Intelligent Shoes

Sometimes I think it’s cruel giving machines a personality. My mate Petersen once bought a pair of shoes with artificial intelligence. Smart Shoes they were called. It was a neat idea. No matter how blind drunk you were they could always get you home. Well, he got ratted one night in Oslo, and he woke up the next morning in Burma. See the shoes got bored just going from the local to his flat. They wanted to see the world, like, yanno. He had a hell of a time getting rid of them. No matter who he sold them to, they’d show up the next day. He tried to shake them off, but they’d just kick the door down, yanno.

Is this true?

Yeah, last thing he’d heard, they’d sort of robbed a car and driven it into a canal. They couldn’t steer, ya see.

Really?

Yeah. Petersen was really really blown away about it. He went to see a priest. The priest told him that it was alright. He said the shoes were happy and they’d gone to heaven. Ya see, it turns out shoes have ‘souls’.

Oh, what a sad, sad story. Wait a minute… How did they open the car door?

Dave Lister / Arnie Rimmer
Red Dwarf Queeg