Here’s a little story I came up with while reading this XKCD entry and noticing the “sinister Google projects” item… it’s based on an old joke everyone in IT already knows, but I just figured I’d flesh it out a bit. Technically I published it on reddit first, but it is my story!
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The date is April 8th, 2022. John Smith was enjoying a quiet evening at home watching high-def porn on his new HD-DVD player and 72″ LCD screen when he heard a knock at the door. “Who could it be at this hour?” he thought; “I’ll just answer the door in my boxers with this massive tentage, that’ll get rid of the buggers”.
Looking through the peephole he noticed with disappointment that there was a robot on the other wide of the door. Robots can’t be shocked by an indecent display of half-naked slovenliness, so Smith’s plan was foiled already. “Who is it?”, he asks. The robotic-sounding voice responded, “Google Apartment Search, sir”.
Smith was a bit puzzled. He hadn’t gone apartment-shopping in several years now, and he knew he’d renewed his lease properly; once you get a decent apartment in New York the last thing you want to do is go through the bother and expense of finding a new one. But this wasn’t THAT kind of apartment search, as he found out once he opened the door and the robot quickly went past him and into the hallway.
“Hey, wait a minute!” he said helplessly, then followed the curious anthropomorphic metal guy go from one room to the other. He was about to shout again but instead started muttering to himself “what the fuck am I doing yelling at a robot anyway”. The robot kept stopping and looking at things — everything, in fact. But it wasn’t taking anything. What a strange home invasion this was! The thing kept making a quiet-ish noise too, and when Smith got in close he could distinctly hear the phrase “indexing… indexing…” being spoken as though on a loop.
Smith then remembered some vague detail about web server configuration. It was like a lightbulb switched on in his head. As the robot was about to enter the bathroom he simply said “deny!”.
And the robot let go of the door and turned away. Smith’s face now bore a distinct grin. Ultimately he let the robot have a look at the living room, kitchen, hallway, dining room and office, but the bathroom and bedroom were off limits.
Shortly the robot was heading for the door again, but not before turning to Smith and telling him what this latter had figured out for a while now.
“Your apartment has been indexed. Thank you.”
To which Smith responded “Oh yeah? where’s the TV remote then?”
Immediately the robot replied “it’s between the cushions of the couch.”
Smith looked, and there it was. “Well, where’s the love of my life then?”
“Your search – ‘love of my life’ – did not match any documents.”
And the robot went out the door, leaving a slightly deflated John Smith behind him.