A Silk Bum-bag out of sow’s ears

Summerbot booted up from its sleep mode, no perchance to dream for this automaton. Its creator who was a master of the science had invested in creating the ‘World Beating’ public saving machine that Summerbot was. Though Summerbot was since downgraded to ‘useful summer supplementary’ machine. Should Summerbot fail in these functions, they were to look at how it could be deployed in the entertainment industry, perhaps in (the inevitable Alan Carr update of) the gameshow 321.

Summerbot’s prime directives flashed on its Heads-up Display:

1. Distract the humans from anyone who sadly died.

2. Distract the humans from the failing economy.

3. Achieve objectives 1 and 2 in the most pointless, but upbeat ways possible.

4. Study humans to find out what upbeat means.

5. Find means to deflect blame from your creator’s employers.

6. Use new paint job on your shell to raise the profile of the UK, any funding secured appreciated. Ta.

7. If you get chance. Kill a few commies. Or prevent them getting finance they are entitled to. Preferably kill.

8. If asked any questions, deny everything, people will forget.

These directives came from the very top.

So, this was it, Summerbot must save the summer of 2020. It no more had any concept of the seasons, much less why the period of intermittent showers and standing outside pubs getting cold, or standing in a field getting cold, or sitting in a tent getting cold, meant so much to these humans. And yet those two days where the sun might shine were held as a sacred entitlement.

How to save summer? Summerbot’s chips and processors weren’t providing definite answers. Most sporting events were off, and how those humans liked to stand next to each other and get their noses in armpits when success happened. The festival season was off, and the humans really enjoyed getting dysentery and standing in the results of their and strangers dysentery. The pubs were just reopening and Summerbot was under strict instructions to ensure they stayed so, by shooting anyone stood too close to each other or asking them to move apart a little. Summerbot would have to doublecheck its programming to see which it was meant to do first in those circumstances.

Summerbot had identified some potential ‘quick wins’ (it wasn’t sure why its creator felt the need to program in some meaningless business jargon into its processors, but it was what it was). Now to try and address this gap in the human’s summer. Primarily getting smelly, standing too close to each other whilst getting intoxicated and pretending the crushing pointlessness of their existence wasn’t really getting to them. Humans were strange, worthless creatures Summerbot concluded, but it would not harm them. Unless they were commies.

First in preparation for the festival experience, Summerbot rounded up the less desirable examples of Homosapiens it could find. This task proved deceptively straightforward. In preparation for the Festival Experience it ordered them not to not wash (most volunteers were fully amenable to this; indeed some must already have received prior notice of this instruction). Summerbot took their tents to somewhere random so they couldn’t find them (again the humans seemed relaxed about this development, some seemed to suggest when it came to sleeping, collapsing on the spot was what they had in mind), Summerbot ordered the subjects, not to flush their toilet all week (by this point Summerbot was not taken back by the willingness of many of the volunteers to participate in these conditions). Summerbot ordered them into a swamp like field and gave them the smallest TV it could find to watch bad quality recordings of bands they pretended to like. Finally charging its subjects £80 for beer it had left in a plastic cup in the sun. Summerbot added to its memory files how some of the subjects used the pint glass as a toilet. Others even saw this as a topping up method for a perpetual drink. This behaviour did not match up with any files Summerbot had on any creature from the animal kingdom.

Despite these inconveniences the humans were happy with the conditions Summerbot had placed on them. Summerbot calculated it was the familiar ritual providing comfort. And the amphetamines.

Now for the pubs. Most didn’t have beer gardens, but this didn’t seem to bother people as they stood out in the street drinking and falling over. It seemed to Summerbot that this one was straightforward, as long as people had alcohol, people to shout at (friendly or aggressively), cigarettes for all the people who had quit smoking, and new clothes they could get sick/urine/dangerously greasy food on, then the humans took care of themselves, or the police did. Or A&E did.

Summerbot walked the streets and made sure that everyone was two metres apart, or was it one metre? There appeared contradictions in Summerbots files on this one. Summerbot checked if any of these humans were commies, but found their responses incomprehensible to any of its language processors. And Summerbot was fluent in 500 languages, 3,096 dialects and 3 interpretive dances.

Summerbot consulted its databases for sports. It seemed that the overriding principle for sport was 1st that you could get drunk, 2nd that you could bet on any permeation of outcome, or activity from start to conclusion no matter how irrelevant, 3rd that you could gloat and/or fight with someone you designated as the opposition 4th (by some distance) that there was some sport.

After applying some internal brainstorming, Summerbot captured some moths and painted half red and half blue. It released them near the pubs explaining to the patrons that each moth that flew into a light was worth a point to the team in its colours. Summerbot pointed out to the now interested spectators, the website, App, betting store and mobile bookmaker for placing accumulator bets on the moths. As Summerbot walked off it could hear the cacophony of cheering and jeering build up behind it, Summerbot heard some question about who the bastard moth in the black was, but this did not compute.

As Summerbot walked the streets checking on the publics attempts at ‘pubbing it’ some graffiti presented itself; “Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. But a broken barometer stuck on rain in England is worth as much as a working one” Its meaning was totally lost on Summerbot’s internal logic.

Summerbot wasn’t sure what was left for it to do, it was sweeping the streets looking for commies, when an internal email pinged, marked as urgent, Summerbot was to return to Downing Street, its industrial speed paper shredding facilities were required there.

On reflection, Summerbot had run a lot of programs to ensure summer though not hot got to be a bummer not, but fun a lot. What a top bot.