My mate Petersen once brought a pair of shoes with artificial intelligence. Smart Shoes, they were called. It was a neat idea. No matter how blind drunk you were, they would always get you home. Then he got ratted one night in Oslo, and woke up the next morning in Burma. See, the shoes got bored just going from his local to the flat. They wanted to see the world, man, y’know? He had a helluva job getting rid of them. No matter who he sold them to, they’d show up again the next day! He tried to shut them out, but they just kicked the door down, y’know?
Last thing he heard, they’d sort of, erm, robbed a car and drove it into a canal. They couldn’t steer, y’see.
Petersen was really, really blown away by it. He went to see a priest. The priest told him, he said, it was alright, and all that, and the shoes were happy, and they’d gone to heaven. Y’see, it turns out shoes have soles.
This reminds me of my argument that computers have souls: nothing without a soul could be so perverse.
[Dwarfers ping to post #47]
While RIMMER is thinking about this, LISTER makes his getaway.
RIMMER: Well, what a sad, sad story.
He thinks about it, then a look of puzzlement spreads across his face.
RIMMER: Wait a minute! How did they open the car door?