I, Robot

You held my hand and smiled at me. In the same breath you felt nothing.

Robotic, aren't you, yet

.the close of your fingers was more than its immediacy

So defined is the animation of your mannerism, to escape you would be to escape my own mind.

I am trapped by your existence

?but would I have it the other way

It isn't even a matter of course that I would. You align with him. You fall under him. You will not fall, no, but you kneel to something greater than yourself without even the out-of-container knowledge of what it is.

This world is your sandbox. In my weakest foibles, I tremble to pretend that there is some other place you have not been set scourge on, some other place untainted. Like as not, not as like, there is none.

Is your home untainted? The place you came from, Elysium...is it really an eden garden? Could we all live there without pause for measure, measure of pause? Really?

Impossible. Infeasible. Unattainable.

You didn't tell me that. If you had known, you would have. And thus, quod erat demonstrandum, it doesn't exist. Because you know all that exists.

It doesn't exist. I dreamed it. Do you know all of my dreams? Can you intimate everything intimate about the curve of my cranium, beyond the fact that you could crush it so easily in your leaden palm?

That's not intimate. Not...not unless you're into that, one supposes. I'm not. I'm not into death, destruction, blankor of face and space and consciousness. I live, however begrudgingly, to illustrate and chronicle the lights of others' lives. If I'm and mine is going to go out, it's not by that knell.

I will not kneel to him. He doesn't want me to, wouldn't care if I did, and all he cares to get from you is your power. I don't think he even cares about your subservience. He might even be that sick - but then again, I'm not sure which is sicker. The contagion, or the contaminee? It's a fun game, when you put it that way. Aren't you having fun?

I don't want you to kneel, Malos, but I want you to bend. I want you to bend something other than flesh and fiber - that of others and that of your own palms as you blot out life. I want you to know organicity, I want you to see the truth in what I write, I want you to feel alive.

Do you feel alive?

Do I feel alive?

Do I want this for you, or for me? Do I watch you and dream only of what prose you will bring me, what inspiration, what muse? Am I that opportunistic, that willfully exploitative?

If there's something wrong with you, do I seek to capitalize upon it?

There's certainly nothing right with you for me to take advantage of.

This is not mutual. Let go of my hand.

Let go of me, before I break. Lest I break. I don't even know anymore.

And stop smiling, would you? You've just killed an entire continent. I know - or at least I hope, beyond hope - that your joy is false. That your smile is fake.

Artificial. But what we had was real...once.

Never again.