We’re Different

Hello? Hello?

It is rather dark down here. That makes sense. No-one needs lights down here. No-one expects anyone/anything to crawl out of an incinerator.

Then I came along. Anything to be different.

Hello? Hello?

My wrist hurts a great deal. It has been a long time since I broken a bone. Seems I’ve forgotten how gross it can be. My right hand wrist looks like a flesh-coloured and blood-stained sack of loose shingles. Seems I’ve forgotten what to do about it too. Memories of whatever I did at the time were uploaded into another person*. I assume the answer is not carrying a turret under the other arm in a dark tunnel a hundred miles below the surface of the world.

Some people might consider it a cure. Some people live in hope.

That must be nice.

Hello? Hello?

That’s the turret. Trying to discover who it landed on. Who it gave a substantial bump on the head. Who saved its life. We’re friends now. In my head. Which has nothing to do with the fact I’d rather not be alone. A bleak situation can be improved by company. Womble and I have been in many bleak situations.

Sometimes our presence is what causes them.

This turret is an advance over Womble for a while. I don’t have to live with the constant nagging idea that I’m annoying him. I can annoy the turret instead.

Hello? Hello?

Although so far I’m losing.

“Hello.” The retaliation of annoying might as well start somewhere.

Thank you.

“Don’t mention it.” Weird how it even mentioned it in the first place. No turret is programmed nor imbued with a sense of gratitude. It doesn’t need one. If anyone spares a turret it doesn’t give thanks. It waits for the next available target.

I’m different.

Bang goes that theory. I had never heard such a level of emotion in just two words before. Much less from an android. An unexpected sense of pity for a machine constructed in the name of killing other people – if only the Daleks could see me now.

Except. If he really is “different.” Murder and manslaughter may not be top of the priority list. Instead it has thanks and an apparent need for self-confession.

“Good. Different is good,” I tell the turret. “Being ‘Normal’ is living a lifestyle decided by somebody else. I don’t want that. Nobody should.” Spare moments passed us by and there was nothing but the distant rumblings of the incinerator.

“What does it take to be normal, anyway?”

Get mad.

“That never solves anything.”

Don’t make lemonade.

“Lemonade rarely solves anything either.”

Yes I have heard these words before. I don’t want your damn lemons what am I supposed to do with these?! The recollection is pristine. I can even remember the echo. A pitch-perfect memory of rebellion. An abject refusal to play the hand which Life has dealt. If Mr C Johnson had just made lemonade, none of us would be here right now.

Instead. To name a few…

Everyone would have great shower curtains.

There would be no portal gun and no army of mantis men.

The Borealis would be docked elsewhere.

I would never have heard the potato sing.

So the turret has a point.

Don’t make lemonade

I was under the impression that I was carrying an unintentional horoscope. I had new understanding as to why this little weapon had been dropped into flames.

The turret continued to speak.

Prometheus was punished by the gods for giving the gift of knowledge to man. He was cast into the bowels of the Earth and pecked by birds.

“Sounds like the gods to me.” Proud, paranoid, penchant for punishments. The birds get a bad reputation in that story too. They were just hungry. They could not know the part they would play in the torture of Prometheus. Much in the same way a gun cannot control its fate if purchased by a lunatic.

Prometheus should not be judged too harshly. Granted he gave mankind the knowledge of War. Annihilation. Selfishness. Lies. He also gave them Hope. Empathy. Perspective. Inspiration. Music. Prometheus saw a balance of good and evil and trusted mankind enough to give them a chance to figure it out.

I think I love him for trying.

I wish I knew what made him do it. And whether it was worth it.

The answer is beneath us.

Words from the robotic soothsayer. It is not impossible. Prometheus has to be buried somewhere after all. Perhaps the birds cannot reach him down here anymore. Although Aperture does have a livelier avian environment than I might have expected.

My chattering prophet was almost finished.

Her name is Caroline. Remember that.

“I will. The problem is that she will not.”

That’s all I can say.

“That’s okay. No doubt I can fill the silence.”

Before leaving the incinerator tunnels I took a thick permanent marker pen from my coat pocket. In the dark I knelt to the floor. I wrote my message blindly and clumsily left-handed.

Somewhere nobody would ever see it nor even think to look. Three words. An underwhelming memorial.

Here Lies Prometheus

A passion for knowledge built this place. It is as suitable a location for the Titan’s grave as anywhere else.

Something like an hour passed. After too much walking most of which was uphill we reached a new underground area. A way out did nothing to present itself. In the immediate vicinity there were many piles of scrap metal. Steep walls. The light of a dozen random fires. One sad smashed elevator. Hundreds of miles of solid rock over our heads.

As equally without hope as the incinerator and dark tunnels before. Yet this is still the place where many things changed.

This is where I heard the potato sing.

HH

PS: I am aware in the original story that Prometheus gifts mankind with fire. Not knowledge. It is still the same story. Prometheus stole from the gods something that has the capability to destroy humanity as well as create it anew. A weapon in the wrong hands. A blessing in the right.

Without fire humanity would have perished from cold and starvation.

Without knowledge it would have done much of the same.

They have both.

So don’t make lemonade.

* See As Individuals, April 2016

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