Welcome back dear readers to what is fast becoming a staple for our modest tech periodical, another update on Bonabot. Some people’s favourite android inhabited by the spirit of a long deceased French emperor. [for those of you who’ve written in to state that you are not one of these people and in fact, hate these segments, your concern is duly noted and disregarded. I don’t want to write about innovations in fan technology ever again.] As you may have gathered from the headline, he’s been very… active.
The past week has been a busy one for both me and Bonabot. The local children have not tired of him one bit. Their love for him grows. In exchange for their unrelenting obedience, he joins them in games of run-outs and delights them by driving full speed into car wingmirrors and cackling wildly.
Not only has he captured the imagination of the local youth, he’s established a cult following of all ages in our neighbourhood. An exciting and in many ways deeply concerning development, given what has happened since his second venture out of my house.
‘La Grande Armée’, as Bonabot likes to refer to his followers, has been joining him on his daily jaunts around the local area. These have mostly involved brisk marches to the high street where he’ll wave to passers-by as if they were his subjects and stop and marvel in stunned astonishment at cars. Every 45 minutes or so, he forgets he’s learned what cars are and the cycle starts again.
These trips have not been without incident, a few mishaps have taken place, including the rather important thing that I’ll come to in due course. On one occasion he screamed ‘CHARGE’ and led a gaggle of excited children stampeding through a park at some now rather distressed ducks. He came to an abrupt stop, then turned and trundled away as if nothing had happened.
On one of our walks down the high street, he rather sternly ordered me into Sainsburys to fetch 8,000 barrels of finest wine, sourced from all corners of France for the upcoming campaign in Egypt. I wasn’t entirely sure what to do, both making that purchase and disobeying the general seemed out of the question. So, I bought him a Ribena. Fortunately, he seemed happy enough mashing the carton against his face until it was smeared with sticky, red liquid.
And then came, the rather important thing. It’s vital to note that we at 1s and 0s pride ourselves on our impartiality. We were commended for how subjective we were in reporting on the ‘8G-gerbil suicide’ panic and the scandal involving a junior minister doing unspeakable things with the WayBack Machine. So it is with deep regret that I write the P word. Politics. Bonabot has gotten himself involved in local politics.
It is of course, local election season. Early on Thursday evening, Bonabot and his troupe came upon a community hall that happened to be hosting a hustings event. Perhaps he could hear the muffled debate or maybe he could smell discourse in the air (the latter is rather unlikely. He’s caught fire at least twice and the horrendous smell of melting filthy plastic hasn’t alerted him to his imminent peril), something, compelled Bonabot to go inside.
A motorised wheelie bin followed by a gang of suburbians entering halfway through a very lightly attended local governance event, inevitably causes a stir. At first there was stunned silence broken by a rather uninterested moderator trying unvaliantly to bring order to proceedings. Bonabot wheeled himself to the podium at the front of the hall as if none of the other candidates had been there. Despite two of them asking “What the bloody hell is going on?”
We all stood quietly in nervous anticipation. He cleared his throat. Which was strange as he doesn’t actually possess one. His opening line blindsided everyone in the room like a tram hitting a watermelon that had been minding its own business. “Women are nothing but machines for producing children.” It was in that moment that I learned why the word ‘flabbergasted’ had ever been coined.
Now, reader, before your jaw drops all the way into your lap, it’s worth remembering two things. Firstly, Bonabot does not mean the bulk of what he says, he mostly regurgitates the numerous quotes rattling around in his head indiscriminately and secondly, he is both from the distant past and the internet. It is unfair to retroactively apply our modern values to either of these places. Even if tropes of their culture would seem misogynistic by today’s standard.
To my surprise, the comment was received rather well. After a brief moment of yet more stunned silence, a woman whose hair had been dyed a very progressive neon colour rose from her seat. I feared either a thorough telling off, or a chair being hurled at monsieur Bonaparte’s cylindrical head, but she voiced her support.
“He’s right! That’s exactly how they see us! These politicians go on about equal rights, representation and support for our cause, but we all know the truth. They don’t see us as equals and they don’t want to. We’re still ruled by Victorian patriarchs at heart who want nothing more from us than to serve them as maids and baby factories. I’d take a robot as leader any day of the week over one of those sexist Oxbridge fossils!”
A cheer went up around the room. Bonabot gave a satisfied hum and continued his speech.
“Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.”
An immediate cry of endorsement came from a bald man in cheap spectacles and high waisted trousers, brandishing a newspaper as he spoke.
“The tin geezer’s right! Them lot in the mainstream media, all toffs with friends at the top, they ain’t got a crumb of honesty between ‘em.”
Bonabot’s incoherent speech went on for some time. Each erratic line winning him yet more support. One member of the crowd even managed to construe a garbled comment about military logistics into a damning indictment of the state of bin collections. The other candidates sat through the whole thing, timidly squirming in their chairs. Except for the candidate for the Resident’s Association. He joined in as one of our metallic friend’s most vocal fanatics after about line 3 of the speech.
Dear reader! What had I just witnessed!? Was this nothing more than a few locals letting off steam before going to the polls to tick the same box they always do, or has Napoleon once again begun to change the political landscape?
At the end of the rousing speech, I turned to one of my neighbours, and asked if this was all as mad as it seemed or was it a stroke of genius on the part of a badly coded robotic Frankenstein? Bonabot heard me and offered an answer himself. “From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.”
I would love to end this piece on that note, but I have to impress upon our readers a request for donations. Local authorities have advised me that I must foot the bill for all the broken wingmirrors and it’s put a substantial dent in the magazine’s coffers.
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