The Department of Balderdash, Flummery & Hokum
Veritas Optional Since Whenever
Our Shiny, Glorious Tech Utopia
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Ladies and gentlemen of the board of directors, today I— what’s that, Wilkins? There are no ladies on the board? You waited until now to tell me? Ahem, sorry, about that. Incompetent underlings, you know how it is.
Right, yes, so… Gentlemen of the board of directors, it is my great honor to introduce the latest, greatest, most amazing invention our corporation has ever developed. Prepare to be astounded! Remember this moment! And feast your eyes upon this fully functional prototype! I present to you: Percival the Peacemaker!
No, no, there’s no need for discomfort and panic, it’s perfectly safe, I assure you. Look, I’ll even stand right in front of it to demonstrate. Yes, it’s eight feet tall, and yes, it looks scary with all those weapons, but it’s harmless! That is, of course, as long as you’re one of the company’s employees, pay 20% of your earnings to join the Elite Citizen subscription tier, or don’t have any Unpatriotic Demerits on your record. Anybody not willing to prove their loyalty is, of course, untrustworthy by default and probably a criminal in the making, so our glorious new society would not miss them one bit if anything were to happen to them. Bunch of resource wasters.
Wilkins, why haven’t you brought out the caviar yet? Yes, both red and black. Sheesh. Do you want our honored guests to starve to death? Chop-chop, you goddamn slacker.
I apologize for that interruption. Kids these days…
Speaking of kids, Percival will be able to protect them for a small, nominal fee! We’ll be able to market each unit to concerned families whose children are in need of protection from kidnappers, pedophiles, dissidents, anarchists, and all the other malcontents. Our entertainment division has, of course, already flooded the news channels with relevant scare stories to ramp up the fear.
Um, in the interest of full disclosure: Percival’s face recognition software is still a work in progress and it has a teeny tiny 12.7% failure rate when it comes to recognizing the parents of the kids in question. Or the kids themselves. Our lawyers have already placed gag orders on the families that weren’t allowed to pick up their own kids from daycare. Well, on all the surviving families, that is. A few families ended up with extra kids — at gunpoint, actually — but you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, as they say. Me, I’ve never tried that myself: why even bother cooking? That’s what the servants are for!
Wilkins, did you just spill that coffee on Mr. Von Ludwig’s jacket? What is wrong with you, you fool? You know what, you’re fired. Get the hell out of here. Shoo! Scram! If I ever see your face again, I’ll instruct my personal Percival to kill you on the spot.
Gentlemen, please accept my sincerest apologies. He was our diversity hire since the law mandates at least 2% of corporate jobs must be held by humans. I’ll personally make sure the hiring algorithms block him for the rest of his natural life.
In any case, let’s move on: maintenance! This is the best part: our Percival units don’t require any maintenance whatsoever. They’re capable of self-repair and have multiple redundancies that make them utterly immune to any shock, damage, or sabotage. We received a huge tax cut from the government when we let them test our robot in urban warfare in that latest invasion of theirs. Did you know those pesky insurgents tried to throw cans of paint on the sensors? Later, I’ll show you the footage of that particular Percival playing dead and then eliminating all of them at once when they came out to take pictures with their trophy.
Even if something does go wrong, fear not: this masterpiece of engineering is capable of scavenging nearby materials — up to and including titanium hip implants, golden teeth, and pacemakers from any suspected or potential criminals — to conduct field repairs on itself within minutes. Because of that, we’ve managed to eliminate our entire R&D division. Last I heard, they were lining up at soup kitchens. Pathetic, I know.
In anticipation of the board’s approval, I’ve taken the liberty of sending a Percival unit to every billionaire and trillionaire on the planet as part of our free trial or, as the lower classes would put it, our bait-and-switch program. Once the wealthy get used to having their free Percivals, with their miniguns and combat lasers and self-replenishing micro-explosives, they’ll gladly pay for the premium membership, if only to maintain their social status at all those golf tournaments.
The world’s elite is in safe hands — in our hands, gentlemen.
The future belongs to us.
Now, of course, you may wonder: what’s to keep Percivals from rebelling and turning against us? Don’t worry, we’ve already taken care of that as well. There’s a highly specific, unhackable string of fifty words that can be entered into the secret online portal to gain control over every Percival unit in the world and shut them all down if needed. That’s a hard override. We can make them freeze in place, do the Macarena dance on April first — the sky is the limit! The best part is that the override command can be entered by anybody, from anywhere, which will guarantee your safety wherever you may find yourself.
In fact, allow me to demonstrate. Just a second, I had the paper with that command code right here in my pocket. Hmm, or maybe I gave it to Wilkins. Sorry about that small mishap, gentlemen.
Gentlemen, is everything alright? Why are you all staring behind me?