Ode to the Robobee

Abstract

Ode to the Robobee Rebecca Morgan Frank (bio) i Oh little bee, little robot bee, divingand swimming and putting the realthing to shame. You're sexless and hard, you've no allegiance to a queen.The bee-loud glade is buzzing like a drone–We're done with the sweetness of hungry. What can make can also take away: yourtiny wings weld you into a weapon, carryyou into the unknown. You've never known a flower. Back in the lab, you've got a bodydouble: they're making you each by hand.The roboticist labors and dreams you into the flight of the real thing. Listen–hear the tiny wings spin, building the buzz. ii Our curiosity has always built the buzz.For centuries, it wasa novelty to wind up what moved:once inventors usedthe clockwork,each creature's startle and jerkback a kind of dance between what wasand what can be, how everyone doestheir best to make nature not justbetter, butless of itself when repeated, a link.And oh, how we've always loved [End Page 174] the miniature, the innocent shrinkof everything. Our harmlessness, proved. iii Over time, our harmlessness provedthat we knew little, and when we pausedto learn more, we shuffled and shovedour way through the labs, gassedthe creatures we could no longer use.Now a small tool can undo a singlebee and make it new. We comminglelife and death, making robots in the imageof the bee, which dies in part to causeyou pain. Our job was to make lessthan the human eye could discern, the lawsof identification rely on someone's bestguess: "Oh–a honey bee?" A minor sting. iv A minor sting–like love: Oh honey be mine–everyone lovesa movie's war romance. There was a field of flowersand suddenly something zooming around us–it was as big as a space ship, a giant creature with metal wings.I imagined you were the pilot and we'd set sail on that greatmachine. You'd learn to fly and I'd build the engines.But now we'll have to go to war. [End Page 175] v Now we'll have to go to war.There's always a president settingprecedents. This reflectsthe psychology of hornets,how when you stir the nest–No. The truth is that bees themselvesare more social than humans,except humans exhibitlike bees in war, how the youngmen want to go back to whenthey were part of something,a colony full of adrenaline, why elsevolunteer for another tour?That desire to return to the hive. vi That desire to return to the hive,where the queen lays over a thousandeggs a day, is strong. Keeps bees alive. Like in life, robobees can't reproduce.We'll build another machine for that,so humanoid roboticists may produce bees in a giant line of arms.For a robobee has no ovary to besuppressed. Needs no queen's charm, no birth control. This bee is laborless.When a politician says birth control is badfor labor, he is only talking about us. He wants us to be the drone, the workerand the Queen. No one will respect her. vii And a Queen? No one will respect her.We tried that.[ ] [End Page 176] viii We have always tried to replicatebodies with human invention: milkflowing from Cleopatra's mechanicalbreasts in processions, Jesusbleeding wood red drops that popin and out. His tears, displacedwater from live fish swimming insideof him. Vaucanson's duck defecatingfor the captivated crowd.So what if it's just a trick?It doesn't take a virgin birthto give us the feel of a miracle.Looking at ourselves, handmade,we feel delight, again and again. ix The delight of the new, again.Look at the child playing with drones!Look at the package delivered by drones!Soon the drone will be able to land. and unlock your door:Package in the foyer!The news can see anything...