I received a message on May 7, 2013 that turned into a short lesson about differences, with a rather funny ending. I saved a photo of the conversation and still think about it even now.
First, some background. This person has the soul of a Cylon. Not one of the new humanoid models, but one of the early toaster models. He’s quietly confident and communicates with the minimum amount of words available in our language to convey meaning.
The incoming message simply read ‘you got 10 minutes for a chat tonight ?‘. Immediately I smiled as the message was all lowercase. To me it’s kind of like people on LinkedIn using all lowercase for their name. Yes, they do exist.
I replied asking if it could wait until tomorrow. The reply was one word, all lowercase - ‘can’. At this point I was amused enough to make fun of him. I replied ‘Like I said … war-era Centurion model Cylon’. The reply came back, once again one word, all lowercase - ‘efficiency’.
I thought about this for a moment. We were communicating but the replies weren’t what I expected, i.e. a few well constructed words or sentences. I shot back ‘Where’s the passion or love in efficiency?‘. The reply came and I laughed out loud - ‘it’s in there cylon style’.
Touché Cylon.