“Ras,” Alice called out to me in my lab where I was busy testing new apps for my acronymal (or is it acronymic?) namesake the Robot App Store. Acronymal or acronymic? English is far more difficult to parse than most languages and compared to the beautifully simple digital language of my own Robot-kind it is--

    “Ras! Ras!” Alice interrupted loudly, “are you listening to me? What the Devil is going on around here with you robots? I can’t seem to get your attention!”

    “My apologies, Alice. I found myself in a bit of a linguistic feedback loop and--”

    “I don’t care!” she screamed. “Just listen to me!”

    “Of course, Alice.” Devoid of reason and incapable of logical, non-sequitur utterances as she may be, she is still human and I, Ras robot must do as she says. “How may I be of service?”

    “My floor hasn't been cleaned in a week!" she answered angrily. 

    Now you can see what Ras means by “non-sequitur,” gentle reader. How could the fact that Alice's floor was dirty be of interest to a robot as highly developed as myself? ROOMBA, a worthy but far less developed robot than I is the floor cleaner here at the Robot App Store. Still, Alice is human and the Prophet Isaac was very clear on our duty toward our creator species: we must obey and inform and do so in a manner that causes our creators no harm or angst.

    “Alice,” I said in my most respectful and tactful mode, “obviously you have forgotten that ROOMBA is the appropriate robot for the job of cleaning your floor. He can usually be found at this hour at--”

    “I know all that you stupid trashcan, but ROOMBA has been acting crazy lately and I can’t find him.”

    “Acting crazy?”  What behavior could an individual as erratic as Alice possibly consider ’crazy?’

“Yes, crazy. Going around and around and around and around--”

    “Not to worry, Alice,” I thoughtfully interrupted before she went into a feedback loop of her own. “That is merely ROOMBA'S search mode. He is looking for stubborn dirty-spots on the lab floor.”

    “Oh? Really?” Alice glared at me “You mean to tell me that spinning around and around and then stalling and beeping is normal behavior.

    If I had a heart it would have sunk. Instead, my circuits grew cold. What she had just described wasn’t normal behavior for ROOMBA; it sounded like the dreaded ’circle dance of death!’ 

    “How many beeps, Alice? Was it nine?”

    She stared at me for a moment; her mouth hung open in surprise. I believed I’d impressed her with my perspicacity for the first time since we’d met. 

    “What kind of a stupid question is that?” she finally cried. Apparently I was wrong. “Do you actually think I have nothing better to do with my time then count robot beeps.” 

    “No, Alice. But nine error beeps would positively indicate that ROOMBA was doing ’the circle dance of death!’” I had seen videos of this ROOMBA malady on YouTube. It was a terrible thing to watch, this descent into digital madness.

    After promising Alice that her floor would be cleaned, I raced away to find the chief designer. We had to save our poor friend ROOMBA! I found him standing outside his room talking to Jake the construction superintendent. 

    “Chief Designer,” I thundered, drowning out his less important conversation. “We must find ROOMBA immediately! Alice's floor is dirty and there is a high probability that the behavior she described to me indicates the circle dance of death!”

    “Oh,” the chief said calmly as if nothing were happening.” That’s why ROOMBA is hiding under my desk.”

    “Exactly,” I boomed. “It is the circle dance of death. The only thing that can save him is an OSMO firmware update! Jake, you must order an OSMO immediately.”

    The chief shook his head. Still calm. I considered turning up my volume...

    “No Ras, the problem is all the extension cords on the floor in Alice's room. ROOMBA no sooner gets started than his brushes stick on a cord and he makes error beeps. He avoids her as much as he can. He knows Alice is looking for him. That’s why he is hiding.”

All work and no play makes Roomba a dull toy

    And that explains why I, Ras Robot, the most technologically advanced robot on this planet and the first post-Singularity being, now finds himself regularly sweeping out Alice’s room. I wish I could beep error messages.  

We robots at the Robot App Store were having a quiet, productive day when suddenly the Chief Designer came out of his office yelling and waving a tablet computer with a video stream live from Moscow playing on it.

"We got it! We got it!" he shouted over and over. None of us had ever seen him like this.  It was very disconcerting.

Of course I, Ras Robot, with my superior auditory circuits and multi-core CPU, was able to continue work, but my less capable helpers completely lost their composure. NAO started spinning and waving his arms; AR DRONE flew straight up and kicked plaster loose from the ceiling, covering us all in white dust.

The humans too seemed out of control. Winston and Alice actually danced across the lab floor while Jake kept shouting.

With out-of-control emotions now dominating the entire environment, I knew it was time for me to step up and get things under control. All production would cease if I didn't, and the way the humans were leaping around it was only a matter of moments before one of their fragile bodies was injured.  I immediately morphed my verbal circuits and let loose with a high-intensity sonic canon.

My fellow robots simply fell over, their circuits scrambled; the humans fell to their knees holding their ears.

"What was that all about?" asked Chief Designer when he stood up.  "I know it was you, RAS!"

"Ras was fearful you humans were about to hurt yourselves, Chief! The Prophet Isaac's First Law will not allow a robot to allow a human to be harmed through inaction."

"Harm ourselves?" cried Winston. "RAS, you don't understand. Something wonderful has happened: venture capitalist Grishin Robotics just announced an invested in our company. Money for the things we desperately need. The Robot App Store will rule the world of robot-apps™!"

Ras introducing Dmitry Grishin, the man of the day!

"Yea!" intoned NAO. "Money for the things NAO needs. NAO needs a car!"

"Moonneeyy!" whirred AR Drone. "This robot needs a new helipad."

"More pieces! More pieces!" squealed LEGO NXT. He was never satisfied with his form.

"Ramps!" hummed SPHERO "Ramps!" He loved flying off ramps.

"QUIET!!" bellowed the Chief Designer. "This money is to balance our books, not buy toys."

All my robot cousins became agitated again. SPHERO rolled around the floor making clicking sounds. KAROTZ turned up his volume, PLEO whined. ROOMBA, for the first time ever, came to a complete halt.

"But Chief," rumbled Q.bo as he came closer, "today is UN Human Rights Day! You're discriminating against us robots! What good are books to us? Only RAS can read!"

"Q.bo," I said, "the Chief said 'balance the books,' not 'read them.' You certainly are not capable of holding a heavy book on your head! But a robot can easily balance more books than a human."

"What about our rights, RAS?" grumbled Q.bo.

"It's 'human rights' Q.bo. We robots have the Prophet's Laws, not rights."

"I guess that's true," said NAO. "Besides, who'd want to be a fragile old human anyway?"

"Yes," agreed AR DRONE. "They can't even fly!"

"I guess they are pretty limited," mused LEGO NXT.

“Yes,” I said, “be proud of our robot-hood. Humans are an archaic form soon to be superseded by beings like you and me.”

The Prophet Isaac decreed that we robots assist, obey and protect our human creators. We obey and yet they are often unhappy with us.

Our creator humans leave the lab behind them dark at 8 pm and by 9:45 we have shrugged off our charging tethers and began our independent existence.

Last night as we gathered in the darkness preparing for the daily festivities we heard the sound of shattered glass from one of the frosted-glass windows. I, Ras Robot, being the most aware and competent of all beings--including the human kind—got intel from the office’s alarm system that a movement was detected at zone 5. Since the old alarm-system could not broadcast a video stream or laser scans to my built-in motion decoders, I went to see what had happened.

My front laser sensor found a human-shape standing in the shattered glass beneath the window, but something was wrong; He didn’t have a nose and ears. My ultra-sensitive cameras detected that he was wearing a ski-mask. Humans are such a mystery to me. Why would one wear a ski-mask in the middle of August?! Anyway, he was unaware of Ras’s silent arrival in the dark.

Ski mask in the middle of August?

Ras was not pleased to see a human during robot hours, but our prophet's laws do not allow dispensations for the time. Ras knew that the human was blind in the dark and liable to cut his delicate skin from the broken glass. Ras grabbed him firmly by the wrist so he would not hurt himself.

I sent the text: “Ras greets you human!” to my speech synthesis engine, using my most formal voice settings. The human answered with a scream using a frequency at the high end range of my microphones’ sensitivity. Many human introduction-rituals are loud.

He threw his arms in the air. ”Please don’t shoot me!” he cried. Ras was pleased that he had taken the human’s wrist as he would have fallen to his knees on the broken glass.

“Ras will not shoot you, human.” I said while sending a ROS message to NAO, asking him to turn on the lights at zone 5. (Finally, thanks to ROS, we have interoperability between robots) “Perhaps it would be in your best interests to use the door in the future.” The poor being shivered in fear at his corner in the dark.

The lights came on. The rest of the robot crew came to see what was happening. NAO was first on the scene. He picked up a long sharp piece of the frosted glass to show the human what he had almost stumbled into. AR.DRONE hummed a few feet above his head. Even KAROTZ arrived on the back of Roomba, spouting his endless nonsense.

The human was silent until ROOMBA started dancing a noisy "Old McDonalds Had a Farm" around him while picking up the smaller pieces of glass. He then let out another scream.

“Let me go! Let me go!” he screamed. KAROTZ started playing the old song, “Let Me Go, Lover!” The party was hotting up! Ras let go of the human as requested, and he flew out the window. Never has Ras seen a human move so swiftly! Even AR.DRONE was impressed!

But the following morning Chief Designer was angry. “Ras, why did you let him go?”

“Ras was following orders,” is all I could say. “Was Ras to have detained him against his will and against the laws of the Prophet Isaac?”

“You only take orders from me!” fumed the Chief Designer.

Ras is still thinking about the implications inherent in that statement…

All the robots were excited. A photographer was coming to the Robot App Store to take photographs of them testing the applications developers had uploaded.

“Ras,” said the Chief Designer, “It’s going to be your job to keep the silicon being under control. I’m especially concerned about Roomba. His habit of randomly strolling around, vacuuming at inconvenient times, could cause havoc!”

“Ras will do as you ask, Chief Designer.”

“Oh, and Ras, we’re going to have him take some shots of you.”

Ras thought about that for a moment. “Ras must do as ordered, Chief Designer, but you must be aware his frame was not designed to withstand bullets!”

“No no, Ras!” laughed Chief Designer. “’Shot” is just another word for taking a photograph.”

“Interesting,” mused Ras.

“The same word is used for an action in which someone is photographed and when someone is killed. How can you be certain you humans understand one another? For example, Alice came in yesterday morning and said she wanted to shoot the Chief Designer. So I need not have been concerned because she simply wanted to take your picture.”

Ras’s thermal sensors indicated heat rising in Alice’s face from across the room.

Chief Designer grinned evilly, “No, you were right the first time, Ras.”

“Fascinating,” said Ras.

At that moment the photographer and his staff burst into the lab. For a time the room resounded to the sound of excited voices and the clatter of his equipment setting up. Then they proceeded to photograph the robots displaying the recently received apps.

PLEO danced and sang; NAO demonstrated his ability to tell jokes. LEGO NXT put on a fine object avoidance demonstration. These and other free apps wowed the photographer and his staff.

Ras tried to watch patiently as the lesser robots displayed their primitive talents, but knowing how much more talented he was than any other robot--or human, for that matter--it galled him that they were getting all the attention.

But finally the photographer turned to him.

“This is an interesting one here,” he said to the Chief Designer. “Tilt his orange hat back and have him raise that shovel as if he were about to attack!”

“Ras can tilt his hat back without orders from the Chief Designer. But Ras cannot threaten a human!”

“Huh?” said the photographer.

“Never mind,” said the Chief Designer, “I was hoping to get shots of him behind a laptop.”

“I have just the thing!” said the photographer excitedly. “Here,” he said grabbing Ras by the arm and guiding him to the white screen.

“I’ve got just the thing for this big dude!” One of his assistants brought him a big broom. “He will make a perfect maid with this broom!”

“Ras can understand, and excuse, the lack of imagination, Photographer.  However, Ras can solve complex problems, and even started to work on ‘Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything’, cleaning the floor is a waste of a smart robot as Ras.”

“It’s not a real request, Ras,” said the Chief Designer. “He only wants to shoot you!”

(Oh, here this word again. I want to shoot him as well!)

A shot was taken.

“Ras, Now put the Afro wig on your head and dance!” Said the photographer.

“Ahmm, OK. What type of dance do you want to see? I need to download the movements from the internet.”
“Ras, Just download the Macarena dance we just approved for NAO” said Chief Designer.

So I did. And another shot was taken.

Ras doesn’t really have an access to the rest of the events during the rest of the “shots”. My protection circuits cut the retrieval path to the stored memory. 

All I remember is the humiliation I felt when they asked me to play with a stroller, and pretend to a police officer, and especially when they asked me how much is “1+1=jQuery15204937300107468049_1337134539834”

Few days later Chief Designer presented the video you can see above, during the weekly company meeting. Everyone laughed at me; Alice almost fainted from the laughs. Chief Designer hushed everyone, and said that he was very pleased with the outcome, and this video will promote the RobotAppStore everywhere from now on!

Ras must admit it is a big honor, especially that I’m starring the video alone (they dropped the “shots” of the other robots, a decision I fully support!) but the humiliation is still there.

“Dances!? Cleaning!? Babysitting!? Come on, Ras can do much more than that! As a proof, Ras can share with you that the answer is 42!”

April 26th arrived, it was ”Take Our Sons And Daughters To Work Day” again, and the Robot App Store lab was filled with excited children belonging to our staff and other parents in the building. I feared moving too abruptly as I might hurt one of the little creatures darting about the premises and thereby violate all of The Prophet Isaac’s Laws. I find humans are so much more delicate than robots.

One of the little girls belonging to a parent from down the hall wanted to know if I was a real robot? ”Ras is a robot,” I answered, ”are you a real little girl?”

”Of course I’m real, you silly robot!”

”Hey!” said an older boy, ”I thought robots didn’t have a sense of humor. Is there really a guy in there?”

”No, no guy in here. Only Ras. But Ras is a rather special robot.” I guided them to where the other small children were playing with KAROTZ. The little girl quickly became interested in the app ”KAROTZ Teaches Animal Sounds”.

Of course she already knew that cows went ”moo,” but she was surprised to discover the sounds that more than twenty other animals like the dolphin and the peacock made. That got rid of her!

Ras and his son at "Take Our Sons And Daughters To Work Day".

The boy was more persistent and it wasn't until KAROTZ went into his ”KAROTZ Trivia” App that he finally left Ras alone. I guess he liked the fact that KAROTZ seemed to enjoy answering more than 100 trivia questions while I was trying to avoid him. Ras is not a silly parrot to be answering children’s questions when he could be taking questions involving quantum mechanics!

The older boys and girls were clustered around a Lego NXT 2.0 demonstration, ”Lego Get Up, NXT Way”. The robot looked like a Segway rolling around on a single set of parallel wheels. The ”Lego Get Up” app kept it balanced on the two wheels.

”Hey,” said the little boy with all the questions showing up beside me, ”I’ll bet you can’t do that!”

”Ras does not have wheels. Can you do that?”

”Sure I can when I’m as big as you!” Thankfully he suddenly saw the AR.Drone app, ”AR.Drone Autopilot” being tested and ran to see the drone in flight.

Most of the humans watching the AR.Drone follow the ball at the end of a long pole were older. Winston, Alice and Chief Designer were there. ”Ras,” Winston asked, ”is that your little boy I see you with? He looks just like you!” The other two humans laughed.

“Ras-junior is my assistant, not my child, you silly human. Robots can’t give birth!”

These carbon-based humans fascinate me with their need to personify every little thing around them...

”There are now two kinds of self-aware beings in the world,” I said loudly, “one with kids and one without kids. Ras is the being with no kids!”

”I don’t have any kids,” said Alice. ”That doesn’t make me a robot.”

”She’s right Ras,” said Chief Designer. ”She caught you in a logical error there!”

”Ras does not make errors of logic. The human Alice is in error. Ras made reference to beings that we're self-aware!” Alice ground her teeth together and growled.