One of the proud boasts AnthroBot Corp made in their glossy brochures was that the androids they constructed were incapable of boredom. Programmed to withstand the most stultifying of situations, they were ideal for those dull chores that any sensible robot would rather be melted down for scrap than undertake.
OYet here was Elec, their top-of-the-range model, close to screaming-point, clawing at his metal cranium with servo-powered fingers and contorting his vulcanized mouth into a grimace of restive torment.
Something had gone very wrong.
One factor was the space mission. For five years he’d been the AI travelling companion of a human competing in the Hundred Rocks Challenge – a competition to collect 100 rocks from 100 planets.
The other, more significant, factor in Elec’s distress,
