THE NANOBOTS AND THE MISERESS

Ms. A., for whom the stylish was a dominating passion,
Decided that her summer home was slightly out of fashion.
But her thrifty disposition made remodeling too dear,
So she turned for a solution to a nanoengineer.
She proffered him a wad of bills of low denomination
(A mere percent of what she'd have to pay a corporation)
And said, "Invent a nanobot to make my home anew,
All the way from top to bottom, from the cellar to the flue!"
Then she handed him the blueprints, to a microchip committed,
And he plugged it in his laptop, and his brows he promptly knitted.
"For this, you'll need a multitude of nanobots on hand,
A microscopic myriad of workers to command.
But as you'll need the services of nanobots galore,
This budget's very modest. Can't you spare a little more?"
"Listen, times are tough all over!" said the lady to the engi.
(Though anything would serve as an excuse for being stingy).
"Well, I'll keep within your budget, and with effort persevere,
And we'll go to work tomorrow!" said the nanoengineer.
Precisely as he promised her, the nanobots were ready,
And the client looked upon them with an optimism heady.
Arrayed in close formation with their nano-kith and kin
Stood the wee contraptions waiting for the order to begin,
Each a-champing nano-molars in its tiny nano-jaws,
Wielding nano-saw and hammer in its tiny nano-claws,
With sundry other nano-tools inside a nano-sack
Slung with tiny nano-harness on its microscopic back.
"They're ready as I wanted?" said Ms. A., her eyes agleam.
"A mighty nano-army, come to realize my dream?"
"They're ready by the millions, and with nano-tools in hand,
They'll fall to work with vim berserk, the instant you command,"
The engineer assured her. Yet he most uneasy felt
About the summer property wherein his client dwelt;
For her rigid parsimony had required him to spare
The precaution of debugging from his cybernanoware.
"Get started, then! Go to it!" said ebullient Ms. A.,
And all at once, the nanobots began to toil away,
Going geeble-geeble-geeble as they started to exert
Their utmost nano-energies, the dwelling to convert.
Then, rapidly, Ms. A.'s abode took on a newer form,
But it wasn't to her liking, and it wasn't to the norm.
For it didn't look like anything the world had ever seen:
And the lady's fine complexion turned a sickly shade of green.
The rafters all were twisted, and the ridge pole wasn't there,
And the hanging beams were hanging in the empty, open air;
The chimney pointed sideways, with the breakfast nook below,
And the floor resembled something like a violinist's bow.
"Stop at once! You'll devastate my cozy little home!"
Shouted Ms. A. "You'll wreck it, from foundation to the dome!"
But the nanobots, insensitive to any such reproof,
Put the shower in the pantry, and the kitchen on the roof,
And the driveway through the middle of the former living room;
And the sundeck and gazebo turned to powder with a boom!
The windows were irregular and vanishingly small,
And rhomboidal doorways opened off a very crooked hall.
When nanobots adorned it all with green and fuschia paint,
The client, understandably, subsided in a faint.
When at last she came around, the 'bots had all withdrawn,
And she said, the while she beat her fists in fury on the lawn,
"Alas! I thought I'd have a home of monumental splendor!
Instead, the whole effect is like a junkyard in a blender!
So tell me, nanoengineer: why did this happen? Why?"
As she gazed on the monstrosity, Ms. A. began to cry.
Then softly spake the engineer: "The nanobots were ready.
But their success, you understand, was ultimately predi-
Cated on reliability of programs they received --
And that is why the outcome was a horror unrelieved.
I didn't have the funds to get the software ever checked,
So it comes as no surprise to see an architecture wrecked.
Somewhere along the line, I guess, f(m) became f(n),
And that mistake let pseudorandom numbers enter in.
But why are you complaining? Has no one taught you yet
That what you nano-pay for, you will surely nano-get?
You tried to do this on the cheap, and now you've come to see
You get nano-satisfaction when you pay a nano-fee!"
The moral of our story is that service has its price,
Which principle will guarantee the very best advice
To give is what, in this our tale, the stingy person learns:
On a nanoscale investment, you get nanoscale returns.

Copyright © 2009 David Ritchie

HOW MR. O'LEARY SLIPPED INTO THE NULL

O'Leary had an office job
For which he showed up daily.
He also took to thinking very
Ontologicailly.

He once pursued a train of thought
And all of its ensuing
Complexities a bit too far:
And that was his undoing.

At 9 a.m., he came to work
And muttered, "Well, I'm here."
He booted up his laptop and
Accessed the netosphere.

He checked his emails and the news,
But then he made the blunder
Of pondering his last remark
In ontologic wonder:

"Of course I'm here, as anyone
Is capable of seeing.
But who am 'I'? And where is 'here'?
And what is meant by 'being'?"

These questions weighed so heavily
Upon his cogitation
That poor O'Leary underwent
An eerie transformation.

He very quickly lost all sense
Of who and what he was,
And forfeited his claim to his
Identity, because

You're an uncertain quantity,
To disappearance prone:
A question mark, that is, lest your
Identity is known.

And so, O'Leary dropped into
An existential dark
And dwindled to the status of
A punctuation mark.

His fellow workers heard a ZAP!!
And hastened to respond.
"O'Leary's gone!" they cried. "He's slipped
Into the null beyond!"

For all they found of Mr. O'.,
On checking his machine,
Was just a tiny "?"
On his computer screen.

From being into nothingness
He'd slid, without a doubt.
Not even Jean-Paul Sartre
Could render him thereout.

My friends, be sure of who you are.
Avoid the state of mind
That carried off O'Leary, leaving
Not a speck behind.

Be careful not to dig too deep
In philosophic stuff.
You know you are. You're you. You're here.
Now, isn't that enough?

Copyright © 2009 David Ritchie

THE DREADFUL END OF MR. LEE

The chief defect of Mr. Lee
Was drinking endless cups of tea:
The hot green tea of Asia, mind,
And not the darker English kind.
(The latter sort he had dismissed
As insufficiently sophist-
Icated for the palate finer,
Because he'd seen it at a diner.)
Such was the choice of Mr. Lee,
And so he quaffed it avidly.
They couldn't ship the stuff to town
As fast as he could gulp it down.
"Tea importers!" bellowed he,
"Ship your merchandise to me!
I'll drink it all, as you have seen,
So long as it is colored green!
A million mouthfuls, down I'd pour,
And still have room for more and more!"
He never, as he swallowed them,
Thought something else might swallow him.
Now, here is how that millionth sip
Led Lee unto a ghastly nip.
The pigment spread, in point of fact,
Beyond his alimentary tract,
And, over an extended term,
Migrated to his epiderm.
One day he was dismayed to see
He had acquired a verdancy.
"O woe! O horror unforeseen!
I find my skin is turning green!
Behold: my hide, no longer pale,
Resembles more a bunch of kale!"
Ashake with sobs, aghast withal,
He leaned against an ivied wall.
Then, as he stood lamenting there,
It happened that a passing mare
Set eyes upon his emerald hand,
Mistook it for an ivy strand
(Or maybe for a tuft of hay),
And so began to munch away.
"My hand is gone!" cried Mr. Lee.
"I fear you'll eat the rest of me!"
Alarmed, he fled across the fields,
The hungry equine at his heels.
But he the horse could not outrun,
And soon the latter's meal was done.
The last of Lee that any saw
Devolved into the horse's maw.
Thereafter came his muffled wails
From deep inside the beast's entrails:
"Oh, friends, behold my dreadful state,
And tea consumption, moderate!
The awful danger, learn from me
Of drinking endless cups of tea!"

Copyright © 2009 David Ritchie