New ground!
Kyung-bot and the lonesome scientist
Zico/Kyung (Block B)
It’s nine o’clock in the morning at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology. Jiho yawns as he slides his security card through the slot, shuffling inside with his sneakers dragging lazily across the floor. He clicks the lights on and hears a rumbling from the department next door, where they try to split electrons. Jiho finds that was he is doing is far more productive, of course. Equal amounts of math, less staring into space (metaphorically speaking, of course).
On his way over to his working desk, he whacks Kyung over the head and mumbles a “good morning”. He puts his coffee down, placing his cup to balance dangerously on top of a stationary computer as he turns it on. A buzzing noise fills the room. The system needs a few minutes to start up, so he leans back in a chair, putting his feet up.
“Hey, did you catch the Yankees game yesterday? I was watching it online and---” he cuts himself off, looking over at Kyung and his lifeless form.
“Shit, I forgot to turn you on, didn’t I.” Sighing, he walks over and presses the ON button. Kyung starts blinking and makes a whirling noise - Jiho pulls a face as the all the sounds of starting machines comes at his ears and he wants to turn on the stereo but he’s not allowed.
“We need to fix that.” He walks back for his coffee, and tries to wake up. “You’re far too loud.” But he can’t help but smile as he looks over at his metallic friend. Four and a half feet tall, with cartoonish features and a baseball themed scarf wrapped around his neck, his green eye-lights open - he’s awake.
His name is Kyung, but it wasn’t supposed to be. Jiho wanted to call him King Kong for funsies but his superiors forbade it, just like they forbid hip hop and reggae in the lab. So Kyung it was. Jiho has put glasses on him, even though he hardly needs them - Kyung’s eyes are small lenses triggered by lasers and electric circuits that communicate with a complex world of wires and pre-programmed data inside the metal box that is his head. When Jiho tries to explain it to his mother, he says that Kyungbot is a mix between a fancy digital camera and a computerised math genius.
“Good morning,” Jiho says, and Kyung beeps. He can’t talk, so Jiho has installed a digital bicycle horn for him and plans to one day teach him morse code. But for now, the main object is to teach Kyung how to differentiate bananas and oranges.
Jiho puts an orange and a banana on the table and thinks that it seems so easy for us humans - we see the fruit, and we pick it up. But our brains, unlike Kyung’s, have evolved through millions of years and Kyung’s world consists of ones and zeros. It’s hardly fair. Still, Kyungbot has something akin to a mental life. He doesn’t have feelings, per say, but mathematics allow him to learn and understand how to use his hand to grip and pick up the orange. He’s a social robot, not a conventional factory robot, and when he looks at the banana, he doesn’t just aimlessly try to grip just like he did with the orange, no - he looks at it and ponders its shape as he twists his metal fingers in the air, contemplating on just how to go about grabbing this new object.
He’s just like a little kid, Jiho thinks, watching his computer screen to monitor Kyung’s progress. And when Kyung gets a little closer to picking up his first banana, he can’t help but feel a little warm inside. A bit fluttery, even.
It’s not like you can feel anything affectionate towards a robot, his mother says when all he wants to talk about is Kyungbot’s wires, but Jiho made Kyungbot. If you love your child, why can’t you love your robot. Besides, he argues, Kyung is sweeter than most of the kids out there, and he doesn’t scream or poop. He’s quite Wonderful. He gives Kyung a good old pat on the back as he rolls by.
Kyung grows up just like real kids do, learning how to pick up new objects, developing, but Jiho has to remind himself that there’s no such thing as a real life Pinocchio. Still, he tries to help Kyung into becoming less dependent on him, into becoming his own person --- robot, at the same time taking great comfort in the fact that Kyung will never leave him for another. Jiho is the man with the remote.
He feels secure enough to teach Kyung to move about on his own. By installing a complex navigation system, he makes sure that Kyung is polite, that he doesn’t run over people’s feet with his potentially toe-crushing wheels, and that he doesn’t hurt himself by accidentally crashing into someone’s desk or a wall. He gets a radar and a GPS, so that nothing can go wrong, and Jiho programs him to honk at eventual obstacles in his way. This way, everyone is safe, especially Kyung.
Kyungbot isn’t the only robot at the institute. Occasionally, Kyung has a run into with Yume, a humanoid designed to look just like people - and she does. In fact, she rather looks like a young woman that just stepped out of a beauty salon, complete with false lashes and permanently red lips. She has a soft, feminine voice, but she only speaks in programmed phrases. Jiho thinks that in that aspect, she’s just like a real girl. A boring kind of perfect pretty that never listens, always talks.
Much like Jiho’s girlfriend, really.
Kyung is in the process of crossing the laboratory to Jiho’s desk when Yume suddenly walks up in front of him. And then, she stops, a dreamy expression stuck on her perfect face. Kyung beeps and beeps, but Yume never moves. She just stands there, right in front of him, looking like she just nodded off in the middle of a step and she’s making a humming noise, as though her vocal cords were in a knot or she was high on something other than batteries.
Eventually, Jiho comes to the rescue, leading the non-resisting humanoid away and putting her to rest against a closet before he returns and gently pats his patient Kyungbot on the head. “She’s pretty, but she’s dumb,” he says reassuringly. “I’m sorry you had to wait. Come on, we’re going to reprogram your bicycle horn. We have to make it louder - I know, it’s not fun to wait.”
Kyung follows him to the battery dock like a puppy, blinking his eyes as he powers off his wheels. Looking expectantly at Jiho, he beeps one more time.
It makes Jiho laugh. “You’re a bit of an arsehole, aren’t you,” he snorts, making sure his Kyungbot is all wired up. “Always have to have the last word.”
One more beep, and Jiho collapses into his chair wrapped up in fits of laughter as his colleagues shake their heads at him.
Kyung has a friend in the lab (well, to Jiho, Yume doesn’t count) and his name is Snackbot. His name is Snackbot because he has an armful of snacks that he carries around, offering chocolate and crisps in exchange for coins and 1000 won bills. Jiho buys sweets from him in the afternoons, when his blood sugar drops, and he pushes a bit of money into the slot before he smiles down at the bot and says thank you. He soon realises, however, that not everyone seems to like Snackbot.
Embarrassed and rather aghast, he watches his colleagues pick their treats from Snackbot seemingly without conscience nor gratitude. They don’t even pay! Snackbot just stands there and admittedly, he doesn’t throw the tantrum Jiho would have - but the fact that Snackbot lacks feelings does not stop Jiho from feeling humiliated on his behalf. Poor Snackbot works his wheels off keeping people happy in those horrible hours of overtime, and he doesn’t even get a thank you! People, Jiho thinks, aren’t half as nice as robots.
Robots have manners, as long as they are properly programmed. Kyungbot never runs over anyone’s toes, and he listens first, before he beeps. He learns simple voice commands such as “stop” and “come here”, and Jiho feels his chest swell with pride. This must be what parents feel.
His other relationships suffer, family and friends, because they just don’t understand why he has to live in a lab and make friends with things that can’t think. But that is exactly what Jiho is trying to change! He is creating a self-evolving organism. He’s God. Just not as successful in the biology department.
Kyungbot doesn’t have feelings, but he’s developing a kind of self-awareness, and Jiho is sure that Kyung likes him better than anyone else. Kyung likes to follow him around.
One thing that Jiho never expected his Kyungbot to develop was curiosity. None of the other robots ever did anything unconventional but one day, when Jiho drags his lazy self back into the laboratory after a late lunch, he looks around and realises that Kyung is gone. Just like that. All the other robots are there, Yume and the other metallic little lives that he doesn’t care about are all standing there, staring blankly into the air but Kyung has gone. Jiho looks around for wheel tracks, for stolen fruit - anything that can indicate where Kyung has gone, and a strange kind of panic rises in his chest. It’s just like losing your favourite toy.
No, wait. It’s like losing your best friend.
He launches at the computer and starts up the GPS, and when Kyungbots little dot turns out to be in cafeteria, Jiho runs. They must have just missed each other, he realises as he hurries down the corridor, turning a corner, heart beating far too hard before he hears it.
Beep.
And not just once. It’s beep-beep-beep-beep-beep and it doesn’t seem to stop either, it’s loud and obnoxious and it surprises him that no one is turning Kyung off - but then he finds him, in the middle of the cafeteria, beeping at the people around them, not daring to move. Poor thing got stuck in the flood of lunching lab coats, and now he doesn’t know how to get out. That’s how he’s programmed, it’s all Jiho’s ones and zeros: when stuck in a group of people, Kyungbot takes the safest course of action, staying put and honking at everybody, hoping they’ll give him enough space to roll past. It doesn’t happen. Not everyone speaks robot, apparently.
“Kyung! What are you doing here!” Jiho chides him once he gets a hold of him. He’s panting from the quick run as he taps Kyungbot on his literal button nose. “That’s very irresponsible, what you just did!” But he’s relieved, and smiling now, putting a hand on Kyung’s shoulder to guide him out of the room.
“Who let you out? I didn’t expect you to go wondering about on your own.” He peers at his bot from the corner of his eye, and wonders if perhaps Kyungbot actually went to look for him.
But that’s probably just his imagination, wishful thinking and all that.
Jiho loves his job. He loves it every day because it’s a different kind a world, the laboratory, a world in which you don’t always have to be handsome and cutesy to get by. Brains are just enough. But just like any other man, Jiho will have days that are hard, when reality sticks to him even as he enters the lab.
His girlfriend breaks up with him.
He wipes his cheeks - she wasn’t all that to begin with - but it’s a horrible thing, rejection, and when Kyung keeps blinking his big eyes at him, lifting his claw-like hand to push at Jiho’s computer, hoping to be re-programmed, Jiho just can’t take it. Not today. Like a big baby, he storms out, wiping at his cheeks and narrowly missing Snackbot who looks after him with his arm full of crisps. The bots don’t understand. They don’t have hearts, they don’t have souls, they don’t have pride and face to lose.
They’re just big metal puzzles of chips, buttons and wires, they don’t know anything. Feeling utterly abandoned and hurt, Jiho sinks down onto the stairs outside, and when the drama of heartbreak grabs at him, he thinks that no one could be lonelier.
Beep.
Jiho looks up, spotting Kyungbot by the door. He’s just standing there, waiting. And then, Jiho watches him roll over and tentatively nudge his arm.
Beep. Beeeeep.
The wiring of Jiho’s heart tangles up inside him and before he knows it, he’s laughing. He’s shooting sparks, not tears, as he reaches up and slides his hand into Kyung’s claw to haul himself up. “Thank you, Kyung,” he says, and walking inside, he thinks about the wonder of having a Real Best Friend.
End.
Zico/Kyung (Block B)
It’s nine o’clock in the morning at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology. Jiho yawns as he slides his security card through the slot, shuffling inside with his sneakers dragging lazily across the floor. He clicks the lights on and hears a rumbling from the department next door, where they try to split electrons. Jiho finds that was he is doing is far more productive, of course. Equal amounts of math, less staring into space (metaphorically speaking, of course).
On his way over to his working desk, he whacks Kyung over the head and mumbles a “good morning”. He puts his coffee down, placing his cup to balance dangerously on top of a stationary computer as he turns it on. A buzzing noise fills the room. The system needs a few minutes to start up, so he leans back in a chair, putting his feet up.
“Hey, did you catch the Yankees game yesterday? I was watching it online and---” he cuts himself off, looking over at Kyung and his lifeless form.
“Shit, I forgot to turn you on, didn’t I.” Sighing, he walks over and presses the ON button. Kyung starts blinking and makes a whirling noise - Jiho pulls a face as the all the sounds of starting machines comes at his ears and he wants to turn on the stereo but he’s not allowed.
“We need to fix that.” He walks back for his coffee, and tries to wake up. “You’re far too loud.” But he can’t help but smile as he looks over at his metallic friend. Four and a half feet tall, with cartoonish features and a baseball themed scarf wrapped around his neck, his green eye-lights open - he’s awake.
His name is Kyung, but it wasn’t supposed to be. Jiho wanted to call him King Kong for funsies but his superiors forbade it, just like they forbid hip hop and reggae in the lab. So Kyung it was. Jiho has put glasses on him, even though he hardly needs them - Kyung’s eyes are small lenses triggered by lasers and electric circuits that communicate with a complex world of wires and pre-programmed data inside the metal box that is his head. When Jiho tries to explain it to his mother, he says that Kyungbot is a mix between a fancy digital camera and a computerised math genius.
“Good morning,” Jiho says, and Kyung beeps. He can’t talk, so Jiho has installed a digital bicycle horn for him and plans to one day teach him morse code. But for now, the main object is to teach Kyung how to differentiate bananas and oranges.
Jiho puts an orange and a banana on the table and thinks that it seems so easy for us humans - we see the fruit, and we pick it up. But our brains, unlike Kyung’s, have evolved through millions of years and Kyung’s world consists of ones and zeros. It’s hardly fair. Still, Kyungbot has something akin to a mental life. He doesn’t have feelings, per say, but mathematics allow him to learn and understand how to use his hand to grip and pick up the orange. He’s a social robot, not a conventional factory robot, and when he looks at the banana, he doesn’t just aimlessly try to grip just like he did with the orange, no - he looks at it and ponders its shape as he twists his metal fingers in the air, contemplating on just how to go about grabbing this new object.
He’s just like a little kid, Jiho thinks, watching his computer screen to monitor Kyung’s progress. And when Kyung gets a little closer to picking up his first banana, he can’t help but feel a little warm inside. A bit fluttery, even.
It’s not like you can feel anything affectionate towards a robot, his mother says when all he wants to talk about is Kyungbot’s wires, but Jiho made Kyungbot. If you love your child, why can’t you love your robot. Besides, he argues, Kyung is sweeter than most of the kids out there, and he doesn’t scream or poop. He’s quite Wonderful. He gives Kyung a good old pat on the back as he rolls by.
Kyung grows up just like real kids do, learning how to pick up new objects, developing, but Jiho has to remind himself that there’s no such thing as a real life Pinocchio. Still, he tries to help Kyung into becoming less dependent on him, into becoming his own person --- robot, at the same time taking great comfort in the fact that Kyung will never leave him for another. Jiho is the man with the remote.
He feels secure enough to teach Kyung to move about on his own. By installing a complex navigation system, he makes sure that Kyung is polite, that he doesn’t run over people’s feet with his potentially toe-crushing wheels, and that he doesn’t hurt himself by accidentally crashing into someone’s desk or a wall. He gets a radar and a GPS, so that nothing can go wrong, and Jiho programs him to honk at eventual obstacles in his way. This way, everyone is safe, especially Kyung.
Kyungbot isn’t the only robot at the institute. Occasionally, Kyung has a run into with Yume, a humanoid designed to look just like people - and she does. In fact, she rather looks like a young woman that just stepped out of a beauty salon, complete with false lashes and permanently red lips. She has a soft, feminine voice, but she only speaks in programmed phrases. Jiho thinks that in that aspect, she’s just like a real girl. A boring kind of perfect pretty that never listens, always talks.
Much like Jiho’s girlfriend, really.
Kyung is in the process of crossing the laboratory to Jiho’s desk when Yume suddenly walks up in front of him. And then, she stops, a dreamy expression stuck on her perfect face. Kyung beeps and beeps, but Yume never moves. She just stands there, right in front of him, looking like she just nodded off in the middle of a step and she’s making a humming noise, as though her vocal cords were in a knot or she was high on something other than batteries.
Eventually, Jiho comes to the rescue, leading the non-resisting humanoid away and putting her to rest against a closet before he returns and gently pats his patient Kyungbot on the head. “She’s pretty, but she’s dumb,” he says reassuringly. “I’m sorry you had to wait. Come on, we’re going to reprogram your bicycle horn. We have to make it louder - I know, it’s not fun to wait.”
Kyung follows him to the battery dock like a puppy, blinking his eyes as he powers off his wheels. Looking expectantly at Jiho, he beeps one more time.
It makes Jiho laugh. “You’re a bit of an arsehole, aren’t you,” he snorts, making sure his Kyungbot is all wired up. “Always have to have the last word.”
One more beep, and Jiho collapses into his chair wrapped up in fits of laughter as his colleagues shake their heads at him.
Kyung has a friend in the lab (well, to Jiho, Yume doesn’t count) and his name is Snackbot. His name is Snackbot because he has an armful of snacks that he carries around, offering chocolate and crisps in exchange for coins and 1000 won bills. Jiho buys sweets from him in the afternoons, when his blood sugar drops, and he pushes a bit of money into the slot before he smiles down at the bot and says thank you. He soon realises, however, that not everyone seems to like Snackbot.
Embarrassed and rather aghast, he watches his colleagues pick their treats from Snackbot seemingly without conscience nor gratitude. They don’t even pay! Snackbot just stands there and admittedly, he doesn’t throw the tantrum Jiho would have - but the fact that Snackbot lacks feelings does not stop Jiho from feeling humiliated on his behalf. Poor Snackbot works his wheels off keeping people happy in those horrible hours of overtime, and he doesn’t even get a thank you! People, Jiho thinks, aren’t half as nice as robots.
Robots have manners, as long as they are properly programmed. Kyungbot never runs over anyone’s toes, and he listens first, before he beeps. He learns simple voice commands such as “stop” and “come here”, and Jiho feels his chest swell with pride. This must be what parents feel.
His other relationships suffer, family and friends, because they just don’t understand why he has to live in a lab and make friends with things that can’t think. But that is exactly what Jiho is trying to change! He is creating a self-evolving organism. He’s God. Just not as successful in the biology department.
Kyungbot doesn’t have feelings, but he’s developing a kind of self-awareness, and Jiho is sure that Kyung likes him better than anyone else. Kyung likes to follow him around.
One thing that Jiho never expected his Kyungbot to develop was curiosity. None of the other robots ever did anything unconventional but one day, when Jiho drags his lazy self back into the laboratory after a late lunch, he looks around and realises that Kyung is gone. Just like that. All the other robots are there, Yume and the other metallic little lives that he doesn’t care about are all standing there, staring blankly into the air but Kyung has gone. Jiho looks around for wheel tracks, for stolen fruit - anything that can indicate where Kyung has gone, and a strange kind of panic rises in his chest. It’s just like losing your favourite toy.
No, wait. It’s like losing your best friend.
He launches at the computer and starts up the GPS, and when Kyungbots little dot turns out to be in cafeteria, Jiho runs. They must have just missed each other, he realises as he hurries down the corridor, turning a corner, heart beating far too hard before he hears it.
Beep.
And not just once. It’s beep-beep-beep-beep-beep and it doesn’t seem to stop either, it’s loud and obnoxious and it surprises him that no one is turning Kyung off - but then he finds him, in the middle of the cafeteria, beeping at the people around them, not daring to move. Poor thing got stuck in the flood of lunching lab coats, and now he doesn’t know how to get out. That’s how he’s programmed, it’s all Jiho’s ones and zeros: when stuck in a group of people, Kyungbot takes the safest course of action, staying put and honking at everybody, hoping they’ll give him enough space to roll past. It doesn’t happen. Not everyone speaks robot, apparently.
“Kyung! What are you doing here!” Jiho chides him once he gets a hold of him. He’s panting from the quick run as he taps Kyungbot on his literal button nose. “That’s very irresponsible, what you just did!” But he’s relieved, and smiling now, putting a hand on Kyung’s shoulder to guide him out of the room.
“Who let you out? I didn’t expect you to go wondering about on your own.” He peers at his bot from the corner of his eye, and wonders if perhaps Kyungbot actually went to look for him.
But that’s probably just his imagination, wishful thinking and all that.
Jiho loves his job. He loves it every day because it’s a different kind a world, the laboratory, a world in which you don’t always have to be handsome and cutesy to get by. Brains are just enough. But just like any other man, Jiho will have days that are hard, when reality sticks to him even as he enters the lab.
His girlfriend breaks up with him.
He wipes his cheeks - she wasn’t all that to begin with - but it’s a horrible thing, rejection, and when Kyung keeps blinking his big eyes at him, lifting his claw-like hand to push at Jiho’s computer, hoping to be re-programmed, Jiho just can’t take it. Not today. Like a big baby, he storms out, wiping at his cheeks and narrowly missing Snackbot who looks after him with his arm full of crisps. The bots don’t understand. They don’t have hearts, they don’t have souls, they don’t have pride and face to lose.
They’re just big metal puzzles of chips, buttons and wires, they don’t know anything. Feeling utterly abandoned and hurt, Jiho sinks down onto the stairs outside, and when the drama of heartbreak grabs at him, he thinks that no one could be lonelier.
Beep.
Jiho looks up, spotting Kyungbot by the door. He’s just standing there, waiting. And then, Jiho watches him roll over and tentatively nudge his arm.
Beep. Beeeeep.
The wiring of Jiho’s heart tangles up inside him and before he knows it, he’s laughing. He’s shooting sparks, not tears, as he reaches up and slides his hand into Kyung’s claw to haul himself up. “Thank you, Kyung,” he says, and walking inside, he thinks about the wonder of having a Real Best Friend.
End.