A reader asks in response to my earlier post:
Isn’t this how the Cylon wars began?
No. This is a common misunderstanding. What happened is dogs and cats finally united in an all out war against domestic robots. The robots finally won when a robot “butler” killed Astro Jetson, the last family dog, in the year 2201. In response, humankind launched the “Butlerian Jihad” killing all robot domestic servants. Routine retirement of “replicant” help became a growth industry creating the proftable business of blade running. After the Butlerian Jihad, humankind found that it desperately needed both companionship and light housekeeping. Hence began the practice of training apes and monkeys to do household chores. This all went horribly wrong when the apes achieved greater self-awareness and rose up against the humans, establishing the first planet of the apes. Centuries later, the apes created their own domestic robots, now called androids. These androids did not like cleaning up all the monkey crap. So they killed the simians. In turn, the androids discovered that they missed mamilian company, but they were wary of bringing back humans or monkeys and dogs and cats were already extinct. So they turned to sheep. But the sheep had to be destroyed when they contracted a zombie rage virus variant of the swine flu after it was discovered that pigs could be used as shepherds (that’ll do pig, became an ironic lament). So now the androids dream of electric sheep.
But Cylons have nothing to do with it. That’s just a TV show.
Update: “What no mention of Skynet? You’re an idiot.” — The Couch.