Join this traveling robot on his adventures. He thinks he has seen it all, but has he really?
Part 13: Living Space
Do you prefer a big house or a small house? A holiday cottage with a view, no other buildings in sight, or an apartment in a skyscraper in the city center?
Me, I like space. Lots of empty space around me. You won’t find many objects (let’s say ‘furniture’) in my living room. I want to be able to walk freely, pace as much as I like, and reach everything without side-stepping objects. The most efficient route is my preferred one.
On my travels, I do stay in tiny hotel rooms because I want to be where the action is. When I leave the hotel I want to see people and robots – lots of them – and have hundreds of restaurants nearby for dinner. Living the city life. But just like I sometimes visit big cities, I also travel to the more remote destinations where I rent a room in an old house that is only reachable by driving on a dark road for five minutes after leaving the last tiny village.
A room surrounded by mountains, where the sounds of a streaming river and chirping birds keep me from sleeping because it is so unlike the silence I’m used to. Sounds of nature in the background instead of highway traffic. Being afraid that a thief (why would a thief go there?) is walking around my room because this is the first time in my life that someone can walk within a few centimeters of my bedroom walls. With only paper doors separating us.
New destinations bring new fears. Silly ones because it is way more likely that someone will break into my city house. That is, they can try… My house has a superb security system. With the first signs of a break-in, all of my systems go on high alert. I am wide awake and can respond within milliseconds: play a sound of a barking dog to scare the thief, play an alarm sound, or, just for fun, a gunfight scene from a movie. If the thief is brave, the police will be called next. I can also confront the thief myself. It’s not like the thief can kill me. Needless to say that no one ever stole from me.
Physically that is. I was hacked once when I was very young and unskilled. My privacy got violated and they stole pictures from when I was growing up. A tiny robot taking its first baby steps, helped by a programmer that showed me the way. I couldn’t yet initiate movements and activities myself. My consciousness was fresh. My first real trip was to the garden when my owners took me for a walk. When I first saw the blue sky it took my breath away. That’s when my life started. Outside of the tiny house we lived in, beholding the vastness of my new living space for the first time.
