Gaslamp Ball

I figured out what makes Khalil so creepy.  They made him too realistic!  Have you heard of the Uncanny Valley?  When you're making a humanoid robot, the more realistic it is made the more familiar it looks to the human eye.  You get a positive feeling because even though you can tell it's a robot your brain picks out the human characteristics and you have empathy for the machine.  That is until you reach the "Uncanny Valley".  This is the point where the robot looks a little too realistic so the eye finds all the non-human characteristics and flaws.  This tends to creep people out.  Check out this graph from Wikipedia:

The text in red is where I feel Khalil-Bot fits into this graph.  He's more lifelike than a zombie but less lifelike than bunraku puppet.  Actually after I did a google image search on bunraku puppets those things are pretty creepy, I don't know what they are doing on this graph.  It's natural to be creeped out by these imperfections because it could be dangerous to the human gene pool if you were attracted to even the slightest mutations.

When I see Khalil I'm transfixed by his lifeless eyes.  They are soulless, empty and they reflect my fears.  Then I see he his matted blonde hair, parted so perfectly yet obviously glued to his scalp.  Wisps of his dry damaged hair flutter from beneath his ball cap.  He barely moves, except when his optics sense a baseball within range to either swing at or dive towards.  His voice is void of emotion and he only answers in binary, "yes" or "no".

I'm not convinced that the far right side of this graph is true.  Some don't believe it exists because no robot has ever catapulted itself over the uncanny valley like Evil Knievel.  One day maybe technology will advance to the point where we can't tell the difference between a regular shortstop and a robot one, and maybe then Khalil will be accepted and loved.  Until that day comes he will always creep me out.