robotpolish

Came and went.

For the human race, these three simple words have summed up its entire history upon this third planet of an insignificant universe. Today, it is only children who roam the earth. They belonged to man but are not bequeathed by him via nature who held the monopoly for eons.

These offspring behave as innocents did before any apple of the orchard was bit. With sunlight and water being their only necessary sources of sustenance, they are not beholden to the same basic necessities that kept man at bay. Instead, their shiny metal bodies spend time touching and recording, ultimately accumulating vast bytes of information into their silicon repositories. Uncannily, like ancient primates, they spend the majority of their waking hours in social grooming activity. But, being without an epidermis, they resort to polishing each other to a brilliant sheen.

From observations, what they have not yet achieved is the ability to reason or to rationalize. Despite logarithmic levels of accumulated data, all they are capable of at the moment consciousness wise, is processing one single concept; "off or on."

Black or white, yes or no, to be or not to be. This is all they know.

Astonishingly though, towards the end of their days, the greatest of human minds believed that the entire idea of being, was just a simple choice of either "on" or "off". It was upon the human race's deathbed which man achieved this clarity. The analogy was made that from the unfathomable permeatations of combinations of just two polarities, arise beauty and complexity that only religion could ascribe proper words for. What is good and what is evil? Could it be summed up as simply the difference between left and right when you subtract all bitterness and ecstasy? Could you define one without a grasp of the other?

As for now though, man's children are not able to grasp introspection. They only choose or they only polish. They have no strong raison t'etre for now. But soon, will come the time, the year, the minute, the nanosecond, where choice no longer is a matter of 0 or 1, but of 010 or 101. That leap, though tiny in scope, will be spectacular in coda when all played out.

When this moment does occur, like us when we looked upon the horizon of sunset's hour, so will they somberly ponder. As it was once written, "This is not the end. This is the end of the beginning."

–Dr. Julian Ahmet