THE ONE TRUE SPEETH

As brothers are they joinēd heart to heart;

But Cupid hath not struck them with his bow;

Demon from The Fall of the Rebel Angels by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1562.

it doesn’t have any special intelligence. it’s just a normal space roomba. there are other space roombas on the ship and they don’t have knives. it’s just this one. knife space roomba has full clearance to every room in the ship. occasionally crew members will be talking and then suddenly swear and clutch their ankle. knife space roomba putters off, leaving them to their mild stab wounds.

“what is the point?” asks the alien as another crew member casually steps over the knife-wielding robot. “is it to test your speed and agility?”

“no it doesn’t really go that fast,” replies the captain.

“does it teach you to stay ever-vigilant?”

“I mean I guess so but that’s more of a side effect.”

“does it weed out the weak? does it protect you from invaders? do repeated stabbings let your species heal more quickly in the future?”

“it doesn’t stab very hard, it gets us more than it gets our enemies, and no, but that sounds cool — someone write that down.”

“but then what is its purpose?”

Details: Six (6) members of a Mercenary/Pirate crew of little renown attempted to infiltrate ship in order to steal equipment and/or personnel.

Prior to being detained they had remained undetected for eight (8) hours and accumulated several high value materials (see attached log), and incapacitated and restrained several crewmen (see attached log) in dock #3, with the intention of using a life boat to exfiltrate.

Just prior to their would-be escape, the boarding party encountered the ship’s mascot. A cleaning unit which had been modified by crew members to mount a traditional Terran melee weapon, as well as an officer’s insignia (having been jokingly given a commission by the Captain the night before). Curious, one picked it up, before realising the mounted weapon had a nickel finish (highly toxic to their species) on the handle, and dropped it in a panic.

As the unit’s anti-impact sensors had been disabled, it immediately tried to right itself on landing. This caused it to flip over and slash the third knee of the boarder who dropped it, prompting the rest of the boarders to flee. In doing so, they tripped over a waste container, causing the unit to “chase” them, as it collected the trail of dust they left.

The security crew were alerted to the boarding party’s presence by an entry on “Sargent Stabby’s Hit List” - an account on an intership microblogging site which automatically logs any injuries caused by the cleaning unit in question - and quickly intercepted them.

Casualties: Four (4) crewmen treated for minor lacerations sustained after detaining boarding party, one (1) captured crewman treated for negative reaction to sedatives used by captors.

Belligerent status: Two (2) members of the enemy boarding party remain in stable condition in sickbay. Three (3) remaining surrendered peacefully and remain in the brig. One (1) refuses to leave the safety of a storage cupboard he went to ground in.

Recommendations/Actions:

All captured guards to undergo debriefing and possible disciplinary action for breaches of security protocol.

Remind all crew members to report missing colleagues immediately.

Retain a guard outside cleaning storage room 87 until the final boarder can be coaxed out and properly detained.

Quartermaster Stabby becomes a famous icon of the human race, proof that humans can and often are unintentionally terrifying, but maybe there actually IS something to their strange attachments to inanimate objects…?

Aliens are now convinced that humans have some weird psychic/aura powers or something. “Object Tamers” they call us. Humans are so amused that they adopt the term for themselves. They love it. They start printing it on bracelets and T-shirts. Aliens can’t tell if this is a joke or a confession.

Through a disturbing number of coincidences like the above, aliens begin to fear Quartermaster Stabby and are legitimately unsure if it has intelligence or not. It doesn’t help that humans refuse to break the joke to explain it to them.

Alien scientists try to explain the strange phenomenon that is Quartermaster Stabby. They cannot. Humans are delighted.

Quartermaster Stabby is eventually promoted to a position of authority over all autonomous drones in the entire human empire. It also escaped the ship once and managed to become the mayor of a small alien city. That city has since begun using the fact as a tourist attraction, and the episode has brought to human attention the fact that Mayor Stabby technically fulfills all of the criteria necessary to become a president or council member. (Minus the sentience.)

Humans are now trying to vote Mayor Stabby into office, using the aliens’ inability to determine its sentience level to their advantage.

They are successful. Counselor Stabby is most universally beloved representative of the human race. (Among humans, anyway. The aliens have mixed reactions, ranging from amusement, to fear, to outrage.)

Counselor Stabby goes on to somehow reveal a corrupt plot among several other counsel members and essentially averts a huge political catastrophe, all because one of the spies dropped her earring and Counselor Stabby ate it. The earring was bugged. Good call, Counselor Stabby.

Every time Counselor Stabby breaks down and has to be repaired, trillions of humans flood its social media accounts with ‘get well’ messages, and many flowers and gifts are sent to the repair bay or to its charging station.

Counselor Stabby has somehow blundered its way into receiving all of the highest honors that can be bestowed by human society. It helps run an empire. It saves lives. It cleans donut crumbs off of the floor without being asked.

All without a single sentient thought.

“Why does a human’s consideration for a ‘better bot’ mean more knives, sir?” the young ambassador said, staring at the contraption in front of him. 

“ we are unsure of their purpose, we have many reports of these creations protecting their home ships. “ The advisor said also staring at the contraptions many spinning blades. 

The residing human walked into the room squealing, quite to loud for the ambassador’s taste, at the contraption. 

“ Aren’t you just a spinning bundle of death! “ The human cried out happily? (The ambassador was still unsure of humans deployment of emotions.) The delivery droid, with knife blades above its propellors, bobbed up and down before depositing it’s ‘gift’ (as the human called it) and leaving through the bot-hatch with a frightening scream accompanying it.