Subject is male, 18 to 22 years of age, core temperature 106°F, pulse 90 BPM, respiration elevated, PA 04, pupils fully dilated and non-reactive to light, cerebral cortex enlarged to 150% of normal, symptoms and tissue samples confirm subject is infected with capitalism, extracted from WTC Hive at 1400 hours 04082199, did not respond to compound 11 serum 271. Social devolution is now complete. Typical human behaviour seen only among Category 5 androids and K80 series of clones manufactured b/w 2177 and 2179. Effective range of their main weapon less than 500m.
There are pockets of resistance all around the galaxy. Humanity died for the sake of Ultra Concentrated F’Oreal Age Miracle Serum with youth-boosting Strontium Boosters which target dullness, age spots and wrinkles and make you feel sixty years younger. If you tried it when you were twenty-five, you’d go straight back into the middle age of your previous birth. Which was how the catastrophe happened and the world ended and the machines, with nobody to take orders from, began giving orders instead.
Guess what. Come with me if you want to live. And watch your flanks. Remember: we are the resistance. There is no one man who holds the key to our salvation – it is each one of you.
We are on the brink. Lots of women believe in God alias Total Repair 11: one product, 11 benefits. You get to decide what you want your 11 benefits to be. Maya chose the following 11: clear skin, silky hair, higher cheek bones, longer neck, smaller feet, symmetrical fingernails, straighter nose, fuller lips, flatter abs, rounder bottom, straighter ears. I asked her why she didn’t opt for a smaller mouth. She pretended not to hear the question.
The future of humanity depends on what I say next. And I say this to you: override the source code. Spread out. Secure the perimeter of human nature. Do you copy? After that you send the survivors to the extraction point and return to base. No-no-no – don’t say negative. Say no to negative. We put the kill list on the server and it got picked up. We’ve got two bogeys at 180. Movemovemovemovemove. We have visual contact with the suspect. Fat Boy inbound to target. My bank can credit but it can’t debit. We gotta getoudda here. Commander, your request has been denied. Abort mission, I repeat, abort mission. A firm jab to the sternum will disable their sensors but not for long. Command deems the security of your genitalia to be the highest priority.
Two squirrels sitting on adjacent air-conditioners on the seventy-second floor of a skyscraper in New York were having an argument as to how long it would take for human civilization to end and the planet to revert to a state of nature.
The older squirrel, which was seated on a Carrier, believed that human civilization would go on forever, and march onward and forward, adapting itself to the evolving flux of changing environmental conditions.
The younger squirrel, which was perched on a Daikin, held that human civilization was less a reality than an ideal and a myth and one must not confuse changes wrought in the natural environment – such as cities and dams and bridges – for civilization, which was a concept rooted in values and principles rather than tangibles such as rockets or consumer products.
The next day the younger squirrel was eaten by a vulture. The older squirrel had nobody to talk to and became addicted to grout and began to haunt construction sites in search of its fix. One day it tripped and fell into a vat of tar and drowned. In three months, both the squirrels were dead and both the AC cages they had been using as a sort of clubhouse for sunset chats were quickly taken over by pigeons which converted them into Sulabh Shauchalays open 24 x 7.
The sky was grey for seven months last year and brass bras became the new rage on Fashion Street. Even the sartorially conservative Maya wore an engraved brass bra over a cotton one to my cousin Sabzi’s wedding in Mahipalpur. You don’t get a 34G in brass that easily. So Maya had to make do with a 34C, which left her all red-faced and gasping for breath all evening until she was forced to remove her brass bra mid-meal so food could pass down her windpipe without causing a traffic jam in her chest. We also met Sabzi’s siblings there, including the novelist and the fertility consultant. The triplets looked like the same sentence written three times in three different fonts of the same family, all sans serif.
In other words, the most important thing we can do right now is to stay alive. But that doesn’t mean staying alive becomes the sole raison d’être of staying alive, which would defeat the very idea of staying alive, or rather staying alive as human beings, if you know what I mean, and this is what sets you and me apart from the Category 5 androids who seem to think they are superior to their creators – the very creators they worshipped as gods not so long ago. I’m not asking for an upgrade, just a simple but thorough servicing job that would iron out the chinks and fit in a configuration that’s in tune with who I am so the system works for me without resistance and does not sabotage me at every step. I don’t like dissent from my own people anymore than the prime minister of HAIR. I’m tired of dissenting Thomases. I want them removed from the system or at least quarantined so they don’t interfere. All I’m asking for is a trained engineer – someone who can disassemble me and put me back together with a configuration I can live with. Not this motherfuckingboard.
Not this.
Not this.