People Are Glitches

"Are billboard bluzzers usually this smart and helpful?"

NO.

"Not usualies," J.Lo agreed.  "But this sort of thing can sometimes happen.  If a robot is for too long frustrated at its job."

Bill was slaloming in and out of koobish's ears.  They tried to nip at him as he passed.

"I don't understand that," I admitted.  "Frustrated?"

J.Lo set down the pieces he was fiddling with.  "Yes.  Aslike . . . a robot who always wants to do, but it cannot do.  When we wants to do something but cannot, that is when we think.  When our consciousness awakes up and stretches its arms.  That is when we imagine, and plan, and dream about the undone thing.  Ignored for too long and not able to show anyBoov his message, Bill developed a bug.  Some bad code.  A . . . glitch."

I felt weird talking about Bill right in front of him like this.  After he zoomed up the ramp to the bedroom, I said, "A glitch?  Bill can think.  Like he's alive.  He might be as smart as a person--that's not a glitch."

J.Lo gave me a sad look.  "Peoples are glitches," he said.

He returned to his work.  "Their worlds do not want them," he continued.  "A fox?  It knows how to be a fox.  Any koobish is the number one expert at being a koobish.  But peoples?  Boov and humans and Gorg and Habadoo and suchlike?  We are the only ones who don't know how to be.  Who do not know the right things to do."

 ~ Adam Rex, Smek for President