🦺 Haley

Welcome to the 29th edition of Safe For Work.

Today a story inspired by I, Robot. And an entertaining work, safety, engineering Instagram we discovered this week at the end.

I’ve been rereading I, Robot lately-- you know, Asimov?

“The robot spread his strong hands in a deprecatory gesture, ‘I accept nothing on authority. A hypothesis must be backed by reason, or else it is worthless— and it goes against all the dictates of logic to suppose that you made me.’”

I’ve been reading it at bedtime to Haley. She doesn’t understand a word of it, but she likes me to read to her, it doesn’t matter-- the more, the longer, the better. She wants more than a picture book. And who knows, maybe it actually is seeping its way in somehow. Children are children are children.

“‘I say this in no spirit of contempt, but look at you! The material you are made of is soft and flabby, lacking endurance and strength, depending for energy upon the inefficient oxidation of organic material.’”

I remember this story-- “Reason”-- I read this one myself when I was maybe ten or twelve and older enough to understand it. I remember it quite vividly, actually, and it comes back to me so smoothly as I read it to Haley. Two men on a faraway space station doing some very important job-- whatever-- and they get a new robot to come help them, and its serial-number starts with the letters “QT”-- so they call it “Cutie”. I remember this.

“‘Periodically you pass into a coma and the least variation in temperature, air pressure, humidity, or radiation intensity impairs your efficiency. You are makeshift.’”

Cutie goes crazy, maybe. Cutie thinks it's impossible for the two men-- Powell and Donovan-- to have created him.

“I, on the other hand, am a finished product. I absorb electricity and utilize it with an almost one hundred percent efficiency. I am composed of strong metal, am continuously conscious, and can stand extremes of environment easily. These are facts which, with the self-evident proposition that no being can create another being superior to itself, smashes your silly hypothesis to nothing.”

“No being can create another being superior to itself.”

I shut the book and I kiss Haley on the forehead and I turn out the light and I step out into the hallway and I hope with all the weight and pulp of my bones that it’s not true-- that Cutie is wrong.

“No being can create another being superior to itself.”

I crawl into bed next to Amanda, who is already three-quarters asleep-- but that’s fine. One-quarter of her brain is usually more than enough for anything, or at least my silly questions. “Do you think I’m doing alright?” I ask her.

“Mmm,” she answers.

“Am I really supposed to be a dad? I mean, I still trip on the sidewalk. I bring home the wrong milk. I rear-ended a Porsche last week, and just drove away before anyone saw. I leave the stove on. I leave the fridge open.”-- a long breath. “...I’m probably going to get fired next week, Amanda. Laid off. Whatever. The way things are going… all the hard times that we’ve had… the times that I’ve shouted, or haven’t listened… is a person like that really supposed to be a dad?”

“Mmm,” she answers.

“Perhaps Cutie was right— and he was only an inferior being with a made-to-order memory and a life that had outlived its purpose.”

I watch my daughter on the floor the next morning, on her knees. In one hand, she is holding a plastic banana, which looks a little too much like the real thing. She is holding something that in three or four years or maybe tomorrow she is going to get the idea to put into the fruit bowl, and I’m going to be tired because I am, and I won't get any less, and I’ll pick it up and I’ll try to peel it.

For some reason, when I imagine myself picking it up, though, I don’t imagine myself trying to peel it, but instead just popping it into my mouth or the blender, peel and all, and biting down on plastic— I imagine that because that's what I imagine Haley imagining when she decides to do it, and I imagine her peering around the edge of a door frame at the height of my knee or maybe a little taller by then, and giggling so madly that she gets snot bubbles and nearly falls over.

In her other hand, for now, down on the floor, she is holding one of my action figures from when I was also five years old, that my dad has been holding onto for longer than anyone probably ever pictured it being kept, cheap mold-poured plastic that it is. Half of the paint, or maybe paint, has already rubbed off. None of the facial features are recognizable. Haley is smashing it together with the plastic banana in a form of play which everyone has done and which no one has ever been able to later justify. I sit on the couch and I watch her, and I think about what Cutie said.

He must have been wrong, mustn't he? “Can’t create something superior to itself”-- or however he’d said it— but there she is, isn't she? Right there on the floor. And here I am. Bigger than her and stronger than her and with a lot more knowledge under my belt, which I guess would put it in my legs for some reason— and in every way that matters, she is completely and entirely and totally better than me, isn't she?

Haley puts down the plastic banana and action figure, and she reaches for her crayons. For a moment, I start to flinch-- but then, just as quickly, I relax again. The lower parts of all the walls in the house are already covered with unmeasurable swirls and jagged lines of “Good-Luck Green” and “Radical Red” and most of all the bafflingly named “Punctual Pink”; what are a few more? They’ll all wash off just the same with a mop and bucket when we eventually sell the house, however many layers she scrawls.

Or maybe I’ll just peel down all the wallpaper before we go and frame it.

Maybe I’ll sell it to a museum. That’s where it belongs, I think. There’s not a girl in the world who can scrawl on walls quite like my Haley; shouldn’t people be able to go and see it? It would be a crime to keep it all hidden away in here like this.

But for now, it’s just mine— just ours— and that makes me smile, too.

"Punctual Pink”… maybe that one is just always there when you need it. Right on time.

I think about missed birthdays and concerts. Little-league games. Missed graduations— “I’m so sorry honey, I really wanted to go, but I was just swamped at the office.”— “I’m so sorry honey, the meeting just kept going on and on."

“I’m so sorry honey, we just can’t afford it. Maybe next year.”

I glance over to Amanda in the other room, hard at work. She’s a third of the way through her day, and halfway through the coffee I made her two hours ago. She wants to finish early tonight, and I think she will. I’ve seen how she gets when they won’t let her, so they’ll let her.

There’s another story in I, Robot-- the first one in the collection, actually-- called “Robbie”, about a little girl with a robot for a babysitter.

“Gloria’s father was rarely home in the daytime except on Sunday.”

And maybe Cutie was right, I think. Maybe it is impossible for a being to create another being superior to itself.

Not without a little help, at least.

Fun discovery in safety content

how.things.actually.made

View more on Instagram

See you next week as we continue to kick off August’s theme of robotics and automation. Stay safe.