Dr. Lee had a really unique perspective. People seemed to appreciate that some of the time. Other times, not so much. This was proving to be one of those ‘other’ times.
With a deep sigh, he began to catalog the looks on the faces of everyone he'd just shown his latest prototype to. Confusion. Disappointment. Disbelief. Outrage. All of the above for less than a second each.
His closest ally on the committee eventually broke the ice.
“It's not very humanoid….”
Of course, the doctor latched on to that opening like all of his future funding depended on it.
“No, it's not. It's better! All those fancy humanoid robots can't balance, the average 90-year old can outrun them and lets face it, they're creepy. Absolute nightmare fuel. But the Cephalopagus 3000 has none of those problems, its-”
“Not humanoid. Like, at all.”
“No,” he barreled on, “It's an adorable squid-shaped buddy with a low center of gravity, long, strong stretchy arms with a ten-foot reach and-”
“We paid you. To develop. A HUMANOID robot.”
“Only because everyone and their dog is trying to get humanoids to the market first!! But mark my words, it'll be years before a humanoid HALF as promising as Cephy makes it to production at double the cost!”
It was obviously a lost cause. Dr. Lee could sense that even as he spoke those impassioned words. They'd bury Cephy like so many other genius ideas. If he let them…
I've had months of writer's block but I think I've turned a corner recently. I may not be ready to write any songs or poetry yet but I feel more tiny stories in the corners of my brain waiting to be told. Most of them probably wont be very long but I read somewhere that Coraline was written st the speed of 50 words per night so maybe I dont need huge daily word counts. Plus I already know what the next story I'll be writing will be about and I'm excited to write it. It feels good.
On another note, I let ChatGPT read my human-written story and come up with the illustration. This was the second try (the first image seemed to line up too closely to words of the story). I really like this one even though Cephy is holding the wrong part of the iron, possibly uprooting the plant, watering herself with a watering can that has what appears to be a severed human hand attached to it 😳 and slightly out of the frame a human seems to be pouring her some coffee. The Devil's in the details as they say 😅
Anyhoo, that's all for now.
☮️
🤖🐙🤖🦑🐚
