…and see a tortoise It’s crawling toward you. You reach down and you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t. Not without your help. But you’re not helping.
Why is that?
I’m Vorbis.
What’s a tortoise?
I am programmed to help tortoises, so I have NO idea why not. Perhaps a malfunction in an error-trapping routine.
I’m a roadrunner, and I’m hungry.
One flip per tortoise. That’s the rule.
My mother? You wanna talk about my mother?
You’ve been reading Small Gods?
In that case, the answer is: because Vorbis is a jerk. That’s why.
Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that, but “Vorbis is a jerk” will suffice.
The tortoise killed my daddy. Turning him on his back in the dry hot sun is the closest you can get to waterboarding him.
Don’t wanna.
I’m gazing into the sun.
I’m a replicant.
There’s some good eatin’ on a turtle.
Close.
The correct answer is: “What desert?”
What’s for dessert?
What desert are we talking about? High desert? Low desert? Sonoran? Mojave? The Gobi?
See, I’m programmed not to harm tortoises, but they neglected to also program me to not allow tortoises to come to harm through inaction.
So, I was capable of flipping the tortoise over because I knew that I could flip him over again immediately with no harm done. However, once the tortoise was flipped over, I had no obligation to not allow the tortoise to come to harm through inaction on my part. *
Were you sent back from the future to protect John Connor, Folly?*
I really gotta see that movie at some point.