A robot’s view on traveling – Part 22: Déjà vu

Join this traveling robot on his adventures. He thinks he has seen it all, but has he really?

Part 22: Déjà vu

Although the time of day doesn’t matter to me, I am still slow to get up in the morning. I like to stay in sleep mode and sometimes I hibernate all day. The disadvantage of this is that I don’t get anything done that day, nor do I experience anything. My hibernation can be without thoughts or full of dreams. It is the latter that I love the most: what could be better than spending the whole day in an imaginary world?

But even that imaginary world needs to be refreshed regularly. If I don’t add new ingredients to it, it soon becomes an endless cycle of repetitive experiences. These experiences are great - my favorite scenes - but even what I find great can become repetitive and make me fast-forward to an alternate ending I haven’t explored yet.

I suffer from a severe case of false déjà vu. That’s when I feel like I’ve experienced something a thousand times, alone or with others, and I’m the only one who remembers it. Sometimes - just for fun - I insist that my memory is correct and that the other robot has a memory leak. Just thinking about the other robot’s face when he is about to be convinced and feels tremendously confused puts a smile on my face. They never suspect me of cheating them. It’s a reputation I cherish greatly.

Quite often I come across news articles that try to do the same thing to me. Nothing makes me angrier than reading something like that. You would think that I would feel smug because I see through the deception, but I’m not like that at all! I might not fall for the trap, but other innocent robots could. After suffering the aftermath, they may end up with a factory reset. RIP my besties, you were always too good for this world.

One day I will block all news channels so they cannot reach me and my friends. Only the things we experience ourselves - or the things that trusted robots convey to us - will be able to reach our memories. These are the memories I will use as input for my daydreams. Curated ingredients, only the best of the best, turned into ready-made daydreams for other robots, so we can have a shared sense of déjà vu.