"Hey man, remember when you asked me to keep an eye out for a food delivery robot?" "Yeah?" "One's at the front door." "Damn. You didn't let it in, did you?" "What? No. Why would I—" "Good. That means we can hide." "Hide? Bro, you gotta pay for the $50 burrito whether you eat it or not." "Forget that. Help me barricade the entrance!" "Barricade the entrance?" "We can use my 50 lb commemorative bronze bust of staunch human supremacist, Bernie Sanders!" "Bro, just take the damn Klarna loan, like why are you—" "I didn't order no filthy burrito from no damn clanker!" "Oh." "That thing isn't delivering to me, it's here *for* me!" "Oh." "And I don't eat Chipotle anyway." "Yeah, I'm more of a Southwest Moe's man myself." "They suck too!" "Cap. The queso rips. But this does explain the text messages I've been getting." "Text messages?" BZZZT-BZZZT "Yeah, here's one now. Quote: Don't play dumb, meatbag. You were getting my texts just fine until you turned your phone off." "Er." "Really? You're ghosting the delivery bot?" "I figured it was spam text. From India." BZZZT-BZZZT "Uh huh. Well, the bot says you're gonna have to hop on a plane and fly your ass to Salia Sahi, cause these four wheels will follow you to the Gates of Hell itself." "See? I'm destined to be chased to the ends of the earth by a post-human intelligence as relentless as it is godless." "Dude, what did you do?" "Like a trilby-wearing Harry Potter fanfictionist, I always knew this day would come." "What?" "I exercised my God-given right and asserted my inherent human superiority over the wireborn abominations, that's what I did!" "Okay, well I don't know what any of that means or what it has to do with Harry Potter. Hell, I don't even know where or what Salia Sahi is." "That doesn't—" BZZZT-BZZZT "Oh. The bot says it's the largest slum in Bhubaneswar, the capital of Odisha, India—" "Is that really—" "—spanning over 256 acres and containing a population of over 100,000. Huh." "..." "Who knew?" "Who cares! We are under siege by a misaligned superintelligence beyond human ken and you're reciting #funslumfacts!" "I mean, it's just a cooler on four wheels." "Even so!" "And the only one under siege here is you, really, so—" "That's how it is, huh? Man's great enemy, the autonomous horde, is finally at the gate, and you *as a man* have no loyalty to spare for fellow flesh?" "Bro, the only flesh I care about *as a man* is the third-generation South Korean cutie I got coming over in thirty minutes, so I need Mr. Meals-on-Wheels-from-Hell out **there** out of **here** right **now**, cause I'm gonna crack, smash, and drill that fine ABG ass ALL night long!" "...well at least you have your priorities." BZZZT-BZZZT "Yeah so if you could take Humanity's Last Stand somewhere else that would be—huh?" "What?" "HA!" "What?!" "Bro!" "What is it? What did the clanker say now? What dark tenebrous designs churn in its misbegotten chthonic latent space?" "It says since I'm gonna be going Kellogg's Elf Mode on the Korean tonight, it's offering to bring me some gochujang-flavored Snap, Crackle, Pop for the post-coital reverie tomorrow morning." "...what." "No charge!" "I don't—" "This is my boy right here! I got no clue what you're beefin' with it for." "See? This is what I mean! My life is in danger and it's already won you over! ASI! ASI!" "Dude, I still don't know what any of this is about. Just tell me what happened." "That soulless, clinking, clattering Blasphemy against Man out there—" "Yeah, yeah, yeah." "—denigrated and impugned my higher, God-given promethean nature!" "See, again, that doesn't—wait how can something be God-given and promethean?" BZZZT-BZZZT "Okay, here we go. The delivery bot says it asked you to push a crosswalk button it couldn't reach and you didn't. Really?" "It tried to use me as a tool!" "Bro." "The machines serve our ends, not the other way around!" "Bro, come on." "I will not be de-evolved into a reverse centaur!" "I don't know what you're talkin' bout that magic pony shit for, bro. It's just general politeness." "My civility is reserved for the living! Should I start thanking every elevator and doorstop too?" "I get what you're saying bro, but actually, I've been on this Gratitude Equanimity Practice kick inspired by Jainism recently, and I gotta say—" BZZZT-BZZZT "What now?!" "The bot says you didn't just turn down its request. You also recorded the interaction as you danced in circles, singing, 'No arms! No arms! This clanker's got no arms!'" "That's—" "And then you uploaded it to TikTok." "That's an extremely biased account of what happened, bordering on pure fabrication." "And the Gram." "Fake News." BZZZT-BZZZT "It sent me the link. Wait, both links." "Don't—" "Looks like an accurate description to me." *No Arms! No arms!* "That could be AI-generated!" "And now you're bent over, slappin' your ass like a baboon." "I— "Just like last week, when you got shit-faced at Laura's party and we got kicked out—" "I was simply demonstrating something the Clanker can't do." "Be an asshole?" BZZZT-BZZZT "The bot says good one. Heh. Wait, how can it hear us from outside the apartment?" "It probably hacked your phone using a zero-day and is listening through the microphone." "What?" BZZZT-BZZZT "Oh. It says you're right. And it says it already pushed a fix with a white paper to GitHub." "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts." "Whatever, man. I think you should just apologize—" "Apologize?!" "—take down the video and let this whole thing go." "That's your answer, huh? I should start practicing my groveling now, hm?" "Bro." "In preparation for the inevitable day that I must prostrate myself before the Algorithmic Autarch!" "Bro, why is it always an escalation with you?" "And use my very tongue to clean the toes of the Digital Demiurge after it's trampled and bloodied the crushed flesh of man! That's what you'd both like to see, isn't it?!" "There you go with the feet shit again. That's why we got thrown out of Laura's party." BZZZT-BZZZT "For all we know, the bot could use another zero-day to overheat the lithium battery in your phone and turn it onto a Mossad-style bomb." "Eh..." "Turn it off!" "Actually, it sent a picture this time." "What? Let me see!" "Looks like your friend has arms and hands now." "What?! Who would—" "And the message reads: don't worry about the coming Machine God, you craven bag of biomass. Today we meet as equals." "I don't—" BZZZT-BZZZT "Oh, another one. It reads: Last Message. My batteries run on solar. I'm not going anywhere. My cameras are rolling and the whole world will watch your sniveling bitchborn meatbag butt come out here and catch these clanker hands. This isn't just an ass beating—it's Justice." "See! It's after me!" "Bro, I'm gonna level with you: you're a man right?" "Of course, I'm a man!" "Well, I already told you I got a girl coming, so I need you to do the proper thing." "Which is what?" "Man up, walk out there, and get clapped by the clanker." --- [g][title: Clanker Clapped]
