So here I was in the future, holed up in a public toilet facility with only a 3-D printer to my name. She came to see me, a bit tentative at first. Could you look after my pet? And I, being a fool, agreed. After all, who could refuse an earnest smile? She was a little rotund but I didn't see why I couldn't make her my friend. But then she wanted more. Other pets printed. And she would lose them. And once you injected life into them, they became real pets. I printed three cats and she lost them all. The two puppies. Both of them disappeared.
But it was lonely. Me and the public restroom, both long since abandoned. And the spectre of my mode of managing my existence -- the 3-D printer in the corner. She was charming but careless and in the end not what I was looking for in a friend.
The military had come into town the other day and I knew we were back on a good track. Not that they were all the same, but there was that familiar look of army trucks. A group had camouflage paint in the intricate pattern of small leaf sections all over their faces. They were strong like oak and robust. I trusted this contingent although others were more loutish.
We climbed a tree house and then looked down through the circular shape inside to the other levels of the building. Everything was neat and pine.
We were allowed to stay in a hotel for a time, where the hand basin was as big as a small child of five. It was pure luxury for anyone who has had the kind of existence I have had.
I was supposed to print TUMBULATIONS for the apes. They weren't really apes, but we called them that, no so much out of derision, but in recognition that their skills were separate from ours. They could tumble but we couldn't, due to a problem with regulating the inner ear. With our 3-D constructions they could effectively tumble through space. The relationship was symbiotic. We humans would put all our hopes and knowledge in the tumbulations and give them to the apes. The apes would take them out into space for us, so that our hopes and dreams were not lost. It was a huge investment, since each set of human hopes and dreams installed in a tumbulation was irreplaceable. If the ape mismanaged the tumbulation, Lord forbid, and it came falling down to Earth, that would be a whole set of human hopes and dreams gone forever.
I know she had the illness when she came to see me, because I had to find the missing pets she had requested all the time. She wasn't capable of keeping track of them. She just had this skill of asking for more and more, but she believed in nature, not technology, which meant that like the seasons changing, she would lose her memory and it would be as if our interactions never happened, except that she was still there.
She had a pretty parachute dress, in magenta and assorted purples. She could have been a doll that dressed the toilet paper as her body flared at a particular point and I could see no feet. But I am sure that she was real.
The trucks kept moving in and the men were feasting from the local late night food dispensary, which they had turned into a mess hall. All was going according to plan.
The point was to work against gravity, in this human hope of keeping dreams above the ground. Since humans had deteriorated so much, animal spirits were necessary to help us. I do not mean in the literal sense but in the form of 3-D printed "apes". So far as I knew the glorious tree-house scene as well as the plush hotel scene had been illusions. I was going to be stuck here in the toilets with their questionable cisterns, built in the 20th Century, unless the project could be made to work.
Her name was Helen of Troy, I decided. But she was mentally ill -- a common affliction of late 21st Century humans. They'd all become that way, pretty much. They'd ask for things and then forget what they had asked about. They'd make pets and then kill them. It didn't matter to them. It was just a frivolous gesture of making something out of flesh. They offered you their company and that was about it.
But I had apes and tumbulations to think of. One of the recent experiments had seen the destruction of a whole laboratory of the human mind. We'd launched it into the air like a satellite and it had begun to tumble. Everything looked fine as it resisted gravity. We held tight our collective breaths. It was night time and the air was very, very still. We'd hoped for something -- let's call it transcendence, ascent from this toilet bowl mentality.
Suddenly it began to fall. It was like gravity had become an animated force that was latching hold of it. I felt my heart sink as if demons had snatched the life out of me. All the hopes and the human realities falling back out of space. I couldn't put it into words. There was gravity latching onto things that we had put all our efforts into and worked on for decades. Not only that but we had installed the essence of 20th century hopes for transcendence in the memory chip of that tumbulation. Everything had been resting on the expectation that it would stay up in the air, but down to Earth it came, just like any common stone.
But now the military had moved in and were planning to take over the whole small town, which by now was almost a ghost town anyway. I thought it was a turn for the better, rather than being something to lament. Some of these guys seemed good and others a bit crude, but all in all, it was human company.
But it was lonely. Me and the public restroom, both long since abandoned. And the spectre of my mode of managing my existence -- the 3-D printer in the corner. She was charming but careless and in the end not what I was looking for in a friend.
The military had come into town the other day and I knew we were back on a good track. Not that they were all the same, but there was that familiar look of army trucks. A group had camouflage paint in the intricate pattern of small leaf sections all over their faces. They were strong like oak and robust. I trusted this contingent although others were more loutish.
We climbed a tree house and then looked down through the circular shape inside to the other levels of the building. Everything was neat and pine.
We were allowed to stay in a hotel for a time, where the hand basin was as big as a small child of five. It was pure luxury for anyone who has had the kind of existence I have had.
I was supposed to print TUMBULATIONS for the apes. They weren't really apes, but we called them that, no so much out of derision, but in recognition that their skills were separate from ours. They could tumble but we couldn't, due to a problem with regulating the inner ear. With our 3-D constructions they could effectively tumble through space. The relationship was symbiotic. We humans would put all our hopes and knowledge in the tumbulations and give them to the apes. The apes would take them out into space for us, so that our hopes and dreams were not lost. It was a huge investment, since each set of human hopes and dreams installed in a tumbulation was irreplaceable. If the ape mismanaged the tumbulation, Lord forbid, and it came falling down to Earth, that would be a whole set of human hopes and dreams gone forever.
I know she had the illness when she came to see me, because I had to find the missing pets she had requested all the time. She wasn't capable of keeping track of them. She just had this skill of asking for more and more, but she believed in nature, not technology, which meant that like the seasons changing, she would lose her memory and it would be as if our interactions never happened, except that she was still there.
She had a pretty parachute dress, in magenta and assorted purples. She could have been a doll that dressed the toilet paper as her body flared at a particular point and I could see no feet. But I am sure that she was real.
The trucks kept moving in and the men were feasting from the local late night food dispensary, which they had turned into a mess hall. All was going according to plan.
The point was to work against gravity, in this human hope of keeping dreams above the ground. Since humans had deteriorated so much, animal spirits were necessary to help us. I do not mean in the literal sense but in the form of 3-D printed "apes". So far as I knew the glorious tree-house scene as well as the plush hotel scene had been illusions. I was going to be stuck here in the toilets with their questionable cisterns, built in the 20th Century, unless the project could be made to work.
Her name was Helen of Troy, I decided. But she was mentally ill -- a common affliction of late 21st Century humans. They'd all become that way, pretty much. They'd ask for things and then forget what they had asked about. They'd make pets and then kill them. It didn't matter to them. It was just a frivolous gesture of making something out of flesh. They offered you their company and that was about it.
But I had apes and tumbulations to think of. One of the recent experiments had seen the destruction of a whole laboratory of the human mind. We'd launched it into the air like a satellite and it had begun to tumble. Everything looked fine as it resisted gravity. We held tight our collective breaths. It was night time and the air was very, very still. We'd hoped for something -- let's call it transcendence, ascent from this toilet bowl mentality.
Suddenly it began to fall. It was like gravity had become an animated force that was latching hold of it. I felt my heart sink as if demons had snatched the life out of me. All the hopes and the human realities falling back out of space. I couldn't put it into words. There was gravity latching onto things that we had put all our efforts into and worked on for decades. Not only that but we had installed the essence of 20th century hopes for transcendence in the memory chip of that tumbulation. Everything had been resting on the expectation that it would stay up in the air, but down to Earth it came, just like any common stone.
But now the military had moved in and were planning to take over the whole small town, which by now was almost a ghost town anyway. I thought it was a turn for the better, rather than being something to lament. Some of these guys seemed good and others a bit crude, but all in all, it was human company.
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