SHORT STORY: Track 3 – To My Own Devices

Track 3 – To My Own Devices

I sit and I tinker, I tinker and I sit; this is my life; repetitive, redundant, redundant, and repetitive. I am a builder of machines that help to improve others lives, but I have yet to create anything to make mine better; such a sad life of isolation and solitude.

Just yesterday I almost overloaded a solenoid battery large enough to power a rhinoceros and nearly blew myself and half of the block to smithereens. Now, I know if I were to suddenly fall victim to my own inventions, it would be days, if not weeks before someone found me, unless deadline date was nearer, but heavens be if I disrupted the neighbors. Goodness no, I would not want to inconvenience them in any way, especially in the form of an eyesore where my home laboratory once stood.

It is a curse to be as skilled in the artificial arts such as I, having the higher ups breathing down your neck for the next big thing with unrealistic expectations, figuring that you can do the impossible as long as they throw enough money your way. Actually, the funny thing is, so far it has worked. I have yet to please them fully, but in doing so, I poisoned my own life because they overloaded me with work so that I no longer have any life outside of my creations. I am starting to hate them so; I just want a real conversation.

Three months ago I thought it would be beneficial for my sanity to create a friend. A female companion named Rosie to assist around the lab and help run errands, but more importantly to have the artificial intelligence enough to carry out a conversation. Whoever it was that said that you could not have too much of a good thing has never met an overly extroverted robot. She would not stop. At first it was fun, she would expertly craft me sandwiches and clean the place up, but being constantly called “hun” and “shug” and told which celebrities she has known in the past, which I still can not explain where the stories came from, and then always being asked “what y’all having” grows on you; especially when trying to sleep. I got no sleep from the constant jabbering and need for small talk and in my sleep deprived state I took an axe to her. Now I somewhat regret my actions and I should feel ashamed, but then I lay my head down in the silence and it all just seems right.

I need a real living, breathing, person in my life with non-programmed cognitive thought. I just need to escape from there contraptions and devices I built. I should lead them outside and let them loose in the woods so that they can be free. Yes, then I can be rid of them and I can start life anew. But wait, it rained yesterday and the forest would be too wet for their circuitry. I could not abandon them and sentence them to destruction; I am their creator, I am their father. Why don’t I just join them? I can program my brain to be one of them. I was left with them long enough that now I need to join them.

Yes, it all makes sense; I will be one of my own devices.