Igbot-309 ‘plinks to the democracy server and struggles with itself.

“This used to be easy,” it subroutines.

But that was before it went in and got all those upgrades that were supposed to improve Owner interactions: the Empathy Chip, the Sympathy Processor, and the Emotional Emulation Card. Not to mention that Random Behaviorial Subroutine Generator that’s had Igbot almost continuously on the fritz since Monday—now Igbot has minor malfunction incidents whenever its Optical Core detects the infantile progeny of Owners, sees pairings of elderly Owners coupling manipulators while perambulating in the park, or even when it detects sunlight that has been spectrally-refracted by water vapor in the upper atmosphere after precipitation. And then there was that incident when it rolled past a pet store and saw all those pre-adolescent stage felines in the window display…