I know what you are thinking, hear me out. Neither of us has made a post like this before but this is too perfect, I just had to share it with the world.

So I just rewatched a movie from my childhood (before Eir existed) called Short Circuit. It is an old movie about a military robot created for war being struck by lightning and being brought to life. He meets a nice lady named Stephanie who is dealing with an abusive ex and trying to take care of dozens of animals, and she watches him take in the culture around him and start acting as a real life form, while they both try to evade the military trying to get him back. It is a fun and silly movie, especially if you are the type of nostalgic nerd who enjoys movies like The Truman Show, Groundhog Day, and The Terminator, and movies created around that time.

So, during the first half of the movie, we see Number Five take in the world around him. He at first only knows how to say "malfunction, need input" but expands his vocabulary by rapid-reading all of Stephanie's books and watching her TV. He copies what he sees and hears in a few ways, usually by repeating what he sees, saying several words that mean the same thing as something. There is an extended scene where he goes around her house narrating what every object is, then knocking them all over to her dismay. He is shown to not understand what anything means intuitively until he accidentally stomps a grasshopper and learns the military plans to "disassemble" him, which causes him to learn about mortality. As we progress through the movie he starts repeating wisecracks and quips from various shows and movies in the era the film was made, notably The Three Stooges in a scene where he uses his talent at machinery to reprogram three other robots to act as the three stooges to the bewilderment of the military and his own designers. Overall he pulls all kinds of genius stunts to evade capture despite not having a full grasp on how to socialize. And one of the other most notable scenes to me is an encounter between him and the man who built him, Newton Crosby, where he manages to convince him he is indeed alive, and has achieved sentience.

Where does my theory come in? In the ways Number Five learns. It is clear from as soon as he gains sentience from the lightning strike that he is curious and loves taking in new information. He learns everything he can, even if it ends in him or someone else getting inconvenienced. More importantly to my theory, he spends a lot of time copying the ways other people act from what he sees on TV. He makes outdated movie references and reacts to Stephanie's emotional sincerity with much of the same. When he is asked to prove he is alive, Crosby tells him a joke, Number Five takes a minute to understand it, and then laughs uproariously loud, and is even told his laughter is inappropriate for the level of joke told, which was not even that funny, and the punchline was messed up. That is not to say he was mistaken or that there was no joke, but people keep on talking about Number Five as if there is no way he could be real, could be "alive", could be the same as any of them. Crosby and Stephanie act amazed and impressed at the idea, and you can tell in many scenes that Crosby is utterly convinced there is no way Number Five could be alive. He only changes his mind after a social test where Number Five proves his sapience by interpreting a soup stain on a piece of paper as looking like various shapes, and the joke I mentioned before.

I would also like to present to the court that Number Five is extremely talented with electronics and circuitry despite being only a few days old. He literally rewires his own circuitry in ways that do not make sense to Crosby, reprograms several other robots of his same model, and builds a false replica of himself to use as a decoy, out of spare parts. I think it speaks for itself. In a lot of ways, neurotypical folks believe that people with autism have had their "brains go out", and so seeing them act "like a person" is a surprise. I know autism is a wide spectrum and some are low functioning and some are high functioning, so my comparison is not perfect. But Number Five is absolutely on the spectrum. Everybody treats him differently because they believe him to be inferior somehow. The notion that he is "alive" is much like the idea everyone has that there is no way he could be "like other people" because he is different somehow, intrinsically, because there is no way a machine can think for itself. The idea was revolutionary, I am sure, when the movie was made in 1986, and probably is not interesting to people today. Aside from people like us who still get a kick out of "old movies" I guess.

Oh and for the record, I know there is a sequel movie, I also watched it when I was a kid. I am not as familiar with it because I have not seen it in a hot decade, but I think it might factor into my interpretation too, because the plot revolves around Number Five being taken advantage of because he assumes everyone around him is genuinely trying to be his friend, when they all think poorly of him and are just using him. Sounds familiar?

I hope you enjoyed this unhinged post. I am doing pretty well. I was out for a few days because I overexerted myself by being out too frequently. I learned the hard way that I need to pace myself. That does mean I am going to swap out immediately after posting this because today I was out for many hours ever since Eir returned from OT today, so from about 5 pm to now at 2 am, or 9 hours. Today I celebrated my return by making another emote for myself to use, got burnt out over some art that did not go my way, and then made my first pixel art. I hope to share all of this on our site later on. See you all, peace.