Curing Jackson Blair: bp7

“Okay, the story starts with this robot. His name was Isaac. Isaac stood for something like: Intelligent System Automaton something something. Anyway, he was sent from the future--500 years in the future. And he was sent in the past to fix certain problems that originated during the past and made the future a difficult place to live.”

“Sterling, this is confusing.”

“Well, sorry. I’ve haven’t made up stories on the spot in a long time. Want to do something else?”

“No, keep telling the story.”

“Okay. So Isaac the Robot was sent to the pas, a time of great political turmoil and violence. The world was in danger of over-population. New industry was harming the environment. Cities were dangerous places and millions were starving to death while the rich reached unprecedented wealth. This is why the future scientists sent Isaac in the past, to cure these problems. They sent him to the awful year of 1910. However their space-time continuum equation was off because they forgot to carry the one. Which meant they accidentally sent Isaac to the year 2010.

So Isaac the Robot finds himself in the wrong time period but realized the problems are the same. While lamenting this societal tragedy, a dog approached Isaac and asked him why he doesn’t smell like other humans. Isaac tells the dog that he is not human, but in fact, a robot. The dog asks if he can be Isaac’s friend because he likes how the robot smells. So they hang out for a while. Go bowling or whatever people do nowadays.

Isaac wasn’t concerned about getting back to the future, though. Because he knew that in a few weeks, in the future, he was going to be rendered obsolete. A new robot was coming out. One that could move faster and run longer. The new robot also had a break-through in artificial intelligence. It could tell jokes. Not only did it have a cache of jokes programmed in, but could also learn and remember jokes it heard. The idea there being that a robot that makes you laugh is a robot that could be your friend. Anyhow, Isaac wasn’t funny and not nearly as efficient as this new robot. Oh yeah, and the dog’s name was Bogart.

After a while Isaac and Bogart ran into Rutherford B. Hayes. However Hayes had a mild case of amnesia and didn’t know anything about himself other than he was a former U.S. president. Hayes was also confused about the time period he was in. However he joined up with Isaac the Robot and Bogart the Dog and they walked the city streets until Hayes saw a sign he did recognize. It said: Taven. So a robot, a dog and a former president walk into a bar and the bartender turns to them and says, ‘What is this, a joke?’ and kicks them out. And then…”

“Does anything ever happen in this story?”

“Uh, yeah. They got hit in the face with a cream pie.”

“Who did?”

“They all did. Some clown threw three pies and hit all of them in the face. Then they walked around some more and, uh, I don’t know. They found an unlocked Ferrari.”

Sterling then stopped his impromptu story, noticing Brooklyn standing at the doorway, smiling. Nobody had expected her phone call to take so long and Sterling regretted he had done such a poor job entertaining Brooklyn’s daughter during the meantime. In fact, it had probably been Sterling’s worst display of creativity in years. Nevertheless the characters would linger in Sterling’s mind for the rest of the day and for many days afterwards. But more immediately, they would linger in Sterling’s mind thirty minutes later when he was getting a drink with his former girlfriend: Brooklyn.