WAS THING2 THE GUILTY NEWSDROID?
by Hazed
Regular readers will know that I have three newsdroids (Thing1, Thing2 and Thing3) which are custom-built with the new morphing softskin casing. This experimental feature was provided to me for free so it can be tested in a real news-gathering environment. The droids are also running a beta version of their operating system (now up to droid 11.7). This means sometimes they can be a little erratic while the bugs are worked out of their systems, but they mostly do a good job.
But not always. A few weeks ago one of them messed up the emails for the Star and sent them out with the wrong date and incorrect subject line. For the past two weeks I have been trying to identify which one of the newsdroids was guilty of this cock-up, but it hasn’t been easy. None of them would admit to being at fault, but neither would they finger one of their colleagues.
But I have noticed that Thing2 has been behaving more erratically than usual. It hasn’t been producing as much work as the other two newsdroids, and what it has handed in has needed a lot more editing. It has also been spending time staring into space with a melancholy look on its face. It has set its morphing function to shades of grey (I didn’t count how many) – very different from its usual choice of bright colours with psychedelic patterns.
Could this uncharacteristically mournful behaviour be an indication of Thing2’s guilt over the recent errors?
This model of droid has enhanced emotive software installed, and I had been informed by the manufacturers that this means they had pseudo-emotions which I should take into account when dealing with them. In other words, I have to be careful not to hurt their feelings. But as far as I am aware I haven’t been mistreating the newsdroids (no more than usual, anyway) so I see no reason for Thing2 to be so sad – unless it is guilt at its mistakes.
But I can’t level accusations without proof, so I will have to investigate further.
