This cute little robot was created by two Canadian scientists in 2013 to test The Kindness of Strangers. In 2014 he successfully hitched from Halifax NS to Victoria BC. In 2015 he traveled all round Germany and The Netherlands.
But as I learned in the New Yorker this week, things didn’t go so well here in the US of A. He started in Salem MA, bound for San Francisco CA. He was found decapitated and dismembered in Philadelphia — gives new meaning to the aversion of W.C. Fields.
He could listen and speak and even recite all of Wikipedia if you asked. But one of our fellow Murricans apparently didn’t like him. Now all you really need to do with hitchhikers you don’t like is don’t pick them up. Not to pick them up and kill them.