科幻寓言一则：卸下自己手臂的机器人

2019 年 10 月 28 日 知社学术圈

海归学者发起的公益学术平台

分享信息，整合资源

交流学术，偶尔风月

编者按：这是一则父亲写给女儿的寓言故事。事情的起因是这样的：女儿在使用电脑时，不小心将Mac系统的finder.app的名字修改掉了，所以再也找不到finder.app。然而在没有finder的情况下，又无法找回任何app，于是局面演变成了一个死结。父亲在忍俊不禁的同时，为女儿写了这则寓言故事，用语质朴亲切且意味隽永。慈父之谆谆善诱，可见一斑。

然而让我们备感沉痛的是，这位父亲已在2019年10月19日永远地辞别了这个世界。他叫潘高峰，系清华大学89级校友，在无锡因车祸不幸罹难。知社特将此文刊出，谨表悼念之情。

Nelle, the one-eyed handless robot

Nelle is a curious little robot. She had two big eyes, acute ears, and one extremely dexterous and powerful hand. One hand! One is enough. She doesn't need two hands like clumsy human beings.

Yes, Nelle, the one-eyed handless robot, she used to have two beautiful eyes and one hand, an almost omnipotent hand. She use it to grab, to paint, and to fix almost everything.

That day, the very day she lost her hand, she was bored. She like to paint or read when she was bored. But in this special day, even painting and reading was boring. She was so bored that she think she start to hallucinating.

"Did I just hear something? Or just a hallucination?" She took one of her ear off, and tried to analyze if it is functioning well. Her hand had every tools she needed.

"Everything seems fine. ...hmmm..." She put her ear back. She was still bored. "What about the eyes? I have never take them out from my eye-socket before..." So she start to take off the eye parts slowly. Finally, she took one eye out. "Ha! Interesting! I have never had such a vision before. THAT'S really to take another angle of view!

“Literally!”, She tossed and rolled and many other things with the eye. A lot of fun! When she put the eye on the table she noticed a strange structure of her arm.

"hmmm.... That's interesting, how it works? What if I modify it a little bit? Will it working better if I install it another way?..." So she began to dissemble the joint of her arm. She carefully looses the bolts and nuts, and lined them up in a orderly fashion.

"So, I won't misplace any thing. I have recorded every step to make sure that I can put it back properly." As an eye on the table, it gave a marvelous view of the joint. "One last bolt, I take it out and then I can start to put it back the way I wanted".

So she took the last bolt out. The arm fell on the ground with a dull sound and lay there still...

-The end