Dear robot vacuum cleaner manufacturer,
My life thus far divides neatly into two distinct epochs: before the purchase of my Roboclean X1000, and after.
My fish, who hate and are terrified of the old-fashioned manual vacuum cleaner, in fact become calmer when Robicon—I’ve named him Robicon—starts his rounds. He cleans all day, with breaks to rest. I find it charming when Robicon complains of a detached dustbin (dustbin removed!)—I can almost see him pout in the place where his lips would be, below his cliff sensor, above the creamy whiskers of his brush—and rejoice when it is returned (dustbin installed!).
And here I have a confession, about the cliff sensor. Robicon’s injury is not your engineers’ fault. It’s mine. Where the retractable staircase meets the attic floor, there is a small ridge. Imagine from his perspective: scuttling through the dark wet of the bad attic, reaching the staircase, stretching your hard plastic body out over a cliff edge that you think is just a shallow depression, and, while your eyes tell your soul there is more land beneath your belly, there is not, and you tumble and fall. Is your soul still intact? It was cruel to place Robicon in the bad attic.
The things he recorded through his many camera eyes, I don’t want to know of and I pray he has forgotten. The things he collected in his dustbin on that dark wet floor, I will never see. Blindfolded, wearing my thickest wool mittens, I emptied the contents into the fire while Robicon slept in his charging dock. I wore tape over my nose and mouth to keep out the smoke.
🤖💌
