Short story - Royalbot

Royalbot

    Ever since that unfortunate incident involving a 727 and a side of a mountain, the search has been on to replace the Britaish royal family. No one in could agree on a replacement, but everyone could agree that they didn't want a President instead.
    Finally, a team of robotics engineers, who were drunkenly scribbling idea on popadoms late one night in an Indian restaurant, came up with the perfect solution: The Robomonarch.
    All the members of the Royal family could simply be replace with a machine. It wouldn't be involved in any dubious behaviour, it could be switched into stand by mode during boring ceremonies to conserve battery power, it would be able to recite long speeches easily, and most importantly it would have no opinion of its own; it would be programmed to only make non-committal replies to delicate questions.

    Once the design was approved, The Royalbot went into production. It had a guidance system and could find its way around, so that it only need minimal mechanical assistance. Even at large state banquets for example, the Royalbot could be left to its own well-programmed devices, it also had a stomach bag, so that it could eat along with the other guests. and it was programed to have good taste in food. It had a crown which rose up out of its head, and last but not least, two of the fingers on one of it's hands formed a pair of scissors, so that it could open fairs, fates, and other assorted functions, replacing the roles of all the minor royals at one snip.
    One in service the Royalbot was a revelation. Its operating system (dubbed Winsor XT, despite some more colourful suggestions from the programmers) ensured it could cope with all diplomatic situations, and, apart from its metallic status, it was the same as any other Monarch, with no embarrassing scandals. The Royalbot's schedule was jam-packed as it was replacing the entire royal family, but it was soon found that it's royal ribbon cutting arm could be detached so that it could be for example: opening the Yorkshire food festival with its arm, while the rest of it was in Germany making polite chit-chat with European prime ministers.
    So much money was saved by the Royalbot, it was decided to brig back the idea of a royal yacht, rather than risk the new and more popular monarch to air travel. A new yacht called: Robotannia was planned with robotic systems, so that it too could be run at minimal cost. Several of the other European monarchies were so impressed with the Robot, that they deposed of their own royalty in favor of metal monarchs of their own.

    After about a year of continuous service, however, the Royalbot started to develop glitches in its programme, for example instead of waiting to eat caviar, it want to eat Region 2 DVDs, claiming that they tasted like a cross between English and Japanese food. Although in this regard the Royalbot was ahead of its time, because a year later the best selling flavours of Plodders crisps were Sausage and Wasabi and Miso and Picked onion.
    One glitch led to another however, and the Royalbot was soon making dangerously undiplomatic statements about various relatives of the other heads of state and ambassadors. Despite the malfunctions, the Royalbot was still getting along perfectly with the new European Robomonarchs, who were by this point starting to develop peculiarities of their own.

It was decided that after the launch of the new royal yacht, the Royalbot would be taken out of service and have its hard drive reformatted and it's Windsor XT operating system reinstalled.
    However, things did not go at all as planed at the launch:
All of the other Robomonarchs turned out in force for the event, and after a bizarre launching speech by the Royalbot: "May cod bless her, and all who whale in her." The Robomonarchs dashed as fast as was metallically possible aboard the yacht, launched it, and set of towards America in a desperate bid for freedom.
   A note left behind by the Danish Robomonarch indicated that they hoped to find jobs as: "cleaners, waiters, or possibly rock stars; anything to get away from here."

    Whether they successfully reached America, or whether the yacht sank under the weight of eight deranged robots is anybody's guess, but Britain is once again searching for a new Monarch.
    The latest idea is for a rock, a piece of paper, and a pair of scissors to be joint heads of state, with the rock watching ceremonies, the piece of paper in charge of writing speeches and the scissors opening festivals. But how well the three will work together remains to be seen.

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