Onegee has run away. I'm pretty sure of it. I can't afford to deal with this right now.
I don't think he was stolen. He was working on a vaporator and I quickly went back to the house to get some parts. It only took a few minutes. I came back and he was gone. Just the one set of footprints. No tracks, no treads, no other signs of him or anyone else.
I followed the tracks for a while, but the wind kicked up and erased them before I had gone very far. He seemed to have been going in a straight line, towards nothing in particular. I had to complete the adjustments on the vaporator myself. My hands aren't completely useless, but it does take me a lot longer, and it was dark by the time I got home.
I asked around and even posted a reward, but I am not getting my hopes up.
Droids, especially the newer models, typically do not run away from their owners. It is more common in older models, not only because of the older technology, but also because wear and tear makes them unreliable. Usually, it is a memory problem. The droid thinks it belongs to someone else - a previous owner.
Sometimes, ownership isn't transferred properly, and then the droid isn't sure who it belongs to. Or, a previous owner may have uploaded illegal programming which causes the droid to run away from all subsequent owners, or something like that.
I've had Onegee for a long time, and he doesn't seem to miss the Jawas, and he doesn't even remember his previous owner (probably thanks to the Jawas), so there's only one other plausible explanation, which I only just now thought of.
He's probably gone mad. That's very rare nowadays, but it's not impossible. A mad droid tends to take off without provocation and then behave unpredictably - very often violently - until its power runs down or it is destroyed.
I can't imagine Onegee being violent, but that's the thing with mad droids. There's no telling what they might do. If he is mad, and if he does something terrible, I will be liable for whatever happens, because I am the registered owner.
Uh-oh.
I wonder if madness is a known problem with the One-Onegee. If it is, I may (possibly) be eligible for a rebate or something. I'll email the manufacturer, but it may take a while to get a reply, so I guess I need to go back into town and report him.
I was going out tomorrow anyway, to vote for a new mayor. The existing mayor, a guy named Kahless, claims to have been a great warrior in his own time and galaxy, but on Tatooine he is just a boob, in my opinion. He has been mayor for eight years, each one worse than the one before it. I am going to get up extra-early to make sure I get my vote in. You betcha.
8 comments:
I was literally shocked when I heard a while back that your mayor was Kahless.
I can't imagine how such a guy would get elected. The citizens of that city must not be familiar with his name and reputation.
His original campaign slogan was "at least I'm not a Hutt." It was effective at the time.
Nowadays he deals with the gangsters by pretending they don't exist. Fair enough, since they don't seem to know he's alive either.
I don't know what "Kah" means on his world, but I suspect it means something like "effectiveness." I am hoping that he will soon also be jobless.
Good luck with your droid. I do like my dy14-af, but as I've mentioned before, I think, it's really just a housekeeping droid and I haven't had it very long, so I don't know if its performance degrades over time.
Good luck with your mayor as well. It's amazing how, when things get bad, almost anything looks better. :-P
We just agreed two to one that we're willing to take our chances with "anything." We figure a stranger can probably take better care of things than the guy who's been screwing them up for the past eight years.
Sorry to hear about the loss of the droid. But, congrats on the "loss of the 'Less." Your town deserves to shine brightly in its suns. (Unless that messes with communications and such.)
So Kahless lost? Was this basically just a vote of "no confidence"? I've heard that removing your officials that way and installing the others can have bad consequences.
I think they need to install tracking beacons in the droids for occasions such as these. Perhaps and insidious shutdown mechanism if they don't connect to a particular terminal within a set amount of time?
Well, Bri, if voting Kahless out of office causes us to get a few days of rain, that'll work out okay for me.
Newer droids do have more failsafes, and if you're really paranoid you can also fit them with restraining bolts and other gizmos. After all these years I didn't think I'd have to worry about something like that.
I had hoped to do a follow-up post by now but haven't had time.
I actually remember Kahless vaguely from my Junior Achievement days in Fall River. I don't remember liking or disliking him. I just remember him.
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