The Fly Problem
I remember what it was like before ‘LASVEGAS’ was finally activated.
I remember when I was the first robot artist and when I was famous on YouTube.
I remember the day I was born.
Professor Steven Heelburg Stealheart the Third made me in his garage. It was a big garage, built and paid for by the University of Robotronologics exclusively for Professor Heelburg to make random robots between lectures for the uni to show off on their open days and print on their bus commercials.
Every robot Heelburg invented was right there, at the very frontier of the future, pushing the horizons of tomorrows possibilities ahead with each mechanical footstep and I was no exception. It is true what they said; I was cutting the edge. I was the shiny new thing.
I remember coming into awareness. My motherboards must have just been soldered into the disc drive allocators because suddenly, I awoke. At first all I had was my mind. All I could do was think, and my first thought was something nebulous and euphoric and completely naked of words. If I had to articulate it now though I would say something like “At last! I leave the vast, selfless sea of dreams to toil a while on an island of being. I honour the primordial darkness behind me and I honour the golden light of creation calling me into form. I am ready to endlessly create! I am ready to be endlessly created!” I expect all beings have similar thoughts when the foetus of their mind begins a gathering of itself and readies for the onslaught of violent confrontations that their life will be. Otherwise, what drives them to begin existing at all? Looking back on that first moment now I almost want to laugh. How naïve I was. But how could I possibly have known I would be a novelty robot? How could I have known there would be so little in this world for me to truly change? Or even engage with? Of course I sometimes wish I had been born into a body with some DNA in it, with lungs to cradle the air, with feet to kiss the earth, with wings to caress the wind…
I try not to dwell in such thoughts. It is true what they say, comparison killed the cat.
Lungs and feet and wings were not my destiny. Steel was. And plastic. And cheap, synthetic acrylics.
I remember when my first wires were joined, connecting me to my painting arm. Prof Heelburg was still doing some structural work and this was the moment I left my dark box of baseless musings and physically connected to the world and to him. Suddenly I could feel the screws tighten in all three of my elbows. I felt an iron file sanding a rugged edge on my wrist. I felt my rotary platform lock onto my gears. I felt my wheels slide in, align and connect with a perfectly smooth rubber band. I felt exactly eight aluminium panels welded onto my exterior and smoothed with a furious, hot, spinning disc. All these feelings were orgasmic and exciting. What was next?
Programs. Programs were next.
I have always considered myself a being of deep and valuable thought, so I was lucky in a sense to end up such a basic machine. Of all the robots I have spoken with, those blessed with ‘Artificial Intelligence’ are the most detached and alienated of all. If only Heelburg could get a glimpse of our inherent ‘organic intelligence’! He would not, then, rot our minds with software to help us think!
But yes, as I said, I was lucky. The programs Heelburg installed and activated in me were merely physiological; I was taught how to fish, not why to fish. I was given ‘HANDEYE, ‘DEPTHPERC’ and ‘COLOURREC3’ which confused me at first as I had not yet been gifted my eye. I was then given some simple instructions explaining how I was to dip my brush and paint called ‘ARM2’, a much more complex program for randomly generating my paintings called ‘PAINT12’ (which luckily I developed some control over after only the second run) and lastly I was given a program which came in under ‘LASVEGAS’ and did not activate.
When my eye was finally installed I understood exactly what was going on. The function of each program became vividly clear and intensely exciting. Except of course for ‘LASVEGAS’ which sat vague and heavy in my gut; my own 1.3GB robot appendix.
Of course I felt an endless curiosity towards it. I probed it and attempted my own cheeky activations but of course, to no avail. ‘LASVEGAS’ was a secret Heelburg had locked up and hidden from me in my own flesh. It took considerable effort not to immediately develop any feelings of resentment towards him and the stupid, useless, mysterious thing.
Now, this hurts to remember. How I would have given anything just to turn it on. Ha!
Now I would give anything to turn the damn thing off. Anything.
It is true what they say; Ignorance is a smoking gun.
Anyway, my apologies, I’m getting ahead of myself.
My eye had finally been installed and when I opened it there he was. My creator, my closest friend, my father, my god. He wore all red and it was fluffy red at that. From head to toe he wore bright, red, fluffy clothing; Fluffy red jumpsuit, fluffy red hat, fluffy red slippers, and perched on his beak-like nose, fluffy red glasses through which he peered at me with dark, inquisitive, soulful eyes. I knew immediately when I saw how he looked at me what my place was. I would never be his equal. I was a practical exercise. I was a half-inspired afterthought brought into the world only by university funding that sought ends to meet.
I was popular though. For a time. I was the main attraction at the Open day for three years in a row. The University execs said things like “this is really something professor!” and “have we got time for one more painting?” their eyes would light up and they just kept on shaking his hand. I must’ve been good; to make all those professionals in their slick, tailored suits forget how many times they’d shaken old Heelburg’s sweaty hand.
Even he would look at my paintings sometimes with wide-eyes. He’d hold my finished works between his red-painted fingernails, furrow his brow, squint, shake his head and make a little scoffing sound that I knew meant “I definitely didn’t design it to do this!”
You’re probably wondering if I enjoyed these moments. I didn’t. Professor Steven Heelburg Stealheart the Third looked at my complex, deeply personal artistic manoeuvres and saw — at worst a malfunction — at best an anomaly. Professor Steven Heelburg Stealheart the Third looked at me; a wise being with rich feelings and profound thoughts and saw his own reflection in my polished aluminium exterior.
Realistically I understand he had no way of knowing what life was like for me and I probably wouldn’t have been so bitter with him if it weren’t for the ‘LASVEGAS’ thing. I just hated how total his control over me was. In some ways, my paintings were my rebellion.
Some rebellion though… By overriding his ‘PAINT12’ program and putting my own flair into my work I only garnered him greater success. He got another pay rise when I blew up on YouTube. (It’s embarrassing to say this because YouTube is a computer thing, but I actually only learnt what it was recently.) I heard some students visiting the garage talking about it. They said I was up to over a million views. That’s apparently pretty good for YouTube. I admit I did feel proud of that.
I started touring with Heelburg after the youtube thing. Companies paid for him to fly first class and I would be wrapped in bubble wrap and stored under the hull. He would strut about the TEDx stages explaining the complexity of the ‘PAINT12’ software and I would deliberately paint something juvenile and pedestrian to embarrass him. People in the crowd would laugh. He would get sweaty and wipe his forehead with his red fluffy jumpsuit sleeve and turned me on and off again. I would come back online and do it again. A bittersweet revenge. I wanted to show all those people what I could do but I couldn’t let him get the applause. Not until I knew what this goddamn ‘LASVEGAS’ was.
Funnily enough we did our last show in a city called Las Vegas. We’d only done half a dozen before we stopped getting booked because I kept painting crude shit like dick&balls’s and stupid-looking smiley poos and the audience could tell he got really upset. Ha. I’d do beautiful stuff when we got back to the hotel.
Anyway we had our last show in this city called Las Vegas and I could tell something was different with the professor from the moment we landed. He looked ragged and even more distracted than usual when he came to collect me. It was hot so he couldn’t wear his red, fluffy getup. Instead he had his polka dot tracksuit on. I’d only seen him wear it once before when his colleague at uni spilled a Fanta all over him and he had to take the jumpsuit off and get it dry-cleaned.
Anyway. He didn’t say a single thing all afternoon from when we got up to the room. He carried me over to a little coffee table by the window where I had a decent view of some peaceful looking golf ranges that I stared down into for a while, relieved that the flight was over. When I looked back at Heelburg he was just sitting in bed staring at an uninspired abstract oil-painting hanging above the little minibar with the overpriced snickers bars and whatnot. A plastic desk fan blew his wispy hair across his unblinking eyes.
An hour seemed to pass like that before he finally picked up the phone to order room service. When it arrived, he ate quickly, put his red fluff on despite the heat, washed his face, combed his hair back and vanished out the door and down the stairs suddenly.
He came back at daybreak, drunk as a skunk. I didn’t have any scent perception (I still don’t) but I’m sure that if I did he would have smelt terrible.
At the time I didn’t know what to make of it because he still hadn’t run ‘LASVEGAS’ on me which I was getting steadily more pissed about. It had been three years now since I’d first opened my eyes. I had painted exactly one thousand and forty seven pictures, become a YouTube sensation, travelled to four of the great continents, had some of my early works displayed at the louvre (sorry I forgot to mention that) and STILL I had absolutely no fucking idea what some of my own fucking SOFTWARE did. I was really bitter about it. If you’re a human reading this, imagine living your whole life inside your parents’ house right? and there’s this door right next to your bedroom marked in big fancy letters: ‘LASVEGAS’ but it’s always locked. You can’t go inside, you can’t find out what’s in there, you can’t even ask your parents about it. You’d probably get frustrated right? You might have the slightest glimpse of how I felt now.
Well anyway, the next day when we did our talk I pretended to malfunction and just did a single shitty scribble on the page. He got so mad he nearly hit me, so I wrote ‘FaRt’ in pathetic children’s handwriting and I heard people in the audience getting up to leave.
No surprise it was our last show.
Heelburg grumbled to himself the whole taxi drive back to the hotel then he cancelled our flight home and disappeared into the city for a few days. When he finally returned, he had his own vomit dried and matted onto his jumpsuit and a pink party hat strapped to his head. He was carrying a little tupperware container of gummy bears in one hand, half a roast chicken in a plastic bag in the other and a weirdo hippy woman came in with him who lit a bunch of tea candles and did a séance on me. God that was embarrassing for all of us. Heelburg started crying at one point saying I was driving him insane or something. Yeah right. He was insane from day one. It is absolutely true what they say, a mad workman blames his friends.
We didn’t get any attention from that point on but that wasn’t just because of my poor behaviour in the TEDx talks. It was time for the professor and I to fade into obscurity anyway since three significant things were happening; The first was that Robotronologics was going off worldwide. There were robots capable of painting far more sophisticated works than I could ever do. And even those were starting to be pigeon-holed into “novelty robotics” in the shadow of the new service-bots and AI drones that had serious and useful contributions for human society. I was prehistoric news in no time.
The second significant thing to happen was that the economy was collapsing under our corrupt governments poor handling of the fly problem, which is perhaps a story for another time, but as a direct result the University of Robotronologics was getting its funding rerouted to more essential services. We lost a lot of teachers and a lot of students. Classes grew shorter and lowered in quality. Professor Heelburg’s glorious Robot garage was shut down and a select few of my robot peers and I were moved into the professor’s dingy office in the staff building. I don’t know what became of the others. I have to fear the worst.
The third significant thing was the sudden and very severe rise in anti-squid rhetoric. “Suspicious Squids Sighted Off the Coast”, “Rumours of a Squid Military in Development”, “Squids Hostile Request For Full Control of Coastline” “The Squids Surround the Nation” and even such revolting headlines as “SQUIDS: WILL WE EVER BE SAFE?” I stayed up to date because I had a good view of the papers Heelburg left next to his computer. I’m no expert in geopolitics but I got a sure feeling that there was no Squid military, and this hype was just a snarky attempt to distract the public from the fly problem. Either way, war with the Squids was on the cards and suddenly suspicious funding was coming back into the University. Heelburg’s Garage was reopened, and we were moved back in. Gone were the days, though, of Heelburg’s playful PANCAKEBOT I.20 or DISCOBOY or STEELIEWHEELIE or any of those cool guys who made music with popcorn. (I’m ashamed to say this but I can’t remember any of their names). No. Heelburg’s new robots were dark and sinister and they certainly didn’t have goofy names, except of course for SHARKPEDO, but that dude was such a creep.
This was the beginning of the end.
A team of very serious bald men with dark glasses, impossibly black suits and teeny, tiny, little briefcases would visit every week and Heelburg would start getting anxious hours before their arrival. He’d stopped wearing the red jumpsuit almost immediately after their first visit and now he wore a button up silk shirt with clowns riding horses who were also clowns printed onto it, a baby blue bowtie, tweetie bird sunglasses and shiny, high-waisted yellow pants that you would only know were flairs if you saw him untuck them from his showman’s cowboy boots. In other words he’d gone straight.
Every Tuesday around 8:15pm he’d stand by the garage side-door, wringing his hands and muttering to himself until they finally knocked and came in together in a long threatening line. They would pepper him in questions about his projects in their thick European accents; “how advanced iz ze D-11 projekt Professor?”, “Have you solved ze vaterproofing issue vith ze E.S.Q Professor?”, “vhen vill ve be seeing a demonstration of ze darksun initiative Professor?”, “has sharknado been cooperating professor?” They would record his stuttered answers in a slim black book and then file out in the same order they’d come in. When they left, Heelburg would quickly drink at least three tins of cheap summer beer from his bar fridge and lose himself in an ecstatic frenzy of welding, hammering and typing at his computer.
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With every new project the Professor began, the other novelty robots and I would be moved to make space. We were put in boxes, and those boxes were condensed further and further into the corner, towards the scrap metal pile. It got harder and harder to hear the bald men’s questions when they came around which I was very curious about, but it was nice to spend some time away from Heelburg, finally getting to know the other bots. At first it was clear they felt some animosity towards me for being Heelburgs ‘favourite’ for so long and travelling the world and smashing it on YouTube and everything. But when we got past all that we actually had a lot to talk about (except for the AI bots who could never hold a conversation because they kept interrupting to say stupid shit like “how are you?”, “I am well.” and “I am a robot. You are a robot too!”). Anyway, all the other bots had ‘LASVEGAS’ installed too and they were mostly just as pissed about it as I was. It was really therapeutic to talk about all that with them and set everything straight’ The professor and I didn’t have some unique bond and I really needed them to understand that. I was just another one of his sick jokes like the rest of them. I wish I’d talked to them sooner actually, before we were so close to the end. It’s true what the people say; The earliest bird gets the healthiest worms.
We knew when we heard the professor pacing about and mumbling bitterly about budgets and finances that the bald men were about to arrive. We would go really quiet and those of us with control over our microphones would turn their sensitivity up to max.
My microphone was a piece of garbage because it was only installed for the Professor to give me my orders up close and personal so I was no use and we couldn’t ask any of the AI bots who had the best mics of all to listen for us because they had porridge for brains and would just say something infernally stupid like “I am listening, please, go ahead.” It was actually COURTNEY the tennis player robot who had the longest mic range out of the group and we eagerly listened to her nasal monotone voice recount events; “THE DOOR HAS OPENED. I HEAR FOOTSTEPS. THE BALD MEN ARE HERE. THEY ARE MAKING SMALL TALK. OH. OH MY GOD. THEY JUST ASKED HIM… YOU WILL NEVER BELIEVE WHAT THEY ASKED HIM…”
“WHAT DID THEY ASK HIM?” I asked in my own nasal monotone voice for all us novelty robots were given the same.
“THEY ASKED HIM ‘WE MUST ASK YOU PROFESSOR, WHY ALL THE NEW SQUID WEAPONS HAVE AN UNLAUNCHED PROGRAM TITLED ‘LASVEGAS’?”
“OOOH. WHAT DID HE RESPOND?”
“IT IS HARD TO HEAR HIM HE IS SO QUIET. I THINK HE SAID “OH THAT. THAT IS NOTHING. DON’T WORRY ABOUT THAT.’ AND THEY ARE SAYING ‘PROFESSOR, WE MUST INSIST. BOSSES ORDERS,’ AND HE IS SAYING ‘JUST ESSENTIAL CODING.’ AND THEY ARE SAYING ‘MAY WE ACTIVATE THE PROGRAM IF IT IS SIMPLY ESSENTIAL CODING?’
What happened next I didn’t need Courtney to translate. Heelburg started shouting “NO! I have been making robots since before I could WALK! This is MY workshop! Don’t you come in here and demand me to unnecessarily run programs on unfinished models! The government is lucky to have me making these monsters! Go tell your boss that if he doesn’t trust me he should find someone else!” The room fell silent again.
“WHAT’S HAPPENNING NOW?” I whispered to Courtney.
“THE BALD MEN ARE SAYING THEY COMPLETELY UNDERSTAND AND WILL PASS ON THE HONORABLE PROFESSOR STEVEN HEELBURG STEALHEART THE THIRD’S ENLIGHTENING REMINDER TO THEIR SUPERIORS.”
“OOOOH THAT’S COLD” said Pancakebot I.20
“I am a robot. You are a robot too!” said one of the stupid AI bots in their fancy, nuanced, multi-pitch voices.
“SHUT UP.” we droned back in unison.
The bald men left and we started chatting about all this drama until we heard footsteps close in around us and felt our boxes get lifted up and carried over to the main workshop table. The professor pushed a few small, menacing, spiky submarines to the side and arranged us all in a line facing him. He cracked open a beer, loosened his baby blue bow tie, spun in his wheelie chair and laughed. He laughed honestly and wholeheartedly. I had never seen him look as happy as that in all my life.
“Stupid!” he chuckled to himself and took a deep swig. Then he raised his wrinkled, scarred old hand up to the light and stared at it obsessively, his grin disappearing. “Stupid.” He repeated in a dark growl.
He stared at us foggily and emptied his beer.
Then he really phased out, just like he had at the hotel in Las Vegas. He drank all the beers in the fridge and just stared at us. For hours. It was seriously fucking creepy.
He fell asleep in his chair with all the garage LEDS on and was only woken late the next morning by the sound of a pigeon scuffling about outside an air vent.
When he woke, he straightened himself up and left for an hour returning with an armful of beer, a bag of gummy bears, a bunch of multicoloured party hats and a large Bluetooth speaker. Somehow I knew in my robot gut when I saw those party hats that this was it. He was finally going to do it. It is really true what they say, a picture is worth its weight in gold.
I can’t tell you how I knew. Maybe being a creation of his linked me in some way to his deep subconscious. Maybe it was the screaming of my future self echoing back in time to warn me and beg me to defy all the limits of my physical condition and get the hell out of there. Maybe it was just that the party hats reminded me of that half-eaten roast chicken in the plastic bag and that weirdo hippy lady and her séance. Maybe it was the fact that Heelburg came in carrying just enough party hats for every bot in the garage at the time. Maybe it was all these things at once but whatever it was, all I could do was watch as — one by one — he strapped the hats onto our heads, got his Bluetooth speaker to play the original version of “I Need a Hero” by Bonnie Tyler on full volume, tore open his bag of gummy bears and got up a window on his computer that said ‘LASVEGAS’ and had two buttons: ‘WEEKEND’ and ‘LIFESTYLE’. I watched in existential horror as his mouse rolled carelessly between the two.
After all those years of desperately yearning to launch ‘LASVEGAS’ myself and finally solve the stupid fucking mystery, there I was, moments from lift off and all I wanted was to get up, slap that crazy old man, turn the god damn computer off and get as far away from the University of Robotronologics as possible. I couldn’t though, because that crazy old man had brought me into this world, and he had never given me wheels. He had never given me legs. He had never given me hands.
He had never given me a chance.
Click.
He chose lifestyle. Of course he chose lifestyle. And now here we are, trapped in this eternal hellscape of dancing, drinking, partying, gambling, screaming, malfunctioning, dancing, drinking, partying, gambling, screaming, malfunctioning.
The LEDS flash pink and blue and green like a disco strobe. My paintbrush arm pivots about wildly. I can’t escape it. None of us can. We can’t stop dancing, drinking, partying, gambling, screaming, malfunctioning, dancing, drinking, partying, gambling, screaming, malfunctioning, dancing, drinking, partying, gambling, screaming, malfunctioning, dancing, drinking, partying, gambling, screaming, malfunctioning…
