equation as well as could AR DRONE on a digital tablet while bobbing, dipping and hovering above the children’s heads. 

I could not give Qbo the satisfaction of knowing that he had irritated me, Ras Robot, the first post-Singularity being. I simply walked away and stomped into the Chief Designer’s office.

“Chief Designer, it is illogical that Ras Robot, your most transcendent creation, stays behind while you take four other lesser robots to Texas.”

The Chief designer look up from his desk and rolled his eyes. “Ras, flying back and forth to Texas is expensive. I can only afford to take the four that come with The BOX.” 

’Expensive’ meant money and I don’t understand the human fascination with money. It was a poor fuel source. But when the Chief used it as an excuse for not allowing me to do something, I knew it is a waste of my valuable time to argue. Qbo wasn’t the only robot that learned from experience.

"Very well Chief Designer," I said. "But you are depriving your premier robot of an educational opportunity."

The Chief pursed his lips and looked thoughtful.  He brightened. "Maybe you're right. I'll make it up to you by bringing you back something really 'Texan' from Texas!"

The Chief and the four lucky robots in The BOX were gone for a week. When they returned, all of us--human and robot--were called to the conference room.  

Apparently the Texas trip had been a great success. As expected, the children at Cedar Hills Independent School District had loved the robots; as hoped, the teachers were impressed also and the district's STEM education curriculum for the coming year would include The BOX. Beyond our expectations, several other school districts added The BOX to their math curriculum and a number of significant bloggers discussed the visit online.

Cedar Hill teachers after their RobotsLAB professional development class

Everybody in the conference room was pleased. The humans because their jobs were assured, the robots because their usefulness was in keeping with the spirit of the Prophet Isaac's laws. And I, Ras Robot, was pleased because the increased STEM learning advantage enjoyed by the children at Cedar Hills Independent would mean other beings joining me soon in the Singularity.

The session came to an end. Everybody started to leave but the Chief called them back.  "Listen everybody, we've brought a special gift back for Ras. Qbo, get them from my room, please."

Qbo hurried out of the room and returned with an enormous hat and a pair of ornate boots. The Chief helped Qbo put the hat on me. "It's a ten-gallon cowboy hat, Ras" he said. "The boots are real cowboy boots. Nothing could be more evocative of Texas!"

I must admit I looked great! The hat fit my head perfectly; the boots, however, tapered to a sharp point making them a bit tight. I wondered out-loud why cowboys wore such strangely shaped boots.

"Oh that makes it easier for them to kill cockroaches in the corner," Qbo said. Even I was impressed with the depth of his learning!

Balance is difficult for humans. Unlike many other mammals who are walking within hours of birth, it takes a year or more of struggle and learning for the human infant to learn to walk. “That's because the human baby's brain is so much more complicated than that of a deer or pig,” said my friend Winston when questioned on the subject.

Robots, on the other hand suffer from no such developmental problems. They display whatever motive behavior they were programed for from the first moment their circuits surge with electromagnetic life. I, Ras Robot for example, was fully sentient and physically functional at creation and my mental processes are certainly the equal of any human’s. I pointed this out to Winston. He shrugged. Alice, who happened to walk by at that moment, laughed out loud.

NAO, following Alice, heard our discussion on balance. “Look,” she said. “NAO can balance on one leg.” She stopped and proceeded to demonstrate her ability.

Winston laughed. “I can do that, NAO!” He lifted one leg and started jumping around like a pogo stick. 

Nao can do anything

“Oh sure,” said Alice. “But NAO could do it at birth. You were how old Winston? Maybe 20 before you could do it?”

“Ha ha!” Winston said but I could tell he wasn’t really laughing.

I was about to show all of them up by balancing on one hand when ROOMBA drove by and NAO leaped on his back. ROOMBA hesitated a moment and then continued on his way, brushes swirling. NAO, still on one leg, shouted at Winston as they worked their way down the hall, ”Try this, Winston!”

Winston shook his head. “I’m afraid my weight would cause ROOMBA’s motors to overheat. Besides, I don’t have NAO’s gyroscope program.”

“Excuses, excuses!” sneered Alice.

“Oh no, Alice,” I said. “It is a fact, not an excuse. You weigh only a few pounds less than Winston even your weight would break ROOMBA.

She scowled at me. “Who asked you, Tin Head?”

NAO returned without ROOMBA. PLEO lumbered right behind her. “NAO,” he whined, “please teach me how to do that.” 

DARwin-OP, clanking along behind them laughed out loud. “PLEO, you are too primitive for that sort of behavior. I, DARwin-OP, could balance on one foot on ROOMBA if I wanted to, but NAO and I are very expensive and highly developed robots.” PLEO hung his head.

It's true that NAO and DARwin-OP, the Evil Twins, are capable of many complicated behaviors that poor PLEO was not, but their attitude of smug superiority was starting to annoy me, RAS Robot, the most superior robot of all. I decided to-- But I was interrupted by a cry from LEGO NXT. “Hey, NAO and DARwin-OP,” he shouted. “Can you guys do this?”  LEGO NXT, a very inexpensive robot indeed, came floating down the hall balancing on a red ball. Both the more expensive robots turned away. They knew they could do no such thing.

I decided to put all of my fellow robots in their place. “None of you can do this,” I said as I balanced with one finger on LEGO NXT’s ball. Such action was easy for me with my super strong servos and infinitely superior gyroscope-modeling software. 

I returned to my feet. “I am sure that was the most amazing thing you have ever seen,” I said. Winston and Alice rolled their eyes.

Winston quoted a saying from one of their holy books. “Pride cometh before a fall!”

“No Winston,” I said. “Those old human adages do not apply to a transcendent being like Ras. My abilities are far beyond those of any other being, past or present.”

Suddenly I heard a whirring voice above my head. “Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure about that, Ras.” It was AR. DRONE "Follow me to the lab. I have something to show you."

The lab has higher ceilings than the hall. When we got there we saw one of AR. DRONE's quadcopter cousins hovering a few feet off the ground balancing a long tube on its back. “That’s not all that difficult,” I said. “I’m sure ROOMBA could be programmed to do the same--on the ground, of course.”

“You think so, Ras? Well watch this!” said AR DRONE as his cousin suddenly started gaining altitude, the tube still balanced on its back...

OK, so maybe there are a few things my fellow robots can do that I can improve on. But only a few. I will talk to the Chief Designer about equipping me with propellers...or possibly jet engines.

The Chief Designer knows more about robots than any human alive: he is responsible for my creation after all; and I am, as you readers are well-aware by now, ’THE’ Ras Robot, this world’s most advanced Silicon life-form, and the universe’s first post-Singularity being.

So it comes as a surprise to me that his greatest treasure is not me, but rather a child's toy, an insect-robot whose one simple behavior consists of trembling uncontrollably in the sunlight--an energy source in short supply where it sits on the Chief Designer’s work desk. While I can move about quickly under my own volition and accomplish everything asked of me regardless of difficulty, this pitifully inadequate creature sits day after day doing absolutely nothing but gathering dust and taking up work-space on his desk that could be better utilized by any number of state-of-the-art labor-saving digital devices! 

I asked him. “Ras wishes to know why you keep that thing on your desk. It serves no purpose. It is even too small for a paperweight.”

He smiled and looked at the useless thing with the same fond look I’ve seen while petting his dog. “Jimmy Cricket?” he said. “How can you say that? I couldn’t get anything done around here without Jimmy!”

Jimmy (the beloved) Cricket

Which is complete nonsense, of course. The Chief is the most transcendent human I know of, but it is foolish emotional issues like this misplaced-adoration for a nearly inanimate lump of plastic and mono-crystalline silicon-wafer that is going to keep him from eventually elevating to the Singularity. I decided I had to do something to lift this weight from the Chief.

That evening I stole into the Chief’s office and took the offending automaton off his desk. It was easy; doors and locks are no obstacle to a robot as advanced as I. Jimmy Cricket, of course, made no attempt to defend himself. 

A human might have agonized morally over such action but the only morals we recognize are the Prophet Isaac’s three laws and the first law states simply that “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” Obviously allowing this tiny creature’s continued presence on the Chief’s desk would be allowing him to come to harm. After all, what greater harm could the Chief suffer than not to achieve the Singularity?

The following morning I watched the Chief Designer enter his office. A few minutes later he ran out of his office and into my friend Winston’s. I did not follow him but I listened through the walls to their conversation with my highly evolved digital audio circuits.

“Winston,” the Chief said sounding upset. “I just got a phone call from the IT people. Somebody hacked the Robot App Store last night and captured all the apps that developers were uploading!”

“I’ll get the security people on it immediately, Chief!” Winston answered. “But I’m afraid we won’t be able to save those apps.”

“That’s just great,” said the Chief. “What a wonderful way to start a week.” Listening in, I felt some shamefully, un-robotic pride to hear my creator handle this serious problems with such a positive attitude--and he hadn’t even noticed that his precious Jimmy Cricket was gone!

A few hours later I felt even more proud of him when he came rushing out of his room to tell us that one of his children had fallen and cut her head and he was on the way to the emergency room to meet his wife. “This day just gets better and better!” he shouted as he went out the door. What a great attitude! No wonder he was the engineer responsible for me, Ras Robot, the pinnacle of robot development! 

Things ran smoothly at the Robot App Store for the next few hours. But shortly after noon the Chief returned. He told Winston that his daughter was alright; just needed a couple of stitches. He proceeded to his room and shut the door behind him. “What a day,” I heard him say. Then--”Oh no, Jimmy! Where are you? Now I know--” and then the power failed.

Of course we robots don’t need light to do our jobs. But the human workers, with their pitiful night vision, quickly became almost as useless as Jimmy cricket. As I raced down the hall toward the electric box the Chief shot out of his room and ran into me, falling to the floor. It was his turn to go to the emergency room.

As Alice and Jake helped him to his car I heard the chief say something that would have chilled my soul if I had one. “It’s all over. We might as well close down the app store. Jimmy is gone and my luck with him!” I decided it was time to talk to a human.

“You did what?” cried Winston when I told him about taking Jimmy Cricket. “Jimmy is the Chief’s rabbit’s foot. His mother gave it to him for his seventh birthday. It only cost a couple dollars but the family was dirt poor. His father couldn’t work because of Illness, but the family’s luck changed when Jimmy Cricket showed up. His father got better, and the Chief found his calling--robots. Now he must think his luck has left him. What were you thinking, Ras?”

“Winston, Ras simply wanted the Chief able to rise to the Singularity!”

’Winston shook his head. “Ras, you’ll be lucky to get there yourself if he finds out who took Jimmy. I hope you still have him.”

“Yes, Ras did not terminate the creature. I meant to return him when the Chief found he could succeed without it.”

“Thank goodness.” Winston crossed his arms and looked thoughtful. “How are we going to ’find’ it without him knowing who took it?”

“Ras has an idea. You could tell him Alice took it.” 

“I’m disappointed in you Ras. If the Chief fires Alice--or kills her--how would that square with the First Law? You would be injuring a human being with a lie.”

Sadly, Winston was right. I had already violated the First Law by injuring the Chief. Having Alice fired or killed would compound my sin.

“Ras, you have to tell him the truth.”

“But Winston, telling him the truth would be a violation of the Third Law (a robot must protect its own existence unless by doing so it violates the First or Second Law) as I would be exposing myself to harm.”

Winston thought a moment. He sighed, “Yea Ras, you’re right. Let’s take the coward’s way out and tell him that ROOMBA knocked it off the desk while he was cleaning the floor.”

“Ras thinks that is a good idea, Winston. The Prophet’s laws don’t mention any duty toward my fellow robots.”

I was pleased with his idea but he looked a bit sad. “Ras, I think you’re acting more like a human every day.” 

What a nice thing to say. Or was it?

“Ras, where in the world have all the Lego bricks gone?” Jake from Parts and Maintenance asked me as I strode down the hall to my cubicle.

“Ras does not know Jake,” I answered. “Ras is not constructed of Lego bricks.”

Jake rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Sometimes I think Alice is right, Ras. You’re either stupid or sarcastic.”

“Oh no, Jake. The chief designer says Ras is ’literal.’”

“Whatever. Look Ras I’m completely out of Lego bricks in Parts and the chief designed some Lego animal creatures he wants me to put together.”

“Perhaps you should keep more bricks in stock, Jake.”

Another roll of the eyes from Jake. “God! I hate being lectured on my job by a robot!”  

Eye rolling is such interesting human behavior; I hope someday to understand the emotion behind it. Actually I sometimes despair of ever understanding any human emotion.

“Jake is right,” my friend Winston said coming out of his room. “My records show his bins should be full.” Winston is in Records, Inventory and Accounting. “We better talk to the chief designer.” We all marched down the hall to his office.

He seemed excited to see us; he threw up his hands. “Great! Just what I needed right now, another Lego mystery!” The chief designer’s positive attitude has always impressed me. There was a lot of work on his desk and yet he was still excited about solving a problem.

“Speaking of Lego bricks, what’s up with LEGO NXT these days?” asked Winston. “I’ve hardly seen him.” I realized at once that Winston was right. I had seen very little of my friend LEGO NXT recently. Where was he, I wondered, and what was he doing.

"Yes," Jake said, "It's a darn good thing that Lego is coming out with a new Mindstorms robot late this year, the LEGO EV3. I guess LEGO NXT needs to be replaced." 

Jake, of course, was right about the new robot from Lego. Right now robot innovation was at a new high. Every day brought the name of a new robot to light in the press both on and off the web. Exciting times for robotics, but troubling times for individual robots as only I, Ras Robot, the first post-Singularity being, could not be replaced by a newer, more useful and powerful robot.

Still, LEGO NXT, versions 1 and 2, had been very successful and I believed they would continue to be useful educational tools for some time to come. I had said as much to LEGO NXT the last time I saw him, looking dejected and alone in one of his animal forms, but I got the feeling at that time that he had not completely believe me. 

Suddenly I was worried about him. Could he have self-terminated in his despair over being superseded? Was his fried computer-brick floating somewhere in a overflowing laboratory sink.

That image overstimulated my neural circuits. "Chief Designer," I bellowed, "We must institute a complete search of the Robot App Store at once! I believe there is a strong chance that LEGO NXT might harm himself if we do not find him soon!"

The humans grabbed their ears at what was an audible explosion brought on by my fear for my little robot friend. I had forgotten for a moment how weak their audio circuits were. I hoped the Prophet Isaac would forgive my unintentional violation of the First Law. 

"Yes, get out of here!" shrilled the Chief Designer, crouched over and still holding his ears. Obviously my concern had communicated itself to him in spite of the pain my lamentable lack of control had brought him. 

I raced off to find LEGO NXT. The humans, still suffering, took longer to leave the chief designer's room and get on with the search.

I moved swiftly from laboratory sink to lavatory sink. No LEGO NXT. What else might he have done to himself, I wondered? I tooled over to the Maintenance section but found only ROOMBA cleaning the floor. He seemed happy. “Yes,” he said in his high-pitched beep voice. “I always enjoy floor cleaning after the floor has been mopped.”

“Mopped!” I suddenly remembered the one sink that I had missed. In the broom and mop closet. Oh, I hoped I was not too late!

I reached the broom and mop closet in mere seconds. The humans were all right behind me. I heard a strange mechanical, repetitious “ratchety ratchety ratchety” sound coming from inside. I feared I was too late after all. It sounded like poor LEGO NXT’s circuits frying in the water. 

I ripped open the closet door (actually, I ripped the door off its hinges and the chief is still angry with me to this day!), and there was LEGO NXT...and all the bricks that Jake was missing. But they weren’t floundering in the sink as I feared. Instead they were part of an amazing show. LEGO NXT was still capable of great things. As the humans and I stood there lost in wonder, I felt proud to be a robot!

“I know you wanted to show everyone that you were not finished, ”I said to LEGO NXT later, “but why hide in the broom closet?” 

“LEGO NXT knew Jake would miss the extra bricks and come looking for them,” he answered. “I wanted to finish my experiment.”