The other night I was awakened at 3:00am by a robotic, female voice, clearly audible in our bedroom, coming in from outside. The voice was distinctly sexual and was telling me in two different languages that I was going to die.
"Attention, attention," she began in French. This was followed by many French things I did not understand, except for the words, "exit" and "immediately" and "certain painful death by fire."
When the robot finished in French she began in Dutch, only I did not know this at the time. The Dutch word for attention is "acht", which the robot pronounced with a sing-song, super creepy intonation, like a sex-line for Satan. The word "acht" sounded like "Ahhhhhhhh, ahhhhhhhhhhh" when the robot said it, over and over and over, the first one high, the last one low, like a song.
She repeated her warning in French and then in Dutch, "Attention, attention..... aahhhhh, aahhhhhhh."
I woke Arnaud after a few minutes of trying to figure out what the hell was happening and also because I was getting super aroused by the Dutch (a very new response to this language for me -- I am really growing up), and when he heard the sexy robot of death he became very afraid. I guess being able to understand the details of a coming apocalypse is a bit more terrifying than just catching the main jist.
"Wait, actually take off my clothes and jump INTO the pit of flames? OH man, I was WAY off..."
Now, when I say that the sexy robot voice was loud, I need to make sure that you are understanding my meaning. Her voice was so clear from our warm, sweaty bed (it's cold in our bedroom and we need to change the sheets) that it sounded like her robot face was directly outside our 4th story window, mechanically moaning her sexual death warning onto our frigid, 19th century window panes. "Ahhhhhhhhh, ahhhhhhhhhh."
Arnaud can sleep through just about anything, including his own hysterical nightly laughter -- but sexual death robots seem to be his achilles heel. Now we know.
So there we lay, eyes open, feeling the dread for about half an hour before investigating further.
When we did (which meant, getting out of bed and walking to the window to look out onto the street) we discovered that the moaning seemed to be coming from the museum across the street, but as far as we could see there was not a hint of commotion, movement, light or fire coming from any window of the museum or surrounding building.
The street was eerily quiet, except for the sexbot, probably because it was, by this time, 3:30am. We decided eventually to call the Belgian equivalent of 911 (which is 112, FYI) and let them know that the alarm was going off at the museum, even if just to be able to sleep for the rest of the night, give ourselves a gold medal for being good citizens, and to get some relief from the growing mixture of terror and arousal growing inside of us.
"Attention, attention......................Aahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, ahhhhhhhhhhhhh."
The Belgian emergency line said they would send someone, but I don't think they did.
The sexy robot did not stop her moaning until 6am.
She began again at 6:45am.
I am pretty sure that somewhere around the 5am hour Arnaud and I fell into a strange, uncomfortable trance where we stopped caring about life or sleep or each other, and instead envisioned our escape route, naked, over and over. It's like we went to live inside a robot porno about escaping from a burning building.
"WHY is this SEXY? It's supposed to be INFORMATIONAL!!??" We seemed to scream in our trance world, James Dean style, wanting more information from the night, and then morning, sky.
"Attention, attention.......Ahhhhhhhh, ahhhhhhhh" is all we ever heard in response.
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I tend to anthropomorphize on an almost continuous basis. I appreciated my Saab's ass and saw distinct similarities between the face of my Maxima and my father; I thought about him more than I ever have while I owned that car. I compliment my cameras, I have my lamps on a sticker chart system, you get the idea.
Arnaud and I heard a car alarm the other day that was broken. Or at least, that's what people said about it. Instead of the normal car alarm sound (ya know, reee errr, reee errrr) this one was going FAR and away higher and being much more creative in its musical reach -- like 4 octives higher. As I heard the car alarm screech and wail with its fantastic range, unique to his kind, I clearly heard him saying: "I don't want to be a car alarm, I want to SING!"
I think the sexbot was tired of her life of portraying urgent information -- sure, the museum evacuation alarm is a great job to have, but it's not all she is -- not many people feel like having sex when they need to evacuate a building, am I wrong?
I think she was trying to break out of the stereotypes she lives with. Who's to say a fire alarm can't be sexy? Not I, for one. Not anymore.
At random times during the day now I will sing, in the exact intonation of the sex robot's warning, "Ahhhhhhhhhh, ahhhhhhhhh" and Arnaud will shudder, and say "NOOOOOOOOO."
Maybe that's just the way she likes it.
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