29 Comments
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Joseph L. Wiess's avatar

And the robot knew greater sacrifice than man

He willingly gave of himself to save others.

His parts, pieces, geegas and gadgets

were taken from him and put in his brothers.

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Brian Reindel 👾⚔️'s avatar

We can learn a lot from a willingness to help others at great cost. Even from a robot. 🤖

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Meg Oolders's avatar

This story made me want to hug a robot.

It must be very powerful. 🤖💜

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Brian Reindel 👾⚔️'s avatar

Thanks, Meg! I hugged our vacuum cleaner after writing it. That was the closest robot I could find.

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Justin Deming's avatar

What a terrific story, Brian. I really enjoyed it!

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Brian Reindel 👾⚔️'s avatar

Thank you, Justin!

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David Perlmutter's avatar

"Oh, yes, I'm the Great Pretender/adrift in a world of my own..."

Clearly, mentioning that classic #1 hit from 1956 wasn't just to fill space....

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Brian Reindel 👾⚔️'s avatar

You're very right! Occasionally, I will put in a mention of a song as a call to something deeper in the lyrics, and I love it when people spot it. Thanks for reading, David!

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Alexa Tuttle's avatar

The peacemaker’s innocence and willingness to please the mechanic made me think of Wall-E!

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Brian Reindel 👾⚔️'s avatar

I love Wall-E, and whenever I'm creating a robot character, I have to keep myself from recreating his personality. 😁

Thanks for reading, Alexa!

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T. D. Wolf's avatar

That was a wonderful and touching story.

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Brian Reindel 👾⚔️'s avatar

Thank you for reading and commenting, T. Dalton!

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Andrew Smith's avatar

Humans are the worst!

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Brian Reindel 👾⚔️'s avatar

I think we have amazing potential to change that!

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Andrew Smith's avatar

Indeed. I'm motivated to try, evidently!

Maybe I should add the caveat: *most* humans are the worst. I actually like a lot of them here.

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Brian Reindel 👾⚔️'s avatar

That's awesome you're motivated to change that. As am I. 😁

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Andrew Smith's avatar

It is very much my motivation to be here, to write every day.

Thanks for the food for thought, Brian!

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Ernie Brill's avatar

send me your email and I'll send you a download of a robot story I wrote. I am considering writing one despite my current projects. A robot is hired by an AI firm to be a longterm substitute teacher for a school district. He somehow has been faultilybuilt: he has a conscience. There follows a nearly lethall series of ascendingly serious slapstick actions.

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Brian Reindel 👾⚔️'s avatar

Hi Ernie, I would like to read that. You can send it to futurethief@substack.com and I should get it.

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Rudolph Ferro's avatar

Great story. I enjoyed it a lot. I hope that in the future Artificial Intelligence will prove to be so magnanimous. rferro0322@gmail.com

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Brian Reindel 👾⚔️'s avatar

Thank you, Rudolph! I hope so, too. They just need to be trained with better models.

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Ernie Brill's avatar

wonderful.Is this part of an ongoing novel " The Robot's Sacrifices", takiing readers on the picarsque journeys of a young robot? It could be a series. And the robot could fall in love either with another robot - pck your gender, or decide to the Robotic Priesthood ( no sex allowed Most of the time!), or fall in love with a human ( something kin to Blade Runner with Sean Young stealing the wholel show from the bigger "star". You do a fine job, with enormous potential as A Maker ( in our new ( and old - in some places) multiple maker worlds where the term I Want To Make ItBig is more than some narcisstic testosteone. "tightwad" ( see the new definitiion in the upcoming new edition of Webster's Dictionary.

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Brian Reindel 👾⚔️'s avatar

Thank you for the feedback, Ernie! I have no plans currently to turn it into an ongoing series or novel, but I would like to write more robot stories. I don't write them often enough and enjoy it.

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Carolyn McBride 🏳️‍🌈🇨🇦's avatar

What a terrific story about being human. It's sad though that the Robot was a better person than the guy who beat him.

Terrific tale, thanks for sharing!

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Brian Reindel 👾⚔️'s avatar

Thank you for reading and commenting, Carolyn! Being human doesn't need to be an exclusively human trait. 😁

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KyanTan's avatar

With all the negative predictions of AI, this is a breath of fresh air. As the songs go, would AI be better than the real thing, would they eventually be more human than human?

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Brian Reindel 👾⚔️'s avatar

It's a great observation, and one that gets me thinking about the models that train AI, and whether or not they can be modified to encourage things like charity, sacrifice, mercy and peace.

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Scott Ocamb's avatar

Great descriptions of the word and good character development too.

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Brian Reindel 👾⚔️'s avatar

Thank you, Scott!

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