Micro Chipped Beast

A man at war with his computer

Tim Buckley

©2013

 

Micro Chipped Beast

 

 

            There I was, an innocent kid watching Twilight Zone.  That week, a man designed and built a computer.  In so doing, he forsook wife, kids, friends--and common sense--giving uncommon sense to his creation.  He did it, but now the unappreciative contraption ruled over him more than his wife once did.  A test of wills ensued; one must be destroyed. CRASH!  It was not the computer…the man had jumped from the roof to a permanent download. That night, I awoke soaked in laser jet sweat. I had dreamed a lap top chased me off a cliff, humming email “Moo, ha, ha’s.”

            I didn’t fully realize it yet, but my soft walking innocence would soon be run over by hard drive reality as every predecessor to H.A.L. conspired to do me in.  While other kids shook extra gum from the penny machine, I got none.  Also, when daring enough to try the quarter dispenser, friends received rubber snakes or miniature cigarette lighters. Neat stuff. Me, I got girls junk: Earrings, or, once, a pink, heart-shaped trinket saying “I love you.”  The liar.

            In high school, I could be first or last in line at the pop machine.  Didn’t matter.  My soda was always warm and shaken like some hillbilly brew, exploding in my face when opened.  Jocks jeered, cheerleaders chided.

            I had the tilted touch with pinball machines; cash machines swore I was broke.  And me, afraid of earthquakes, was sentenced to Prozac by a computerized elevator. Yes, I was imprisoned 50 stories up for six hours.  All the while, a Dead Head jumped up and down whipping my face with his pony tail, and two salesmen tried selling me a life insurance policy.  Is it no wonder the electronic heart rate machine at the shopping mall displayed me as dead?

So.  Now you want me to walk over to that keyboard and screen monster-- that heartless, mistake exposing, micro-chipped beast--sit down, turn it on, and

trust it? RAM cram it!  Had you heard what the last talking doll told me, you would know who should be trusting whom.

            To you, computers are good things. They simplify these complicated modern times.  But to me, they are 21st century horrors, waiting to rip me off and flop my floppy for world view ( and world laughter ).  Their final goal?  Fulfill my nightmare of 30 years ago by chasing me off sanity’s cliff, cursed cursors cursing with glee.

 

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[Marie]

But where would we be without them?