He was the most interesting experiment robotics has ever seen...
Back in 1998, towards the beginning of the year, I was tinkering in some heavily advanced robotics. I had completed my AI project for world domination at the time (yes, it worked; that's why you know nothing of it), and I found myself bored way too often in my lab. One day, I decided to create the perfect being. It wasn't too hard. I already had schematics and everything laid out from when I was little, and with slight editing they worked just fine.
It was quick and painless. A beautiful process produced what was to be the perfect being. It just turned out its legs didn't work. So, I had a completely immobile being that was perfect in every other way; I thought. I named it thefez. I chose this name because the original schematic had a drawing of a guy on it that I doodled while thinking about some of the circuitry. The little dude had a fez on his head, and the name just stuck.
thefez was a beautiful little toy. It definitely was a toy, because it had not turned out so perfectly as I had planned. Just my luck I guess. It was somewhat humorous, loud, a bit shy at times, you know. Its sense of humor was off some of the time, and no matter what I did to fix it, the damn thing never got everything right. It was funny, it just had bad timing. So, I decided to see if it would be funny in text. Text on a computer or other such device would be the perfect test of thefez's true sense of humor.
It worked. I was so pleased. When thefez produced text, it was funny. Like funny funny. Well, not always, but by then I had already come to the conclusion that there wasn't a way to create a perfect being because I would have to be perfect to do it, and I am admittedly not.
thefez did get out of control very soon after that. Towards the end of March I believe it was, it called me fat. That hurt. I really couldn't take such treatment from my own creation, legless or not. I decided that it had to be let go. I planned to let thefez exist solely in a virtual sense; i was going to remove my failed body from thefez and let it run wild online as it saw fit.
Sooner than not thefez is yelling something from the basement one day while I was in the kitchen making a quiche. "Everything! Everything! Need excessive expression of excessive exceptions!" I was bewildered, so I left my quiche and went down to see what it was dallying with. It seemed thefez had found a website called Everything. I was amazed. I was, in fact, so amazed at the potential of Everything and the state of thefez at that point, that I let him loose. I released and disconnected some of the resistors, relays, and other such robotic devices that withheld thefez from hitting certain keys on the keyboard (such as alt, ~, and [ and ]), and let its arm move freely to even the function keys.
Ah, that was April Fool's Day, 1998. It's been so long since then. I've long since moved from that house, which is now gone with a convenience store in its place (yes, like in Grosse Point Blank). My lab, however, is still under that store. I often venture back to visit thefez and see its status of things.
Only more recently has my schedule and such allowed me to participate in Everything, so I had known not of what it had done. Because of some bad wiring and my releasing of its "hands," it had run rampant on Everything, apparently creating many dead hard links and empty nodes (now known as "nodeshells"). I did not know thefez would turn evil. Dammit Jim! I'm a robot builder, not a programmer!
I hereby apologize for creating thefez. I know that it has created horrible things (as well as good; there is no denying its good points) and caused much trouble for The Nodeshell Rescue Team. If it is desired by the fellow noders of Everything, I can have thefez completely down and dismantled in an hour. Just say the word. I hope you all will not, however, because I know how important thefez experiment is to me.
I love thefez, dammit! And there's nothing you can do about it!
My love will always be there. But now, the fate of thefez is completely left to you, the noders. Thank you for letting me finally vent this long and arduous period of my life. Goodnight.