CULTURE
The Intergalactic
Space Chronicle
The Robot in the Royal Basement
By Goldy Fox
The British Royal family; some love them, some loath them, but everyone is fascinated by them. They are, after all, a family that has grown up in the public eye. Endless movies, television shows, and virtual realities have been made about them.
It was especially interesting to see how robots were incorporated into the Royal Palace, after so much resistance from the royals. One of those more early android editions was Polly Pricket. You remember her, the lovable pink robot that zipped through Palace Gardens picking glowing flowers for every member of the family.
Princess Charlotte, who found a kindred spirit in the joyful robot, especially loved her. After an unfortunate malfunction in her circuits, which caused poor Polly to hug everyone in sight several times over, the palace decided to dispose of her. It seems she was a bit more affectionate than what the royals were comfortable with.
But Princess Charlotte had her servant secretly dig her out of the bin and restart her in the palace basement. The Princess would visit Polly every day and they would have such fun together.
When Princess Charlotte passed away there was no one to look after the poor bot.
For decades Polly was alone in the basement, forgotten with so many other objects. But Polly Pricket was not your regular robot, she was designed to bring joy and that certainly did not exclude "self" joy. In time, Polly unpacked all the old paintings left below and hung them on the walls. She decorated the room with anything she could find, which included so many random gifts strangers had sent to the royals. Strange gadgets, hats, knit scarfs, you name it. She created a very eclectic interior design that was very happy and full of abundance just like her.
One day she found an old computer someone had left in a storage box and soon found that she could connect to the whole wide world with it. Polly downloaded any piece of information she could find and learned every move of every dance out there.
Though she was physically alone, she never felt alone for she wrote positive kind comments to everyone on the Internet and people would write back. Soon she gained a following who encouraged her to create V-tube videos. Of course, she had to download programming software and create her own 360-degree camera. But with all the gadgets she had collected that would not be a problem.
As the years flew by Polly Pricket had become somewhat of a Royal in her own right, but she had never left the basement. It wasn’t until the great-grandson of Princess Charlotte’s servant, Martin, found Polly’s famous ‘V-Tube’ channel that he realized, she was the robot his great grandfather had written about so fondly in his biography.
Polly was then freed from the basement to a new world. One where a robot such herself could be independent of humans. Though this new reality was so very different from what she remembered, the people of this new world knew her and loved her for whatever she was.
