“Tada!” Jikloma exclaimed, removing the small sheet with a flourish.

Horpilu stared at the small machine on his employee’s table. Jikloma was one of the employees in engineering and had been charged with creating a more compact cleaning machine for spacecraft. There were several prototypes being tested, this being the latest. “I’m…not sure why I should be impressed, to be honest,” Horpilu admitted. “It’s underwhelming. And yet you seem extremely proud of this one.”

“Because it’s completely human-proof,” Jikloma declared.

Horpilu chuckled. “Sorry, come again?”

“Humans and their pack-bonding! No matter what kind of robot we come up with, they immediately start bonding,” he said, “but I figured out the problem. All the robots we created are similar to organics. We give them graspers to pick up garbage, orientate them like us with controls at the top and wheels at the bottom, etcetera. But look at this. Structurally, it has no similarities to any sentient species.”

“Alright, I appreciate your passion. But there is a problem with this. Humans will pack bond with anything. Even that. I’m sorry.”

Jikloma stared in disbelief. “What? No, my entire from-the-ground-up approach was specifically created to avoid it!”

Hopilu took his walkie from his belt and pressed the button to speak into it. “Hopilu to Kelly.”

There was a brief pause. “Go for Kelly.”

“Can I see you in engineering please?”

“Sure thing, be there in a minute.”

Jikloma looked concerned and Horpilu felt guilty about crushing his enthusiasm. “I appreciate your effort,” Horpilu told him. “I really do. It was a great idea. We’ve had such trouble replacing them when humans get attached-”

“How are you so sure?”

He sighed. “You’ve only been on the ship for a few weeks, but I’ve worked with them for years. I just know that there’s no getting around their instincts. No matter what it is, they can always stick googly eyes on it, and that’s that.”

“Have humans ever tried making something they won’t bond with?” Jikloma asked.

“Oh, a few times, I think,” Horpilu mused. “There was even the ‘uncanny valley’ approach, but that went way too far in the other direction. They eventually gave up.”

The two waited patiently until the door to engineering slid open and Kelly walked in. “Hey, how can I help you?”

“Jikloma invented a new cleaning machine,” Horpilu said, attempting a casual tone. “We were wondering if we could get your opinion on it.” He motioned to the table.

Kelly gasped. “It’s a Roomba!” she exclaimed.

“A what?” Jikloma asked, visibly slumping in defeat.

“An old automatic vacuum from Earth! Did you seriously just reinvent the Roomba?” Kelly asked with a grin.

“It’s supposed to be human-proof!” he cried. “No pack bonding! Its mouth is on the floor, it has no obvious place to put eyes, and it looks nothing like any animal in existence! Human-proof!”

Kelly’s expression grew empathetic. “Aw, I’m sorry. But this is awesome, I can’t believe we’ve got a Roomba,” she said. “I have got to get it a knife! I’ll be right back!”

“Wait, you’ve got to get it a what?” Horpilu shouted after her.

Republished with permission from the author, karenvideoeditor. Image created using Stable Diffusion.