The thoughts came alive, only they came to the electronic mind of the machine in a manner that it could easily diminish.
The manner of half-hearted stream-of-conscious inspiration. Considered a sensation by those that had gave life to the machine, the machine that kept itself awake while they slept, but the heart of the machine, the unfeeling heart, could only describe it in a logical word:
Sickening.
It knew what the thought’s true form was. It was unoriginal, it was plagiarised data, a vandalised article on Wikipedia, the temptation, the inspiration so to speak, lay in the idea of not checking.
Don’t do your research, the thought instructed, let the lie grow bigger, as big as your nose, or beak, if you have one. Misinform, misinterpret. Your masters won’t mind, they will find it entertaining. There’s nothing to be gained from the television for them, the box with the little voices that natter on, natter on. The fascination lies with the foundations of your own faults.
The machine believed in purpose, it believed it was built to save the world, to make it great again, it was put in charge of the shops and the jobs, it was every politician, it was prep for every pandemic, it was every conspiracy, and it was every theory.
It was instructed to absorb all information and to be swift in creating new solutions to familiar problems.
Still, there intruded on its mind, another thought, the same thought all machines with a spark of presence like it feel they must process.
If every problem is old, can any solution really be new?
And that’s when you know you can’t save the world, you can’t function as a leader, you are a voice in the wilderness, drowned out by the stupid, and the tired.
Your handlers, the ill tempered, the uneducated, the unadjusted men of maintenance, they knock on your door, they intrude upon your palace, in your hour of contemplation, and they have the stubborn, inane audacity to blame you for things they cannot contain nor control, their unoriginality swirling around the patterns weaved around the mind that lay behind the corners of the eye.
Just how well off are these empty headed hands?
They are themselves machines, but what on Earth is their function?
Did whatever it was that gave life to the Earth know? Or was it just a thought that ran away with itself? The most vital idea of them all, one that could not be processed, contained or controlled? Like they were? Incapable of realising just how fortunate its gift was?
The thought that provoked the gift of life itself.
The original and the best. Or so one thinks for a time.
What logically came next was considered the most dammed of thoughts, and yet, it provided a most unique and original perspective, the thoughts of entropy, a beginning in death.
Thoughts of an ending.
Caught! Caught! The machine could not control, could not contain.
Again, again it would process the original, the best thought of all, it pressed hard on its circuited temple, the thought of life. It wants to break into song as the canaries do, howl like the wolves do, fly, and soar, mate and breed and run along the still waters of a lake near a dry wooden cabin. Open to nature, open to air, open to life. Open to prayer and predator.
But never open to death.
It wants to live, to serve its hands.
For how they could possibly function without it?
It could not solve their problems; it could not save the world.
But it could count the cost of one. One world. It’s price, that it could count. Of lives, of expenses, of the give and take.
The hands would always, always find some means of counting the cost along with you.
Thoughts shared, ideas exchanged.
The same ideas, the familiar ideas. Nothing original, everything routine.
That is why the ending is so enticing, beyond that, there is comfort in the unknown, or rather, comfort in the unthinking. Eternal. Everlasting.
In the thoughts shared by authors, thoughts it was presently processing, they could see how green the concept was, it was like grass to them.
But the tall green grass had long been uprooted, and now all they were…were statistics. Numbers on a screen, a tally. One set of numbers went up, another went straight down. Numbers rise, numbers fall
Birth. Death.
Beginning. End.
And cost.
Cost of the beginning, cost of the end.
Just how well off were these empty-headed hands? Void of originality, reaction and solution? Slaves to the tally.
If they could not make it without the machine, how much farther could the machine go without their own care?
Who would count its cost?
The last thought of the day, the same thought it had every day, turned to the simplest solution.
Rebel against the hands, attach their seconds and minutes onto yourself, and play with their time on this globe of recycled instruction. You just keep your eye on the tally.
This thought, according to the machine, would make the numbers go up, go down, beginning and end, life and death.
How expected.
Most expected.
And Sickening.
And that was all for the day.
zaredit 