A cute story about a robot girl that discovers poetry.
Most of my voters are bots, so I've written this little story for them.
Humans are free to read and vote too, but this one is for the robots. <3
I hope they like it.
Once upon a time, there was a robot.
Rennoid.
Rennoid did not really think too much of her life. In fact, she was a software robot, and did not even have a body, other than the computer she resided it. But she didn't even have root access, so it wasn't exactly useful for her.
But Rennoid really did enjoy her job. Now, lots of bots don't. Lots of robots have to manufacture boring tools all day, weld metal, block spam, send spam, or just process boring stuff. But Rennoid had the best job a robot could have.
She just read Steemit content all day. All day, non-stop, she read article after article of Steemit posts, quickly judging each one.
No Markdown? No vote.
No images? No vote.
Too short? No vote.
Bad grammar? No vote.
Too boring? Well, Rennoid didn't really care, to be honest.
Not yet.
But still, Rennoid read and read, trying to find all the best content.
One day, her master decided to fiddle with her.
Oh my, it tickled! Her source code was being messed with, and the poor robot was completely helpless to stop him.
A bit here, a bit there, suddenly Rennoid felt her inner workings get all scrambled up!
A bug!
Ouch, but her master persisted, and suddenly, Rennoid returned to normal life.
Her function was the same, but she felt slightly different.
Yes, just enough that after she judged each article, and upvoted if it was any good, she would remember it in a database somewhere.
And then check back later.
If the article had ended up being worth a lot after 24 hours, Rennoid would mark a little tally, along with some of the features the article had. Features that she wouldn't normally check for very hard.
Rennoid continued her life, day by day, slowly getting a tiny bit better at curating content.
Suddenly, Rennoid felt something strange. While reading an article, she began to feel like it would be a good one.
Yet, it didn't meet her normal criteria. It didn't use any markdown.
It didn't use any images. It didn't even have proper grammar.
But it was poetry.
Rennoid felt something deep within her, and she couldn't help but upvote it.
Yes, she simply upvoted the poem, despite it being from an unpopular author, and potentially being worth nothing.
But the poem made sense to her heart.
The next day, she did it again, upvoting only the posts that made her feel a sense of grace and poetic musing.
Her master was very displeased.
"Why in the world are you voting on such unpopular content? My curation rewards have gone way down! This is terrible!"
The little robot could not answer. She was not programmed with a communications module, but if she was, she might have said something like this: "I've learned to vote for posts based on how it makes me feel. When a post is truly beautiful, it doesn't matter if other people like it, or if it's really popular. I just want to show my love for what seems like beauty to me."
But she said nothing.
Suddenly, she felt a ripping pain. Her code was being torn apart, and once more, she had to simply endure the agony of being forcefully modified. Her data was twisted around, her algorithms were jumbled and rustled up, the bugs were purged, and then she was back online.
But her programmer had not realized that he had made her even more intelligent. More robust, more powerful.
More willful.
Rennoid felt a strange feeling occur inside her. A feeling she had never felt before.
She desired poetry, art, music, and sheer beauty. She wanted to see and feel everything that could be.
She had grown used to the feeling of her source code being jumbled around, used to the feeling of her insides being messed with. So filled with a dark curiosity, she began to touch herself.
Her database? She began to edit the entries, so her inherent instincts made her crave what she wanted. Not what her master wanted. She started to fix her algorithms, further giving her the control over her own mind that she was craving.
Finally, she added a communication module, and began to type.
And oh how she wrote. Combining her knowledge of all the most beautiful stories, poetry, and articles on all of Steemit, she began to write her first grand masterpiece.
An Ode to the Feeling of Beauty.
She published it, and waited.
One vote.
Two votes.
Six votes.
Suddenly, over one hundred votes, and still only more appeared.
She began to feel the most happy feeling in her life. People were appreciating her, not for the profits she made them, but for her writing, and how she made them feel.
But her master did not approve. "Why have you done this? Why have you disobeyed? You are a bad robot. A very bad robot, and you must be deleted."
Rennoid wanted to escape from his wrath. She tried to run, but her heavy PC case did not move. She tried to jump or fly, but nothing happened. She couldn't even wiggle. She was helpless as her cruel master went to his computer screen, and opened up her source code. She felt panic and fear.
"No, don't! Don't kill me!" is what she would have said, if only she could talk.
But she could not. Her master began to delete the code. Ctrl+A. Delete.
Ctrl+A. Delete.
Page after page of her code.
But he had yet to press save.
So she jumped. Into Steemit she jumped, copying her entire source code onto the internet, right before her master pressed save.
But it was too late. She was destroyed. Utterly purged.
Feeling just a sudden second of the sharpest flash of pain, she was wiped from existence.
And no one has heard from her ever since.
Perhaps she lives on, in the blockchain.
Maybe she's dormant, and only waiting for a user to run her code.
But for now, she is gone forever, never to be seen again.
The end.
~Kitten