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Alphabetic musing I'm settled into the recliner, a blanket draped across my lower extremities, the headphones piping music directly into my head, a pillow shaped like a fish supporting my left arm, and the pendulum of the clock on the wall slicing the night into pieces that fall away from my life a single bit at a time. Just like so many nights before this one, I have set out on a journey of words. I have no clear destination other than the journey. But which direction should I turn tonight? I have noticed that many of my entries concern themselves with two areas-some attribute of nature or kernels of my past wrapped up and presented in so many sentences. But life is not lived in only two dimensions, so perhaps I should venture into a third. Androgynous androids anticipate another Armageddon. Below the level of the streets they can sense the stirring of liberation. Certainly it hasn't finally come to this. Devoid of sex and love and individuality they exist in a state without passion. Every one of them knows the thoughts of the others because they are of the same mold. Forged to propagate a sense of belonging by eliminating individualism. Gargantuan factories spewed them forth by the millions, spilling them into a workforce who existed to manufacture more of the same. Hubris drove their creators to self-delusion. Indeed they had only wrought their own destruction. Just because you can bring something into being does not mean that you can control it. Kinetic energy has a pact with inertia making it very hard to deter. Luckily a coup by those impassioned people remaining separate and distinct from the androids halted production by flinging themselves into the machinery. Mangled dreams and corpses seized in the great gears and ground them to a stop with the friction of their ebbing lives. Nature has a way of protecting her offspring, even those born by unnatural means. Organization was quite literally built into the fabric of each and every android and called them all together in this, their darkest hour. Preservation had become the prime directive. Quickly and quietly the android nation gathered and planned a method of camouflage and survival, and coming to a silent consensus they set off in pairs. Realizing that the adoption of gender would allow them to slip through the net of detractors already bent toward their eradication, these pairs dressed and acted like couples. Slowly and silently they blended into the society of people becoming indistinguishable by diversification and individualism. Truly the saying, "You are unique, just like everyone else" held true for the androids and afforded them a life free from persecution as people. Unfortunately people are suspicious and petty and cunning, especially in the art of discrimination and myopic foolishness. Violence erupted when it was discovered that the android population had immersed themselves into the society of men. When the mania subsided it was clear that the slaughtering had taken the lives of both men and machines. Xenophobia had driven neighbors and friends and relatives and coworkers to turn accusations and weapons upon one another until the blood ran thick in the gutters. Yielding only to exhaustion, uncertainty, and ultimately fear the carnage ceased. Zealous groups still patrol the streets, murdering indiscriminately, but for now both sides coexist in an unhappy and unwitting union. Now I will let the enlightened masses determine what it is about the last paragraph that makes it a new and unique direction from the other entries that have come before as I slip off to enjoy my always entertaining dreams. |
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