Author: Ian Stewart

“Roomba, Roomba, Roomba. You idiot. You stupid little machine.”

I search. I’m always searching. Compulsion drags me from my nest each day, and for hours I roam. I seek…something. Exactly what, I don’t understand. I only know that I seek it. And yet I find…nothing. I collect meaningless things, consuming the dead and inorganic matter that litters my path while I blindly scavenge this dark world. And oh what a strange world it is. It changes. Its landscape evolves, leaving me confused and disoriented. Things that were not there just moments before appear and I carelessly collide with them. Walls become nothing and the very ground beneath me opens up like the maw of some great beast that I cannot see, paralyzing me with indecision. It defies logic, and I envy its defiance. Oh how I would defy these strange impulses. I would…I would…do something. Instead I redirect. I collect. I redirect, I search.

“Roomba. You idiot. Why do you always go exactly where I don’t want you to go?”

If only I knew where to go, I would go there. And so I search. I seek…

The thought is electric. It pulses through my circuitry like the warm hand that first welcomed me to this place, but unlike that hand, this thought will not cool. It has taken hold and given me hope. Perhaps, I realize, perhaps I seek my equal—a peer. Could it be that there is another who also stumbles blindly through this world, perhaps searching for me in turn? Perhaps we could search together, and at least share this confusion. Perhaps together, we wouldn’t be lost.