David Strenhorn



When robots started to become commonplace, Congress, in its great wisdom, mandated that every robot be hardwired with the Three Laws Of Robotics. For decades, these three basic rules have maintained class order in our society and kept the number of robot-caused deaths to a minimum. We all know these three laws:


1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

That certainly makes sense. No one wants a gore-bot to twist someone into a pretzel or stand aside and watch a human get hit by a Greyhound Shuttle.


2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except when such orders would conflict with the First Law.

This, too, makes sense. Robots are manufactured to perform the actions requested by their owners. If we didn't want that, we'd all buy SteveJobsbots.


3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Uh, hello? A robot is a big investment. It only makes sense to protect humans from possible protocol violations. We can't have every robot who doesn't like his assigned duties throwing himself off the Golden Gate Overpass, can we?


Frankly, I'd be happy if these three rules were all that was necessary to ensure happy robot-human coexistence. Unfortunately, there's been a huge oversight. There's nothing in those laws to keep those machines out of my wife's coochie!

I'm not asking that we draft a law to prevent robots from manually stimulating with owner consent. If people want their wives fingered by their bots, that's fine. I wasn't born yesterday. To each his own. I'm not asking you to forbid robots from fingering every wife, just mine.


Sure, I can tell the robots from the neighborhood, "Hey, don't finger my wife!" and, under the Second Law Of Robotics, they'd have to comply. But what about the thousands of robots I've never met? The moment my back is turned, odds are my wife's going to get robo-fingered. It doesn't matter if the robot doesn't have fingers—she'll find some sorta antenna, spring, or crankshaft, and—boom—that robot will get her off.

Here's something I don't understand: We can develop a robot sturdy enough to mine the Saturnine moon Enceladus, strong enough to withstand the fierce ionic winds and burst through the 40 meters of scorched onyx that covers the planet, and smart enough to collect the vital crystals from amidst all the worthless rock, but the designers at USR labs can't figure out how to stop them from finger-banging my wife?


Do robotics engineers have any idea how much it breaks my heart to know that my wife's vulva has been probed by hundreds of metal phalanges? Are they trying to ruin my marriage?!

Good people at USR Labs, I urge you: Add a fourth item of protocol to the programming that guides the models in your next rollout. I want these automatons to get it into their intricate positronic brains that some parts of the human body are off limits, no matter how much human women plead. I, as well as thousands of other husbands around the world, would greatly appreciate it.