No Sense: A Robot's Tale

Written and drawn by Joe Chiappetta

"I used to do a lot of things that made no sense," said the retired old robot, reflecting on his many and varied centuries of service to humanity.

"Used to?" exclaimed his upgraded replacement robots, with sly, cold chuckles.

"Hey," defended the old robot, "I am mainly talking about my short but colorful career as a doodle art curator. That's what the humans wanted me to do, so I did it to the best of my programing. Some humans believe there's an untapped market for doodles--and so do I. Such free-flowing subconscious works are much more important than most people think."

"That's what you keep telling us," added one of the new robots. "Remind us again why they retired you from that nonsense position?"

With conviction, the old robot replied, "Well, the humans were looking for a robot who could rank and price each fine art doodle based on market sentiments. But I personally think all doodles are equally marvelous. The humans declared this to be a serious flaw in my code. They said I made no sense. Yet what I have is not a flaw: it's a key feature."

Later that night, as he had been doing for years, the old robot set to work creating his own series of doodles. Convinced that doodling was a uniquely human trait, he too set out to master the ways of the doodle. He too would one day be more human.