Laconic

Brief and to the point (adj.)

The Dalai Llama leans forward in his seat and looks up. He is impressed by Carnegie Hall. Then he looks over his shoulder at the chatting crowd. He is impressed with them, too. Among them he sees the Pope, Cardinals, Presidents, Sheiks, Prime Ministers, Senators, Kings, Queens, Princes, Princesses, Leaders of Business, and Famous Intellectuals. The world's most powerful people are waiting for the show to begin.
He turns around and faces the stage and flips through the the Playbill. It's title reads: "The Truth of Human Consciousness." The Llama stops flipping and finds a page with an ad for women's perfume. There is a little sample glued to the page and the holy man opens the sample, grins, and brings the Playbill up to his face and takes a deep sniff. As he exhales, the house lights dim and the voices of the audience hush in anticipation.

No one thought it could be done. The President of the United States was glad, at least, that Americans had created it before anybody else. The machine was shaped like the tin man. It's face was an aluminum sphere covered with a thin and perpetually wet sponge that was connected to the head by a series of wires. When it was on the wires crawled in and out of holes in the sponge while little LCD lights blinked on and off. The sponge was like a dog's nose: it detected smells, pheromones emitted by whatever was placed within 10 feet of it. The wires carried the pheromonal information into a computer in the head and the computer analyzed and interpreted it. Within a matter of seconds the machine could determine an person's mood and mindset and describe it in spoken English.
When it was first turned on the machine was facing one of its creators. The wires beneath its spongy mask crawled and flickered and it said,
"Relax. You have succeeded. There is no need to worry."
In the first few days of the machine's life it successfully diagnosed seven cancer patients when it was put in front of them. Then a human child was placed in front of it and it said,
"It will learn soon."
Several weeks after the machine diagnosed the cancer patients and spoke about the child it was reported that Japanese engineers had somehow created their own identical model of the robot. When the American creators heard the news the machine was on and close by and it said,
"It was bound to happen."
Then the President of the United States and the Emperor of Japan met to discuss the matter. They agreed that there should be a public display of this invention to demonstrate the power of human ingenuity, and also to demonstrate the political peace that existed between the two governments. After a meeting at the Emperor's home in Tokyo the two men decided that the robots would meet one another on American soil. The Japanese and American engineers, who were invited to the meeting, were told this. They all scratched their heads and their faces collectively and then one of the Japanese engineers came up with a strange hypothesis.
"Given the construction and programming of the robots," he said in Japanese, "if the two machines were placed near each other then they would likely describe one another's mood."
An American scientist that understood Japanese sat up in his chair.
"The most basic, fundamental qualities of human consciousness," he said.
Everyone became very excited.

The curtain rises and reveals the two robots. They are facing one another like they are having a conversation. Then a switch is flipped from somewhere backstage and the lights of the wires beneath their faces light up, blinking and flitting. The wires crawl beneath the sponges and they collect information from the air. The audience is silent. A few seconds pass.
Then both robots simultaneously pronounce the same spare but truthful syllable:
"Fa," they say in their synthetic voices.
The Dalai Llama laughs, grinning and nodding his head-- his bubbly chuckle the only sound in an otherwise silent auditorium.