I AM A ROBOT

I've gone through so many phases in my life where I write non-stop. That's why I started this site, I have so much I want to get out of my head. Sometimes my head hurts like my brain is screaming, trying to push its way out of my skull. When I was younger, and I was in school, I never had a problem with writing assignments. As long as footnotes, sources, or bibliographies weren't required, I could write about anything I was told to write about. I could easily write way more than the teachers wanted me to write. It just comes easy to me, I'm good at BSing for a few thousand words or so. It got me through several college courses, so hey, why not? I didn't start writing for myself until after a particularly bad break-up when I was 19. Directly after filling a notebook, I tossed it. Everyone says it's a bad habit, but I did what I set out to do, and felt there was no other worth to the written words. So, throughout the years, I've filled many notebooks of all different sizes, and tossed them. One was hardcover, and it was given to me. That one I filled, then gave it back to the person who gave it to me. It seemed like the right thing to do, and I know if I ever want to see it again, she still has it. A few years ago (3 maybe?), I bought a nice black plastic cover notebook with the intent of writing my first lengthy fiction story. I can't remember what I called the story, the character's name was Kira. Every fiction story since then has featured a variation on the same character, and I always use the same name. Kira is the name of the main character in Ayn Rand's "We the Living." She's a strong young woman forced to choose love or comfort in post-Bolshevik Russia (she choses love, of course, why else would I like this book?). I normally can't stand Rand's books, but I do like this one. The story that I wrote was about a woman who was seemingly suffering from multiple personality disorder, and didn't know it. She would wake up in strange places with bruises and cuts, but she would never question it much. The story was maybe five pages long, and more or less a drawn-out good idea that got boring. I thought I was writing what I knew, but I wasn't. I thought Kira was a composite of many women I knew, and maybe she was, but I didn't know how to bring it all together in an interesting way. So, I actually showed the story to a friend (something I'm generally not too big on), and she said it was good, but I could tell she was just being nice. Then again, when it comes to criticism of anything artistic from me, I just assume people are being nice. Too many biased opinions. So, yet again, I threw away something I wrote. Tore out the pages and tossed 'em. I started over when the inspiration struck. Kira was not the main character this time, but she was involved. The main character was Floyd Cobbler. Floyd Cobbler, Lloyd Cobbler, yeah, Jon Cusack's character from "Say Anything." It started out as a "Bladerunner" type of thing with Floyd being an android pretending to be human. But it quickly turned into Floyd being delusional about being an android because of how cold and seemingly unemotional he was. The whole story ended up being about fifteen written pages long. Most of it was character sketches of a couple trying to date, Kira and Floyd. Kira was a composite of maybe ten different women I know. Floyd was more or less me. The rest was their conversations, and it was written in a first-person perspective, Floyd's. A few of the conversations were almost word-for-word real. I kept it, because it seemed like the right thing to do, for once. I pulled out the notebook a few weeks ago. It had probably been almost two years since I looked at it. I re-read the whole story, made a couple of small changes, and then, of course, realized that I wrote it all about myself, whether I intended to or not. I am a robot. Well, I know I'm not, but I sure as hell feel like it sometimes. About a year ago, I started having dreams where I had to open a new window on the desktop, or click on a hyperlink to do anything. I was dreaming in Windows 95! Not all of my dreams are like this, but it's like I'll prioritize what's going on in the dream, and move things around on the taskbar, restoring and minimizing windows as needed. I can't give any specific details on the dreams, because all I remember is the format. It's even worse now that I know how to make a word into a hyperlink. In the dreams, I'm thinking about a certain person, finding a picture of them online, then linking to their picture when typing their name. Oh, yeah, I type in these dreams, but it's mostly the mouse that I use to navigate. I'm starting to feel like a fucking Philip K. Dick short-story come to life. I AM A ROBOT.

FOOTNOTE: The title of the story involving the android is "Les Yeux." Pretentious, I know, I was in a weird place at the time: college. And I had a French class.

CORRECTION: I was wrong, in "We the Living," Kira doesn't choose love, she chooses "her own particular brand of being happy and being taken care of." She's cold yet sincere in her own way. Thanks, Marla (more people gotta start callin' me out, because even I think I'm full of it sometimes).