Is it because I’ve just had my first vaccination? It wasn’t AstraZeneca, but I swear our robot vacuum cleaner is alive. It’s a brand-name model. Great thing, especially if you have a dog and not many carpets. Works really well, it’s just a bit noisy. But it’s alive. I checked, the software is not from Microsoft – which eliminates the only alternative explanation. The dear thing drives around the whole flat and picks up dog hair, dog toys, dog food, dog biscuits and dog biscuits and nothing else really – except dog chews.
But what cannot be explained logically, unless you assume there is life within, is the fact that as soon as my Team, Zoom or whatever session begins, this small, round but loud thing immediately makes a bee-line for my office, only to bang indignantly against the precautionary closed door. Once it has gained access, it drives straight under the desk and starts to bash my feet. No, not just once. Again and again, like right now. But anyone who thinks this sneaky little bastard is only out to get me is mistaken. No sooner does our really big dog – a ‘borzoi’, for the initiated – enter the flat than this technical demonic piece of work rolls out of some corner on its little, scaly wheels, into which it had scurried the day before with an “error 17”.
Now, however, the coffee machine seems to have allied itself as well. Whenever I dare to use it, I am instructed by a light-emitting diode to fill up the water tank. Immediately after I replace it, the next red diode screams at me to empty the grounds container, only to insist once I have done so that I stop using the machine, combined with a demand for descaling. And again, this evil reincarnation bumps against my feet. My kicks are answered with an annoying beeping and a bitchy “Error 5” from its nasty little speakers and then it simply continues.
It would seem the virus has now been passed on to my latest acquisition. A telescope – a really great thing. Fully electronic, it aligns itself with each of the 40,000 programmed celestial bodies, all with a WLAN connection and lots of other bells and whistles. More than 400 times magnification. A huge thing, with an 8-inch mirror. Cost a fortune. Ordered at the end of December, arrived in mid-April. And what’s happened since then? Exactly! Shitty weather. Always clouds. – They are alive and they communicate.
Editor’s note: The purchase of a drone could take the issue to a new dimension.
Addendum by the editors from June 1st, 2021:
About a week after this article appeared, we received the following photo from the author, which we do not want to withhold from you:
