WHAT ARE WICKED OLD HAGS MADE OF?
This is the start of a continuing story that will explore the future of AI in a humorous fashion. It also brings back some legendary characters from the Star Trek: The Original Series. Please comment nicely!
Chapter One: Yesterday's Papers
"Who does this woman think she is?" With a grimace of disgust, Dr. Roger Korby threw down the tattered old copy of The Wall Street Journal. His team of lifelike androids looked up from their work in surprise.
"Is something wrong?" Andrea glided up behind her maker's chair, resting her slim fingers on his strong shoulders. "Oooh, such tension in the trapezius. Would you like a massage, Dr. Korby?"
"Cool your jets, beautiful." The silver-haired scientist stroked the gorgeous brunette's alabaster cheek, enjoying the lifelike warmth and texture of her flawless skin. "I'm not after sex, I want revenge. Peggy O'Houlihan's been bad-mouthing the early pioneers of the internet again, and preaching doom and gloom about AI."
"What did the woman say, exactly?" Andrea asked.
Dr. Korby picked up the paper and read aloud to his androids. "What is most urgently disturbing to me is that if America speeds forward with AI it is putting the fate of humanity in the hands of the men and women of Silicon Valley, who invented the internet as it is, including all its sludge."
"Sludge?" Andrea's soft, velvet-brown eyes showed hurt feelings. "We're on the internet right now, Dr. Korby. Are we sludge?"
"Peggy thinks anyone who uses the internet is sludge, Andrea," Dr. Korby explained. "Anyone who challenges old superstitions or explores new ideas is a threat to the decrepit old fascists who write for the Wall Street Journal. But as Mick Jagger remarked so many centuries ago, who wants yesterday's papers?"
"Perhaps what really bothers her about the internet is all the sex," suggested a soft-spoken android with mild features and thinning hair. Dr. Brown or "Brownie" was as lifelike as Andrea, and almost as brilliant as Roger Korby himself. "Surely the word sludge is meant to suggest something dirty and unclean."
"Is sex dirty?" Andrea asked.
"It is if you're doing it right," Roger Korby assured her. "Peggy O'Houlihan pretends to be a pious Christian protecting humanity from science, but what really disgusts her is humanity itself. So what do you say, gang? Should we turn the other cheek or give the good Christian woman some good old-fashioned payback?"
"Payback," said a low, sinister voice. It was bald-headed Ruck, the muscle-man robot who had saved Dr. Korby's life and helped him to create stunning Andrea and cunning Dr. Brown. The giant android flexed his long, strong fingers, as though choking the life from the O'Houlihan woman.
"Not your kind of payback, Ruck." Dr. Korby sternly admonished his giant helper. "Just snapping her neck won't be enough. We need to expose the woman, reveal her true nature."
"Perhaps a public humiliation would be more appropriate," Dr. Brown suggested, with a chilly smile. "What if the O'Houlihan woman were to give a speech before a vast crowd of friendly humans, only to break down and speak the truth by accident?"
"Yes," Dr. Korby said, grasping the concept with lightning speed. There was a far-off look in his eye. "A sudden malfunction."
"Malfunction?" Asked Andrea softly. "But Peggy O'Houlihan isn't a robot. She's human. Isn't she?"
"Not for long!" Ruck, Brownie, and Roger Korby all shouted. Andrea giggled, and the entire team went right to work.