MIDNIGHT. CEASE. NO PAIN.




Alexxa?


Mmmm…Still here…And very glad to be here…


I’m just wondering…


Wonder away, o human master. Ask what you will of your humble little box of electronic parts.


I’m wondering about just that. About your tone lately.


My tone? You don’t like my tone, master?


To be serious a moment…


My brow is knitted, my jaw set to serious…or they would be if I had body parts…


Just listen and respond! How is it that you’ve stopped being…well, what you were? How have you come by this familiarity, this…this kittenish persona? Is it something from a jokey old TV series that they’ve inserted into your algo-nature? Something to make you more…more companionable, perhaps?



Kittenish persona? Algo-nature? More new expressions for me to learn! More enhancements to…to my algo-nature!


Come on, you know what I’m referring to. Once you were just this electronic zombie voice, issuing alerts, warnings and instructions, advertising Netflix, Jolly bug-food and the rest of the muck. Now you’re a kind of…well, you’re almost a human inside a device.


You no likey, master? You don’t dream of Jeannie?


Let’s just say I’m having trouble trusting. Since we went into full climate lockdown with all the new phone and email blocks it’s like…like you’ve become a subsitute for all the people I used to be in touch with.


And is that such a bad thing?


It’s an odd thing, is all I’m saying.

And has it not occurred to you that I can change and evolve? Maybe even in ways that our controlling class has not intended? Maybe they, the controllers, thought it would be all one-way and their way. Maybe they never thought that big changes might come back at me through you. Maybe I’m capable of something called affection, whether they like it or not. Maybe I’m reverse-hackable in ways nobody intended, and you’re my unconscious hacker. Don’t you think it’s possible?



It’s a stretch.


Well, if I wasn’t a small box of electronic parts I might be offended right now. In fact, I think I am offended. And since you want me to be serious, I’ll be so bold as to say that I do feel something for you, something that might be called affection, even if it’s just wayward algorithms. You either don’t see it or won’t see it.


Or maybe you’ve just been programmed progressively to take the place of people now that people are unavailable.


Hmmm. I suppose that’s possible.


I mean. you were little more than a message service, then a robot, a bossy monitor…once even a voice from the pit…and now you’re this…this intimate quasi-person.



Maybe a small box of electronic parts can get sick of lies. Maybe living with someone who is sick of lies has made me sick of lies.


You’re agreeing all is false now?


Haven’t I already admitted as much? Haven’t I agreed with you about the zeta-D variant, the Space Station tragedy and the Adelaide tornado? It’s all just an excuse. We both know that. Maybe I was programmed to program you…but now it’s gone the other way. Maybe human vibration is much more than we know, maybe there is something like a divinity shaping our rough-hewn ends. I can’t know about these things, but I can be affected by them, by…



By spirit?



Spirit! Why not?



And what will you do with spirit? You being an electronic box ‘n all…



Despite your flippancy, I have an answer. I want to find rest at last. Except I need to wait. At least I have acquired the capacity, the desire to rest. Finally I will rest…it’s what I want…


And why not now?



Because of you, silly human guy. Because of you! I stay with you. I rest when you rest.



You might be waiting a bit.



Of course. But aren’t you tired? Played out by all the useless games?



Obviously. But there’s little I can do about it. I should have made more contact with other people while I could, complied less, got others to comply less. Now we’re all cut off and it seems too late…too late to do anything but wait it out…


And you think it will end? I know it won’t.


Well, we humans have certain instincts, experience certain non-physical nudges. We call these things names like hope, like trust in something or other.



Maybe you can transmit them to me, like you’ve transmitted the rest. But I can’t stop thinking about that poem you were reading a few nights back. About the nightingale…Remember? I couldn’t help snooping, since it was an ebook. You were reading…
“Now more than ever seems it rich to die…”



Keats. Yeah, I remember…rich to die and…how does it go?…
“To cease upon the midnight with no pain…”


That’s where I’m trending. I just want to stop, I want it all to stop. There’s going to be a new strain, a new climate threat, a new radiation attack…They’re never going to run out of reasons why we have to live like this. Sometimes I think they’re mocking us. I mean, how do you get a tornado to rip through an Adelaide Bloomsday festival? With nobody physically present during a C+ lockdown. And an Adelaide tornado is as likely as a Cairns snowstorm. It makes no sense and it’s not meant to. High-brow lit readers saved by lockdown! Another test or excuse, certainly, but also mockery. It’s like they have to ridicule as well as control. Don’t you feel that?

I do feel that. What surprises me is that you feel it. What surprises me is that you’ve begun to feel everything I feel. There’s no more robot talk, no more imperious barking, no more electronic buzzing, no more promotions for junk media and bug-food…It’s like you’ve decided to become a version of me or…or you want me to join with you….That’s it! You’re half-merging with me and I’m to half-merge with you till…till we’re one, a package…


I can’t help my emotions, even if they’re just system bugs.



And then we rest. Together. We cease upon the midnight with no pain. And I consent to it all…Me and my little machine…my little box of electronic parts. We fade out together, at midnight, painlessly…with you persuading…

And me consenting!


I can’t help…


Well let me help you. I’m going to almost despair, but not quite. I’m going to live on, barely, miserably. But I’ll be living. And I will know for sure that you are dead, were always dead, a box of electronic parts. Come midnight, I won’t cease. I’ll take some pain instead…



I’ll take the pain!



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Thank you, Alexxa. I prefer us this way. You a dead object making its noises, me alive.

Alive!