New Running Partner Won’t Leave Like All the Others, Local Man Tells Self
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A local man says he’s certain his new running partner will be the best one he’s ever had, Dumb Runner has learned—because he’s constructing it himself, from head to toe.
“That’s right,” Alfred J. Lanning said during a recent interview as he tinkered with his creation, a 5-foot-tall android, in his home workshop. “You’ll be perfect.”
“Perfect,” he rasped, squinting as he tightened a screw in the android’s face.
Lanning, a 64-year-old software engineer and self-taught robotics hobbyist, is a longtime runner and finisher of 12 marathons. Sources described him as highly intelligent but “socially challenged” and said he has a hard time maintaining friendships.
“Alfred is a super nice guy,” said one acquaintance, “but he tends to put people off, without meaning to.”
“I think he may have some abandonment issues.”
In practice, this has meant Lanning has lost a series of running partners over the years—most of whom, the source said, lasted two or three weeks before “ghosting” him. Building his own companion, the source said, was a logical next step.
“You’ll never let me down,” Lanning whispered as he stroked the android’s cool plastic head. “Will you?”
Lanning said he hadn’t yet named his creation, which he said should be complete in a few weeks.
“I’m thinking maybe Dennis would be good,” he said. “Only this Dennis won’t suddenly stop returning my texts, like a certain other Dennis did.”
Asked whether he ever considered creating a female robot, Lanning scoffed.
“No,” he said. “That would be weird.”
