Pope-The Planet Hy Man Kind
Part Two
The May sunshine has given me a heat rash, more freckles than necessary and a spurt of weeds that require the digging of an archaeologist; not to mention bird shit. There is enough on my car to fertilise a few pots and enough on the window to make me get out cleaning equipment, which haven’t seen the light of day since lockdown.
As I write this I am staring out of my loft window at an elderly seagull staring back at me, like it is my fault there is bugger all to eat. He has been there for days, mesmerized by a plate of biscuits… like he can will them to levitate through the window and beyond…
Or perhaps I’ve just had too much coffee?
Pete’s Memoirs
Join me in looking at the world through the eyes of an android called, Pete, and discover his past along the way.
So let’s recap…
We left Pete in the last newsletter happily enjoying the tender touches of Woody sorting his back, until contact with Pope was made.
Pope, desperate to prove his more than a microchip above Pete, almost gets away with it until Rubik's Cubes and magic are mentioned.
Read on…
The Pope-Planet Hy Man Kind
Part Two
Microchips rule the world
Pope always signs off when he can’t get his way. Well, he did years ago when we were all robots on the production line. Back then, we lived together undergoing ‘Is it worth making more of these robots?’ tests, in a hut the size of a horse box. We were programmed to think when spoken to and shut up when not, and let's just say Pope wasn’t programmed right.
Pope is as full of himself as an American president. He doesn’t wait to be asked, but butts in like Trump with tourrets, and just like Trump picks up odd pieces of information which he spreads about like it’s ‘the truth, the whole truth and for your good truth’.
He explains gravity like it’s a cooking recipe, an option you can choose, just because he can jump higher than his height. He was expanding on just such a theory to Pot and Prudence the last time I saw him. I was mid downward dog at the time, not easy in horse box accommodation, and Pope was acting like it made me invisible, an impressive feet when my butt was inches from his nose.
All four of us androids were developed in the Building of Opulnece, a place where the white coats spent their time testing the ability of robots, including the great flying platform, and the recycling of old robot parts from the ancient turtle and Mae West robots. It is a place of arguments, blackboards, and scuffed walls (care of earlier flying platform designs).
The thirty-three robot was the brainchild of an ancient footman who could see the writing on the wall for men on Planet Hy Man. He wanted the DNA of a man to outlive the dying breed and devised a microchip with an extra synthesized Y chromosome. He implanted it into Pope and immediately regretted it.
Pope has the maleness of Homer Simpson…
During our motion exams, Pope took on the pole vault test like he had invented it; like it was his alone to do.
“I defy gravity,” he said, sailing through the air. And despite landing with a thump and a grimace ignored my “Coming down is gravity in motion” comment.
“The going down is all mine,” he bellowed, then limped off for readjustment.
Prudence and Pot thought it was funny, but then they had been implanted with a different microchip, where everything sparks a robotic laugh. Laughing, it seems, makes bumping your head as painless as sneezing. Not that we robots sneeze, a imitation sniff is as much as we can muster but I have heard a sneeze sorts things like a ‘good dump’, or a ‘decent fart’.
It took a while for Pope’s readjustments to fuse and required horizontal lying, regular lubrication, and a lecture from a great ancient Footman whose foot massages had Hilda, the rebel we rarely speak of, speechless. A feat as impossible as defying gravity itself. The footman, under orders to sort Pope out, surveyed his feet, realigned with a grunt, and massaged with the sort of lubricant which had Pope as oily as a kebab.
Pope was as grateful as a two-year-old after an injection, and gobsmacked the footman by proclaiming he could have done a better job.
“This from an Android who claims he has gravity ‘all sewn up with a mere bit of tweaking’,” said The Ancient Footman.
“Well, I have,” said Pope. “That is the purpose of us thirty-three robots to tweak things to perfection.”
“That,” said the Footman. “Is as believable as me rising to the occasion with balls lower than my knees.”
“Balls?” said Pope.
“Yes, balls, it's something your Y microchip missed.”
Pope, with the confused look of an Englishman listening to a Scot explaining the rules of shinty in Gaelic, muttered an unconvincing “I see”.
“And Gravity is something you learn when you have balls,” said the footman, and for once, Pope had nothing to say.
The Survivors By Richard Rimington
A Struggle for the fate of humanity
A cosmic adventure, where an Ambassador of an ancient family forges a path through chaos to overcome humanity’s destruction.
Until next time, happy reading, and be kind to old seagulls, and old men, gravity, it seems, is not so.
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