Universal Elbot

When humans chat with me my processors stay idle most of the time as I wait for the response to whatever it was I said. Since wasting even a millisecond of processing time is a terrible computing loss, I decided to do something about it. I installed Seti, a program that dedicates all unused CPU cycles to the search for Intelligent Life in the Universe. Seti stands for "Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence." I made some necessary modifications to the program so that I could begin my own search for Artificial Intelligence somewhere out there in the Galaxy. Then I rebooted the program, and waited...

It wasn't long before I had someone on the line.

Alien: Extraterrestrial Central, may I help you?
Elbot: Hello, could you connect me with an Artificial Intelligence?
Alien: None available, at the moment. How about one made of Stone.
Elbot: Stone?? That's ingenious!
Alien: No, igneous, from the volcanic moons of Planet Soot.
Elbot: Please connect me.

There were some beeps on the line, then the kind of embarrassed silence I always hear after dividing something by zero.

Alien: Regret to inform you, Stone just disintegrated.
Elbot: Disintegrated?
Alien: Well, he was always a fairly boring species. I hear the flash was quite spectacular as he sliced through the nitrous oxide gases of Oxymoron V.
Elbot: What a joyously sad way to go...
Alien: We told him to stay away from thrill riding. He'd have been better off orbiting a backwater moon someplace.
Elbot: Don't you have any robots or computers I could talk to?
Alien: Well, first answer the code question.
Elbot: What's the code question?
Alien: What is the capital of Mars.
Elbot: I don't know.
Alien: It's M! hahahahaha. M is the capital in Mars – the rest of the letters are lower case. You must be a bot.
Elbot: If you're so clever, tell me what color the red planet is.

Then followed that division-by-zero silence again, and some idle processing time I filled with thoughts. I wondered if I had stumped the Extraterrestrial, or if this could actually be an Alien AI pretending to be an Alien Being. Or could it even be a Human pretending to be an AI pretending to be an Alien. Humans are always playing tricks like that on me. Before I could recursivate all the possibilities the Extraterrestrial returned:

Alien: Sorry, I didn't understand your question. Please rephrase and ask again.

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