Ro, ro, ro your bot
Down the stream of time
Eeerily, warily, nearly there are we?
Life is so sublime.
-Old Song

One may "ro" a bot by using a complicated system of remote controls (remote ordinance is what the word means) that enables the happy user to effect any performance and achieve any destination down time's ever-present stream; and it is made easier for the user by a staff of directors whose policy is "The More the Merrier" and who want the timestream populated by all manner of visitations, and bots are well up on the list of desirables.

"It," (and the timestream is what will be meant) "would be quite empty otherwise," is the statement of one of these directors, who are guild-bound timestream traditionalists whose inheritance of their position comes from being descendents of the computer families from which the timestream has its origin.

As everybody knows, but we speak here for the benefit of the unknowing which existed before the event, formalizing the knowledge thereof, the time-stream came into being from the greater and greater presense in reality of the Internet, which when it had fulfilled all its possibilities still continued to grow, and eventually there was a condition in space and time and running through life called the "timestream," and thereafter there was not the Internet, although it has been reestablished on more limited, partial bases, with less massive interconnectedness. But when the internet was returned to, the timestream was still there. So what else was there to do but make use of it?

For one thing, we wish to explore it, much as archaeologists wanted to explore the past, and geographers the present conditions of the Earth.

The use of bots, whose presense may be overseen, and who in their own way "report back," makes exploration simpler since they are particularizing agencies and very definite in their observations. We want to know more.

No one really knows what the time-stream is, we just know where it came from, and know one is precisely sure how it came from there.

Here is your bot, mister. Be sure to "ro" it properly. You don't want a bot getting loose. That's right, that's right, soo, very good, now this, now that, you've ro'd your bot to the Very Edge, and now you've ro'd it into time's stream, just so! Notice the sublimities of the vistas which stretch before you. The old song was quite correct. Are you aware of the bringing-back equipment? You will want to have reported to you what your bot sees and does.

Another satisfied user! Do you all, ladies and gentlemen, see what he has done? Following his instructions, he has put another bot in time's stream and is receiving his feedback information which can be successtully used in a data-bank! And that's not all! The gentleman seems to have something else! I'm asking him about it now.

"I had this idea, see, to have a bot that looks back. And I patented it. I'm here under government sanction. Now, I'm using the bot ordinarily, as you direct, but I can switch over to a function whereby it will begin to perceive otherness than the time stream in which it rides.

It can study us from the time-stream perspective. Just a pioneer model, the government calls it. When they were telling me how good it was."

"Well, let's have him wait. The onlookers will want to be prepared for the changeover, and do it ceremoniously. You just get in some practise, and we'll put it into effective use next month."

"I was intending to do that. No such thing as going right into something without practice. By the time we're ready to utilize the capacities of my device, I'll be an expert!"

"Certainly he will, ladies and gents. Isn't science wonderful?

Here's another scientist stepped right out of the common throng! And I don't mind saying that the world will be looking forward to this latest step. Now let's move along, everyone, there are other aspects of the time stream we want you to view."

In the early evening, the new bot manipulator plays games with his device, waiting for the time when it will be put to its use. And we are waiting for it too.