|
For several years, a group of robots
with had been getting together every week in order to
play a friendly game of poker and to get away from their
robotic wives for the evening. It was usually a night
that was full of cigar smoking, shots of hydraulic fluid
and a little bit of metallic bonding. For the most
part, things were kept rather light and it was not
usually necessary to police the game because they were
really only playing for chips, not for nuts and bolts.
On occasion, however, things got a little bit strange
and this week was one of the strangest.
Nobody really knows how it started or which of the
robots is to blame, but one of them brought a computer
virus into the room that quickly spread from robot to
robot. At first, there were just a few quirks that were
recognized in some of the robots. For example, Robocop
kept beeping and just couldn't seem to stop. At one
point, he even had to excuse himself from the game table
because he was beeping so much that it became
distracting to the other players. Not only that, nobody
enjoys getting beeped on.
XR419 was the next to be affected and his ability to
compute mathematical skills, which is often legendary,
was reduced to basic math that was only carried out to 2
decimal places. He began losing chips so quick that it
was alarming to the other players, and as they begin to
manifest their own computer virus symptoms, they became
less and less cognizant of what was going on in the
room. As a matter of fact, many of them thought that it
was the small amount of hydraulic fluid that had already
passed between them.
By the time they finally decided to call it quits,
Captain Squeaky had almost totally frozen up and two of
the other robots had to carry them into his room in
order to oil his joints. Fortunately, they had decided
to play poker at his house that particular evening so
was not necessary for them to call him a hovercab. It
was at that point that they decided to call the doctor,
a friendly small town robot who still made house calls.
Dr. Droid was at the house within about a half hour and
it didn't take long for him to recognize the fact that a
serious computer virus was being passed around the
room. He was able to contain the virus rather quickly
by super heating their circuitry boards in order to
drive the virus out of the elements. Fortunately, that
was not too much damage that was caused by this unusual
virus but it did teach them a valuable lesson.
At that point, there was a no beeping rule that was
established at the poker table. Beeping is rather rude,
anyway, and it is a perfect way for one of these viruses
to be passed along. After that odd night of playing
poker, another computer virus never entered into the
room.
|
