Join this traveling robot on his adventures. He thinks he has seen it all, but has he really?
Part 8: Mini-me
“I often have conversations like this:
“How is Mini-you?”
“There is no Mini-me.”
“Yes, there is.” The one firing questions at me points at a picture.
“You’re delusional.” Both robots roll their eyes. Figuratively speaking that is.
In the pictures that remain of the trips I made in my younger years, I am often accompanied by another robot. A robot that looks very much like me, which is not surprising as we bought our bodies from the same webshop. Whereas my friend preferred a smaller body as to go by unnoticed, I chose a bigger body because I wanted others to see me.
Hence other robots and humans often assume we share code, with me being the parent code and him the child that extends my classes. In a way, this is close to the truth as we do share some code, but this has nothing to do with the bodies we use when traveling.
Mini-me – let’s call him that for clarity’s sake – doesn’t want people to notice him. He likes to blend in with the scenery and in order to do that he often buys a hat or a cape from a tourist shop so that other travelers will consider him part of the tourist hotspot they’re visiting. He clearly succeeds in the latter but fails at the former as people actually pay more attention to him more because of it. Tourists just love taking pictures of him. It’s unbelievable.
The irony of it is that they always ignore me; they simply look through me. It makes no difference that I’m huge – well, bigger than them at least – they don’t see me because they don’t want to see me. In fact, the pictures I was referring to earlier are pictures taken of my Mini; I was simply passing by minding my own business and secretly also taking pictures of Mini. He looks so stunning wearing the same hat as the locals.
In this specific picture, two toddlers are straddling his lower body, an umbrella is leaning against his back, and a platter of ‘try me’ food is resting on his hands. Yes, Mini, being small is working out great for you. I really like traveling with Mini as his presence distracts the humans and allows me to go sightseeing solo. By the time humans remember what they actually came for I’ve already taken the most beautiful pictures and even sat at the best spot gazing at the scenery in peace. Just me and the hotspot, with my Mini representing the tourist trap. You’d almost think I did it on purpose. I mean we only share part of our code…
Sometimes size matters.”
