An excerpt from Robot Boy’s autobiography:

In 1966, I had received a letter from the draft board informing me that I was going to Vietnam. I had been very content at MIT, counting the stars in the sky and deducing the feasibility of God. The US Government, however, saw use for me elsewhere – in the rice paddies of Southeast Asia. Alas, I was not a senator’s son’s robot nor did I have the vaccinations necessary to enter Canada. With no other option, I was immediately dispatched to a top secret Air Force base and flown under cover of darkness across the Pacific Ocean.

While en route, I received a phone call from President Johnson via my internal military band com-link. He said “Hey Robot Boy, you’re the only Goddam chance we’ve got out there against Communism. I want you to assassinate Ho Chi Minh. You do this and I’ll get you that female robot you’ve been asking for. Johnson out.” I will admit that the President’s offer was hard to refuse, but how would I gain access, let alone kill Ho Chi Minh? It had then occurred to me that Johnson believed that I was a killing machine rather than a counting machine. Little did he know, until this 26 hour flight, I had never left Cambridge. Before I could discuss this mistake with my military attaché, I was tossed off the back of the C-130 without a parachute. I was officially in “the shit.” Eight seconds later, I was captured.

My North Vietnamese captors took an immediate fondness of me, finding great use in my reflective aluminum frame to cook chicken. They were surprised to find that I could speak their language, but were incised when, after inserting a few hundred hao into my data slot, I would not sing their tribal songs. I had been mistaken for a jukebox. As a last-ditch effort, I recited pi to a million places to no avail. I was immediately moved to the American POW camp. This is where I met the beautiful Trung Nhi, sipping spring water from a lily. I suddenly found myself torn between completing my assassination mission and finding out about love. But that, as they say, is another story.

[tags]zach ayers robot boy vietnam[/tags]