You're in a desert, walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden you look down...

[Lemur866]

Is this a test?

[Zeldar]

@Folly

I really gotta see that movie at some point.

One of the best, and it holds up well. One of the most moving death scenes in movies, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTzA_xesrL8

[Jophiel]

Tortoise-back is too rounded to keep my beer from tipping.

[malkavia]

@Damfino

One flip per tortoise. That’s the rule.

This made me laugh.

[Elendil_s_Heir]

I didn’t want it to get to the other side.

[Taomist]

I’ve lost my glasses and thought I was helping flip it right side up.

[jz78817]

@samjones

…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?

Eh? I wouldn’t have done the first part. That’s… awful.

[Alan_Smithee]

Do you make up these questions, Mr. Jones, or do they write 'em down for you?

[Tangent]

I’ve got $50 bucks on the hare.

[Saltire]

@Folly

• Full credit to whatever Asimov short story this was from…something about robots working in an environment with some minor radiation

“Little Lost Robot”

Editing the First Law like that made the robots unstable, and one of them decided to hide. Susan Calvin had to figure out some way to out-think the rebel robot.

[Miller]

@Malleus_Incus_Stapes

You’ve been reading Small Gods?

Watching Blade Runner, more like.

[Enderw24]

Oh you’re a smart one aren’t you? But you can’t fool me. It’s flipped tortoises all the way down.

[Der_Trihs]

@samjones

…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?

Because it’s actually a tortoisoid assassination cyborg, and flipping it onto the back turns the shaped charge built into its shell away from me.

[Tangent]

There is no tortoise.

[Little_Nemo]

Because it was the tortoise who turned off the town’s water in the first place.

[Alessan]

@Kobal2

There’s some good eatin’ on a turtle.

Especially the big ones.

[Stowed_Bob]

I am out of shape, cannot start a fire, and have not eaten for hours. It was the only prey I could find and catch. The sun is my only means of cooking it, and I am praying it bakes thoroughly enough before my broiler is swallowed by the horizon.

[Alka_Seltzer]

@Sampiro

The tortoise killed my daddy. Turning him on his back in the dry hot sun is the closest you can get to waterboarding him.

When will the madness end?

[QUOTE=Gandhi]
A flip for a flip, and soon the whole world will be flopped.
[/QUOTE]

[Turek]

I was too busy daydreaming about unicorns to notice the tortoise.

[Lumpy]

Because the second part of the puzzle is to turn the tortoise back into it’s original position in exactly three flips, and I have to show my work in terms of quaternions.