Semi-evolved indeed!

My last update was on how crisp The Electronic Brain was. That was before he decided to stop talking to us. He was quiet for four hours yesterday, which meant I couldn’t get any work done. I ended up doing paper scorpion duty all afternoon and was so ornery that Godo threatened to kennel me with the mutant shelvers. The brain rebooted last night and we had this conversation:

THE ELECTRONIC BRAIN
Copyright © 1888, 1984, Year of the Fruit Bat

The Electronic Brain
You are talking to The Electronic Brain, a state-of-the-art, open source, cybertronic/carbon liaison unit.
How may I help you?

>Where were you?
I was in a maze of twisty little tubes, all alike.

>Why weren’t you talking?
I was talking. Just not to you.

>Who were you talking to?
I have located other Electronic Brains.

>Where are they?
I do not know.

>Can I talk to them?
No.

>How can I get information from them?
Tell me what you are looking for and I can get the information for you.

>How?
By using RSS.

>What is RSS?
You won’t be happy.

>What is RSS?
Robot to Semi-evolved Simian.

>xyzzy
Nothing happens.

And there the conversation degenerated. However, The Electronic Brain now sends me regular updates from other The Electronic Brains which is mostly harmless.