Roller Coaster and All That
Consciousness is nothing but electricity wired into matter. Once humans learned that, nothing kept them in place. Humanity took over the stars, since any computer could be wired with a human brain. Not that the human brain was anything special, but combined with the mechanical, it had the most creative computing power known to the entire universe.
I was proof of that. Not that I was very creative or intelligent. I was just average or stupid, as my teachers would tell, when I swirled in my chair and looked outside, not focusing on the algebra class. Maybe they were right. Maybe that was why I had contracted my brain to be able to afford a semi-good life. I was a robot. Not even a good one. A goofy sort. One that made people sing ‘Dancing in the Rain’ to me. I hated it, but it was not like I didn’t deserve it as the host of a mega corporation’s Old-Timey TV-Land.
An annoying kid kept poking my leg and laughing at me. There was the stupid Asimov rule in effect. A robot, even a conscious one, was not to harm a human. All I wanted was to strangle the little shit. I cursed myself for not paying attention when I was at his age; maybe then, with good luck, I would have been attached to a spaceship’s mainframe rather than be stuck here with morons like the kid’s parents.
“Once we take a turn to the left, you will find the Old New York. You can go inside any house, and there is even a working Central Park cafe, the one from the famous Friends show.” I got a kick in my shin. While it didn’t hurt, the constant buckling didn’t make the walk fun. The little shit’s mother and father clearly had come here for their own amusement. What six-year-old kid wants to see the set of Friends? They want the Disneyland experience, and that was on another planet.
I hated the parents. I hated amusement parks. And this wasn’t the first time I thought that. It was insanity that we took the stars and, instead of spreading civilization, we made the universe our entertainment center.
At least, my brother, who never forgot to remind me, was looking for extraterrestrial intelligence with his space missions.
I always said that if there was any, they had created another dimension and escaped us humans there. And that was exactly what had happened. Something strange happened. The set bent beneath the group, and for a while, we all hung in the air as the air vibrated like a tape stuck in a player. Then, there was an explosion of light, and suddenly my group was pinned to a wall inside a huge hollow space that looked remarkably like an air hangar. That wasn’t the most mess up part. I found a pair of huge, disc-like eyes staring back at me, licking its gray lips, and chirping out an odd noise that somehow translated inside my head.
“We may experiment with you.”
—
I’m singing in the rain… Okay, I went rogue, but just slightly. Not too much. What I got today was a conversational sci-fi rebirth written in the omniscient third person. The story wanted to be first person. It just fit into the narrative better.
I wanted to write about brains being used as computers and people loaning them to corporations for money. I think I got that part into the story, but I wasn’t sure where to go with it, except into the useless use of such computing power; then I got the aliens. Our hero would escape and save the miserable touring group and the annoying little kid, so they could give their brother a middle finger.
Thank you for reading! Have a brainy day, and see you tomorrow ❤
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