Control story
A well-intentioned, but misguided man prioritizes developing a home security robot over providing for his family's more immediate needs.
15 total · 9 major · 6 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| acute anxiety | major | Ed became increasing paranoid about the possibility of a mysterious trespasser returning to harm his wife and daughter. Even though other people in the community didn't make a big deal about the incident, Ed felt it necessary use his remote-control scrap disposal robot for home security. |
| deafness | major | Beth was deaf-mute and communicated by sign language. |
| facing financial ruin | major | Central to the story was the fact that Ed and his family were so short on funds that they had trouble paying hospital bills and needed electrical works. |
| father and daughter | major | Ed was very much concerned with protecting his young daughter, Beth, from intruders. |
| fear of strangers | major | Ed was unusually concerned about a mysterious person who had lurked on his property. |
| husband and wife | major | Ed's fixation on developing his security robot over paying the bills strained his relationship with his wife, Kate, to the point that she up and left with their daughter. |
| obsession | major | Ed became obsessed with protecting his family from possible intruders to the point where he neglected their well-being in other ways. |
| seeing the error of one's ways | major | The story concluded with Ed coming to see the insanity behind his beyond the pale efforts to protect his family from home intruders at the expense of tending to their more immediate needs. |
| speculative robotics | major | A large, remote-controlled robot, called "The Scrapper", that copied the movements of the person controlling it was a main novelty of the story. |
| anger management issues | minor | Ed barely controlled his anger and we saw a few over-the-top outbursts. |