They should call this robot number 0.0.1 of the Webster series. Or the Jenkins series.
One of the all time classics of Science Fiction is a collection of stories told by the Dogs to each other over the fires at night. Stories of the legend of Man. Was there ever such a creature? Was he just a myth, a fable to explain the unexplainable?
"What was war?" they would ask. What about the Robots? Could we Dogs have originated them? Scholars disagree. Rover says one thing, Fido another, and Spot yet another...all on the same evidence.
The book was CITY. The author, Clifford D. Simak.
Throughout the 7 or so short tales the saga of the Dogs is told through the perspective of the Webster Family, and their robot servant, Jenkins.
It was a Webster who gave the Dogs the gift of speech. But when most of Mankind left, off to Jupiter to assume a new form, leaving a few behind to return to primitive ways (not counting the mutants); and when the last of the Websters chose the eternal oblivion of the freeze, it was the Family Robot, Jenkins, who was left to look after the Dogs.
The origins of Dogs became so shrouded with time that the few men who were left weren't even referred to as men. The Dogs just called them Websters".
And there was, of course, Jenkins. Still there was Jenkins, left to look after the Dogs, as he had promised. To show them how to give the gift of speech to the other animals. To teach "thou shalt not kill" to the rest of the animal kingdom. To help shepherd them on their exodus when one of the mutant's experiment ran out of control, and the ants threatened to take the Earth.
On his 10,000th birthday the Pups gave Jenkins a new body.
Well... Add a fist-sized atomic power plant and a decent processing platform to this thing, and it could well evolve into a Jenkins.
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They should call this robot number 0.0.1 of the Webster series. Or the Jenkins series.
One of the all time classics of Science Fiction is a collection of stories told by the Dogs to each other over the fires at night. Stories of the legend of Man. Was there ever such a creature? Was he just a myth, a fable to explain the unexplainable?
"What was war?" they would ask. What about the Robots? Could we Dogs have originated them? Scholars disagree. Rover says one thing, Fido another, and Spot yet another...all on the same evidence.
The book was CITY. The author, Clifford D. Simak.
Throughout the 7 or so short tales the saga of the Dogs is told through the perspective of the Webster Family, and their robot servant, Jenkins.
It was a Webster who gave the Dogs the gift of speech. But when most of Mankind left, off to Jupiter to assume a new form, leaving a few behind to return to primitive ways (not counting the mutants); and when the last of the Websters chose the eternal oblivion of the freeze, it was the Family Robot, Jenkins, who was left to look after the Dogs.
The origins of Dogs became so shrouded with time that the few men who were left weren't even referred to as men. The Dogs just called them Websters".
And there was, of course, Jenkins. Still there was Jenkins, left to look after the Dogs, as he had promised. To show them how to give the gift of speech to the other animals. To teach "thou shalt not kill" to the rest of the animal kingdom. To help shepherd them on their exodus when one of the mutant's experiment ran out of control, and the ants threatened to take the Earth.
On his 10,000th birthday the Pups gave Jenkins a new body.
Well...
Add a fist-sized atomic power plant and a decent processing platform to this thing, and it could well evolve into a Jenkins.
Call it Webster. Or Jenkins.