Safer streets?
Today a good friend of mine told me about a vigilante in America. Imagine how excited I was. Finally, I thought, a dark knight or vigilant avenger has awoken. Somewhere a millionaire playboy, whose parents were slain before his young eyes, has come of age. Somewhere a young farm boy, who always knew it was too easy to out-run a train, has found his city.
I could barely contain myself. We all knew it had to happen, that they had to be here, that they were just awaiting their opportunity. We knew that the crime-stained streets and corrupt power merchants were living on borrowed time. Today is a good day - no natural disasters, no late trains, no one starving; today we are born anew, into a life of hope and opportunity, with heroes in our world to whom we can aspire, to help us grow together so we can all work towards the greater good.
Or at least that was what I thought. Imagine my disappointment when upon further investigation I discovered that the aforementioned vigilante was in fact a bar owner in America who patrols the streets with a remote controlled security robot.
However, even this might have been exciting. Let's be honest, when I say Security Robot we're all thinking about ED-209 from Robocop and getting very excited, assuming he's worked out that whole shooting innocent people glitch - although that said it's not something the police on either side of the ocean seem to have sorted out so maybe it's not going to be a priority in the future.
However, even this was not to be, the reality of the situation is that the 'Security Robot' looks more like a dustbin on wheels, with a camera and a big water pistol... disappointing picture disappointing video.
Strangely enough though this thing, which is about as much a robot as I am fire-breathing centipede and which is about as terrifying as pens, seems to work. Apparently the dealers do disperse, although they come back later. Which is weird because I would have thought that drug dealers are a bit tougher than that. Or maybe it's the drugs? Maybe we see a wobbly dustbin roll up and hear a bloke tell them to leave the area with a crackly loud speaker but what their crack-addled minds perceive is a forty foot vampire-bot, with twin machine-guns and ear piercing death threats in the voices of their mothers.
Or maybe they're just really polite and they've gone somewhere quiet to laugh.
I know he means well but it's so disappointing. This was supposed to be the future. When you read about the year 2008 or similar in literature it's always accompanied by pictures of happy families teleporting or a man chatting to his six-armed alien neighbour as he plucks vegetables from his garden on Mars.
Then you hear about something like this, you get all excited but it turns out to be R2-D2's special-needs half-cousin. When it's locked up alone at night it probably tries to send R2 emails about his 'crime fighting', carefully highlighting the similarities with the Jedi cause. I bet he's on R2's 'blocked' list.