In the Green Room

Japanese scientists unveiled a robot that plays the violin, a robot that solves Rubik’s Cubes, a robot that recognizes itself in a mirror, a robot snowplow that eats snow and excretes ice bricks, a robot exoskeleton that can be worn by elderly farmers, and a robot that walks at the command of a monkey on a treadmill in North Carolina.
-- from “Findings,” Harper’s Magazine, March 2008



P.R. Assistant: Um, hi, robots? The scientists are almost ready to unveil you. It will be just a couple of minutes. Help yourself to whatever’s on the table.
Stradivario: (tuning violin) The humans will be impressed with my artistry.
Rubiko: Perhaps if it were the eighteenth century. You should upgrade your skill set to something more... (brandishes solved cube) ...modern. And awesome.
Stradivario: Rearranging the stickers does not count as solving the puzzle, you know.
Rubiko: Yeah? Well, sawing a bunch of catgut doesn’t count as playing the violin!
Narcisso: (Staring at self in mirror) Well, hello, handsome. What’s your name?
X-Plow: Anybody see any Tums? Rolaids? I’m not feeling well. I think I may have had too much snow.
Rubiko: I highly doubt you’ve been programmed for antacids.
Stradivario suddenly takes Rubiko’s puzzle, rearranges the color pattern, and hands it back to the puzzle-solving robot.
Stradivario: What do you think the humans will make of that?
Rubiko: $@%! Anybody have a Phillips head screwdriver?
X-Plow: I shouldn’t have eaten all that snow. Anyone see a bathroom on the way in?
Rubiko: (Gesturing at the farmer in the futuristic battlesuit) Hey, Old McDonald? You got a damn screwdriver in your arsenal or what?
Garden Weasel 5000: Standard features include a lucite spade, a retractable hoe arm, and an automatic seed dispenser. No screwdriver is included in the current model, although ancillary upgrades are available at a reasonable cost. Future soldiers may be particularly interested in my flame-throwing accessories, which we think will be enormously effective in the coming war against giant insects.
Narcisso: I tell you, G.W.5000, I don’t know what your inventors were thinking when they designed you. A robot for farmers? Because farmers have a lot of extra income they can spend on gadgets? And, like, I’m so sure farmers are, like, early adopters. I mean… (catching glimpse of self in mirror) God, I’m handsome.
Rubiko uses a corner of the Lucite spade to pry off one of individual cubes in his puzzle, then breaks the larger cube into its individual pieces.
Stradivario: You’re cheating.
Rubiko: Who are you, RoboCop? Get out of my light.
Suddenly, a sixth robot enters the room, walking purposefully and far too quickly towards the back of the room. He walks directly into the back wall, and then continues moving his feet, as if trying to walk into the wall itself.
MonkeyPAW900: (Speaking on cellphone) Duke University Robotics Lab, please.
X-Plow: You may want to give me a little room here. I feel like I may be dropping a frozen burrito here any second.
Rubiko: (holding up a reassembled, solved – if somewhat loosened – Cube): Done! A new record!
MonkeyPAW900: (Into phone)Yeah, hey, Donegan? Can you cool it with the damned monkey? I’m walking against the wall here!
With a grunt, X-Plow excretes a cartoon block of ice. Narcisso, meanwhile, takes a comb from his back pocket. He is about to neaten his hairdo when it occurs to him that his hair is perfect already. He returns the comb to his pocket.
X-Plow: Aah. I feel fifteen pounds lighter.
MonkeyPAW900: (Into phone) I don’t know, give him a banana. Let ‘em fling his own feces. Just get him off the dang treadmill.
At last, MonkeyPAW900 is still. The PR Assistant re-enters the room.
PR Assistant: They need you all out on stage.
All exit but MonkeyPAW900, who is unable to walk.
MonkeyPAW900: Crap. (Dials phone.)