A cosmic mistake. What else but that? Botched, or straight out never-meant-to-be, time appointment between two seasons of another kind, misaligned, each its variant position in Time and Space, collided in some weird quirk (fate? fluctuation in the way of all things? cunning trick of Cosmic Mind?), resulting in blood-splashed vinyl, chrome and asphalt at the sharpest, though not the most dangerous, twist of Dead Man’s Curve.
Reason being questionable, we questioned whether reason could be reasonable (or questioned) at all.
Others, convinced fleet magic had been indeed made manifest, had their fun and laughed themselves to sleep.
Such ones confessed to having waked in the night crying your name.
Doubts arise. Does the bright engine future gleam future of engines? Are engines our future at all?
Much is at stake.
Prosthetic colors lack sweat. Like most synthetic projections, extensions, amplifications, they miss essential instances, trace elements found only in original design. Authenticity of the organic. Life-like, these tech-no-ma-jigs, but not Life.
They don’t care. About ability, for instance. Developing skills and knowledge in accordance with our own desire and design. They don’t care about the scent of hedgerows in the simple luxury of a Summer night. They care only for machines invented to facilitate exchange of misery — at home and overseas. They — you know, Them, who rule us all — appear as if from outer space, some distant planet their progenitors had fled, a trashed planet, once luxuriant as our own — had been — no longer alive or able to sustain. Wasted, burned. A smoldering rock of crimson trauma, wayward quanta, premeditated doom.
Did they know fear, then, leaving all that sustained them, and History — there is always History where They have been — for new green blue earth? Do they know fear now? Or has another Mother already been scoped, analyzed, targeted for swift procurement, regardless of whether indigenous Life, whatever form it takes, is intelligent enough to be hostile to Them, and willing to die to kill them — in vain, of course, only in vain. For They are Death, and Death can be delayed, for a time, but not repelled.
They douse with killing rain, combustible and toxic, like gasoline.
“Clay can’t be helped.”
Their excuse for renting live organic for periods of extended tragedy. Until it too is clay.
Followed, inevitably, by “life goes on” chanted hourly by talk-show, news-show, sitcom prophets of the television hoot virus. Laugh till you piss your pants; laugh yourselves silly or dead.
Otherwise it’s, “Control yourself. Act rational and civilized. Pretend, if you are able, that you’re more than mere human stuff. Be taller smarter stronger. No more in-betweens, no more whining that you’re ‘freaked and alone.’ We expect, we demand good will. Look to greatness, whistle while you work and work and work as your stalwart grandparents had done in glorious times past!”
They will not take ‘No’ for an answer; nor will They take ‘Yes.’
Grandma, grandpa, we fear for our lives, and yours. We fear whatever might be coming next from Them. Tell us a story so we can forget. Tell us a story. Secretly.