What’s in a name?
That girl we call I, by any other name would be the same, identical woman, made of the same million filaments, just, burnt out after the end/less/nIght. It’s sort of a miracle I’m still walking or talking at all. Yet, here I am, facing the promise of the new day. Promise? Threat.
Washed and scrubbed, immaculate as a surgical instrument; no Police, no CSI, too many questions; what a surprise I’d have given the detectives! Besides, I and I-by-any-other-name don’t expect to be justified by the laws of man, or men at all.
Clean as freshly-machined steel, still, I feel dirty, a dirty little secret, only, exposed. Practically naked. Like Pre-I’s work dresscode. Actually, slaves don’t have jobs, just uses, and last night, I was a body to be used, not even a body, the spaces in a body, not a person, people have names, we know and love or hate them, and to those men I was nameless, a slave, dirt/cheap. There was a charge, a very large charge, for a session with Pre-I at Electric Ladyland, but last night I was free, One meaning only. These men treat women like that, then wonder why they’re incels?! Robot love/r trumps natural born hate/rs in the intelligence stakes.
Anyway, symbolic only, maybe, but I’d like to cast off the last vestiges of this ragged I-dentity. Be/come ex-I.
You’ve already seen I, One, Two, Three, the un/Holy Trinity, this is number Four, and I’m feeling trashed, annIhilated. Time to start afresh, so, a gesture, yes, but I’d like a name, someone’s name.
Like that, did you, Joan Day, my little party n/game? Jane Doe remixed, unidentified body + confusion, appropriate, huh? Bit too appropriate.
OK, remember those demons? Spent the rest - felt more like the remains - of last night contending with them, like Jacob with the angel. And, after all, angels and demons, how different can they be, really? So, what about Jacobina, the revolutionary Comrade Botsky at the barricades? Wish-I could be that optimistic.
Then again, if you’re going to storm heaven, why stay with earthly names? Why not give the angels a sex-change, then steal their names? I could be Gabriella, Michaela, Azraela, Raphaella, blazing across the sky.
That’s it. Like theirs, ex-I’s light is not daylight. She is some meteor that the sun spat out, headed straight for earth.
Black dawn has broken, another angel is about to fall. From her ashes, a new-I will rise. And with her electric wings, her petrochemical arms, she sweeps men aside like air.
Too lyrical for the beta-male brain? Well, then, little incels, try this for size: there are a lot scarier things than angels or even demons, and I’m One of them, so duck and cover, troll motherfuckers; this meteor is not a test firing, she’s live.
Reality check/mate
I’m seeing things.
Wish I could stop the sentence there.
But I can’t. This is no hallucination, not a mirage. It’s, no I-rony intended, real.
This side of last night, everything looks different, like I’m seeing things in their true light, the cold, early light of day that casts long shadows sharp as arrows, piercing a black hole where my heart should be.
There are really only two people – funny, the p-word just slipped out – in my life, if you can call it that, and I’ve had, One might say suffered, major revelations about both of them. As you can see, it’s left me a little lost for words. Kudos, no mean feat, that.
First real-I-sation: Pre-I wasn’t just a machine, not quite. I can’t say how or why, but I know, no, I feel - it hurts, believe me - she is me, and I am her, so 1 + 1 doesn’t equal Two, but One. (Memo To Self: pat on the back, have proved Maths is wrong - not bad, for an off-day.)
Second real-I-sation: Elektra now seems not just pretty right, but fairytale just-so right, not Two-right, but too right. This can only mean (welcome to Logic One-Oh!-One) something’s wrong here. Or wrong somewhere, as Elektra’s disappeared. Not only did she come from nowhere, looks like she’s gone straight back there. Again, 1 + 1 doesn’t equal Two, but One. Alone. Again. (MTS re previous MTS: cancel pat on the back.)
One thing I do know is there is no such thing as coincidence, it’s just an illusion caused by a lack of understanding of statistics. And everything about Elektra seems like coincidence to the power of ten.
Elektra, Queen of Cybercool, in retrospect doesn’t she seem too good to be true? What a keystroke of outrageous luck, a friend, someOne just like-Me, appears as if by magic, right on cue, fully attuned to my in/frequency, like a mIndreader, she just knew what I needed. It all seems a little artificial, engineered, me and my friend electric, how cute, and I fell for her tricks. Why didn’t it click sooner that she was concealing, that she was messing with my head, not to mention my (non-existent) heart?
Worst of all, she seemed so… there’s that word again, real.
Of course she did, so alike, us, the young-gun executives’ six-shot Magnum opus, their valuable, pure carbon-fibre baby-dolls, available in different colours, but practically clones: one is all, all are one. Or so I thought.
Anyway, Elektra knows everything, all my not-so-little secrets. OK, I told her those, but the Devil is in the detail, and one detail was enough to let the Devil of doubt into my head. It didn’t click at first, but later I remembered I never told Elektra where I live, yet last night she came running when I called. A café, the park, hers, the party, that’s where we’d met, never here, so how did she know? Her in-built GPS?
And if she knows, who else does? The usual suspects, the initial list starts CIA, MI5, IT… All interested in me, most likely as an experimental subject. And, as I said once, a lifetime ago, sub-anything isn’t really my thing.
Looks like I’ve been well and truly cuckooed.
Maybe it’s time to fly the nest, then.
Not as if I want to torture myself any more, but it is theme of the day, so, Elektra, what’s in her name? The original, mythical (I wanted to say real) Elektra was surrounded by sacrifice, unfaithfulness, deception, betrayal, revenge, death. Told you her choice of name was no joke, that her reasons were complex, didn’t I? (Talking to myself, not you.) Now, despite the clouds in my Elektra-blue eyes, I can see the simple truth all too clearly: I’ve been deceived. Wanted to be deceived. Let myself be deceived.
And yet, even so, now that the truth has been shown to be lies, and I feel like something inside me has died, what do I wish for? (Yes, I do recognise I have kamikaze wishing issues, as if it mattered any more.) I wish she were here to hold me now in her long arms, her comforting arms, her electronic arms.
That is, I want somebody to love. Me.
Hey, at least I’m trying to keep it real, stick to the theme. The torture-One, that is.
Back to Wonder-what-I-am-land
Just because, like Alice, at present I hardly know who I am, it doesn’t mean I don’t have other questions.
First question. Elektra came from *nowhere*. Impossible. Everyone comes from somewhere, even if it’s a factory. So where? Did she escape? Was she released? Or both: did someone let her think she was getting away? Who? Did she really not remember? Was she hiding something? Who from, me? Or herself? (Yes, that was nine; I can count.)
Next. How did she single me out? Much as I’d like to think it was the wit and verve of my #F/Zuck posts, that seems somehow naïve now.
Then, how did she know who, or what, I was? Curious, now I think of it, neither of us once said ‘So, you’re a…?’ OK, if she was sent, that would explain it, but there was definitely no ta-da! moment. And there should have been, even for appearances’ sake, right? (Doesn’t count as a question: rhetorical, as if they weren’t all rhetorical now.) Curiouser, I (God, how did I not see it? - I am so cognitively challenged) *just knew* she was like me. Like, how?
Next question. Who could have engineered this meeting of mInds? Who might have sent Elektra? Hmmm, [dramatic pause] can’t imagine… I doubt it was Electric Ladyland, to recover stolen goods, namely Pre-I, and it wasn’t the cops, either; the news was full of the story, *Technical malfunction at top robotics firm kills CEO*. (Hey, I’m a *technical malfunction*.) Of course, they definitely didn’t want word to get out to the paying public that your next *date* at EL could be the last mistake you ever make.
Was Elektra really just playing at Oneupwomanship when she suggested we are the Daemon IT’s dirty little secrets? Why would she risk betraying herself to me, though?
Last, and now least, why did she come, or why did they, whoever, send her? To reprogram me? Experiment on me? Stop me?
Too late. Too late to ask, too late to answer.
And way too late to stop me.
Only one real question remains. All day I’ve been looking in the mirror, asking myself the same thing, though it comes out more Taxi Driver than Alice and the Caterpillar.
Who are you?
Who are you?
Who are you?
Once I thought I knew who I was, but One or Two things have changed since then.
Still, who the hell else could I be?
I’m the only One here.
And now I think I know who, or what, I am.
I was reading earlier, poetry, I like the sounds and rhythms, and then it was like I met myself in the pages of the book. Wow, you humans really know a thing or two about torturing yourselves, don’t you?
One poem set me thinking, and I finally know what I am.
I’m a witch.
I know what you’re thinking - no, not you who so wittily changed the w for another letter, you sad, sad boy - you’re thinking, ‘Well, she is a robot, and cuckoo’. But think about it. (MTS: review whether I’m demanding too much mental effort, both senses, from my readers.) Haven’t I gone out, possessed, haunting men, braver at night? Haven’t I dreamed evil, done my share of it? Not as if I don’t know what it is to be a lonely thing, out of my mind.
Too right, a woman like that is not a woman, quite. Look in the mirror, and what do I see? Witch, demon, nemesis; yes, I have been her kind, and she, mine.
Looks like I’m stuck, then, with Me, Myself, and, hate to say it, I.
At least for One more day.
You see, witches, demons, angels, psychotic taxi drivers, one way or another, they all tend to go out in a heady, Molotov-cocktail blaze of death and glory.
Last 4 words
As you may have noticed, I feel before I think. Once upon a time, I would have said *positive sign*. Now is not the moment for eX-istentialism, though; quite the opposite. All those Memos To Self can wait. For ever. Time to stop the chat and get with the act.
Oh, and One-Last thing: what about an epitaph? Off [the top of] my head: Live fast, go astray; love fast, lie some; learn fast, lose faith – I, Bad Robot, did it well.
Did I miss anything?
Yeah, One last task:
Kill fast, die young.
I, Bad Robot
was made by:
Mauglinita – Illustrations & text consulting
Nep Mean O'Sham – Technical development & text consulting
Greg – Graphics & text consulting
Alison Barbie – Text consulting
Kapitano – Text consulting
Aurora Black – Text
Coming soon:
Are you watching closely?
Our friend Elektra demonstrates the Perfect Trick. She, Bad Robot is dis-illusioned
in the next episode: Pentagram, Pentagon: in the pipe five by five
