Better Than Life
Chapter 4: Limitless
By: Cornel Kennedy
In stressed situations, I like to grab by hair trying to run my fingers through its knots, but there are no knots in my hair. There is no hair. It's like I have been recruited into a cult, but I don't know from where this comes. Nature? Is there a part of my humanity that rejects the process of brain washing? A lack of one? I think it has existed before the nature in the world in which I exist.
I wake up. This is the dream I have had many times in this year. I am in a vessel of some sort, to that I can find no end. Prehaps there is no end.
The fish food is on the table near the tank and I put some food in not fully aware that the tank is dirty. But I constantly find motion in a toxic environment. Fish have evolved in a way that they can adopt to continuous change. In this instance, they are subjected in the neglect of their water, and swim around in their waste until they are dead. I believe that some have adopted to this and are tolerate of the dose of poisons in the water. In the dose is increased steadily, then the subjects can survive and will be immune to the same about of dosage. This is the same with drug addicts. They cannot get the same high all the time from the same dose. Their bodies will adapt and require a higher dose to get to the same level.
I remember. Everything.
The pills that they had given me no longer erased my memory; everything around me, I knew, is not real. I could feel something in my throat. I had thought it was words that I could never know or release, but what stuck into my throat was real. Everything around me was red.
I kick and moved around, like it was my first time for motion. I pull my weak arms to my mouth and eject the object from my mouth that digs deep into my throat. It was like it did not end, and I pulled harder until the whole contraption cleared by throat. I fought to the top. A slim layer had covered the top and I broke free from it. All around me, as if I woke for the first time, had seemed weird. I could not drink enough to come to this conclusion. Around me were pods; many pods that had carried people just like me. I lift my arm. It is thin, so thin. It is bone and skin. Under the red goo that covers my body, my veins pop out of my arms. Bolts of electricity run down the pods. I was a battery for the machines and had woken up form the truth.
Suddenly, I am ejected from my pod and am sent down a long tube. The tube is round when it is smooth, but certain parts cut my flesh but I cannot scream like I have never breathed for myself. An ending opens and I shoot down into a lake beneath me. It is filled with body parts. I swim to the closest edge and hang on with my small limbs. "I don't know where I came from," I scream and pass out.
When I wake up, my arm is tired and ready to release the pipe on which I hold. I sink below this foul water and a cold body wraps around me and pulls me out. My eyesight is dead and the lights are so bright. Angels lift me up and put me down to rest. "Where am I?"
"Welcome to this world." A deep voice says. "Sleep now."
I comply.
With no agreement, I awake. It was like in my dreams where I am trapped in an unlimited space of reality. "Where am I?"
"This is the real world," I see Morpheus say. "You are one of the few would have exited the Matrix without our help."
"Huh?" I question. Sitting up, I pull the plugs from my body. "But, I took the other pill."
"But your body has been resistant to that pill. You are self-awared. What you always wanted to be." Morpheus says. His hands that are plumb with fat rest me down on the table. "You are out of Samsara."
The light above me gives Morpheus a halo. A fair face enters the screen. "Trinity," I speak.
"What is it?" she responds. I can only see her dark hair hovering over me.
"This doesn't invole an anal probe does it?"
She laughs with beauty. "We would do anything for you."
No one thinks more about awakening than I. I burb instantly and the reak of my breath is alcoholic. Why did I remember this dream? I had completely missed by bed and lie in a mess of dirty clothes. It is comforting, but I think I know too much for my own safety. At times, when I dream, I am released from my body. It was almost like what ever inhabited by body would know that it did not belong in there. I could move freely. It was hard to move too far, and I could never go down the stairs. But what I have remembered of my dream, I had shot down a long shoot and Trinity, and Morpheus were there. Where was Neo?
In question haunted me and dragged me from reality until I appeared at a table surrounded in darkness. Three children, two boys and a girl, sat at each side of the table and had hovered cards in front of them. They were light blue in skin tone and had flatten noses. Cards floated in front of me as well. "Where was Neo?"
"Outside this limitless prison," a fat boy replies in his gravel voice. It drags on with a low register and will not be interrupted. "Neo has evolved."
"I do not understand," I say to them as my five card hand reduces to three and replaces them with two other cards that float from the deck in the middle of the table. "A single animal cannot evolve. It is the random change of the whole population."
"That is nature's way," the slimmer boy says. "This is a different kind of selection that Neo had gone through. To put it into words you can understand, he has mutilated."
"A freak," I put bluntly. They giggle in excitement, as I think they have much more to tell me.
"As are we," the plumb child says and his full house rests on the table. "We're a produce of what would have happened if our advancement had not been stopped by the machines."
"Not a freak," the girl across from me with no nose and a glow to her speaks and her flush lands down on the table, "but, what could have been."
A four of a kind drops down for the slim boy, "We are a change of becoming the next one."
My hand drops down but I am not interested in the game. They wear their bedtime clothes, and I give them a small smile. "It gives me a hint of satsifaction that I am the next one. It is not exactly a place where you are holding up the line but a position were I am envied."
The pots in front of us reshuffle but I am focusing on the movements of the chips rather than the victor and losers.
"We are experiments," the young girl with pony tails says. They look sick, and in my stick like body, I may be sick as well. "the machines need to end this war so they artifically select beings like us to provide them with more power. With most of the population, there is a slow change in the exchange of memes."
Memes are a unit of information that can be exchanged between two minds. They are like genes but instead of sexual reproduction, it is what cultures have excepted in their way of life. This explains why a person will be so forceful when trying to induce a friend into a part of this culture, be it drugs or a certain band. Survival of the fitness is how information reproduces.
"You're right," the chubby boy says looking deep into my eyes. "Because information has become the new way of storing information, there was a degression of what genes could change physically. This is why the machines have taken over. There is a shortage of change in genes to provide life with the needs to survive the environment."
I did not have to ask for an explaination as the girl picks up were that boy ended. "Like humankind, the machines are running out of resources. There is a form of pollution with that the machines had to deal. They need enegry. Given us the possibility of unlimited power, they have provided themselves with an oppurtinity to tap into our enegry we create."
"But, they can't contain such power," the slim boy warns with a harsh high voice, "it is the hope of humanity that one of us will break free from this prison."
I drum a finger on the table. "I fold."
"It is not that easy," one of them tells me. They are all wise in their own way. A debate starts that involve evolution. This is not the debate between evolution and creationism, but one of the pace that evolution progressions. I admire their positions and their agruments, but I am somewhat unattracted. They converse about the layers of fossils and how the gaps can be explained with reasonable terms. For me, and I dare not insert my opinion, I think that things had to move slowly. There were no large gaps, though I do like what the girl talks about with the increase of evolution.
Once again, I say, "I fold."
They break out of their debate and see into my stained brown eyes. "We are equal."
"Thank you," I say and nod my head. I smile and laugh so loud and violently that they drag their chairs back from the table. They know my thoughts and when I see my pile of chips, they seem large than the rest. I push the chips away with my own hands and shake my head. "I'm drunk. I'll tell you; I'm drunk. I respect you as much as the next professor, yet I am not the one. What can I do to help you?"
"This is our path to become the one." The girl says. I like them, I like them all. "What we know of DNA is but a program. When this system finds out which is the strongest of us, they will cause a reaction to try to contain us. It has never worked, but it is for the survival of this earth. The sun, though in reality has been blocked from the true surface, will be the death of us all if this cirlce continues. We wish to help the machines, but as living creatures, we may also adapt to their scheme and ruin it."
"The machines must learn the Way," I tell them though I am a bit uneasy with the idea of the machines, which I can no longer ignore. Drifting off is what makes me a companion to these freaks; a group in which I belong. Everything I saw was a conspiracy that had lead me believe hat there was some hidden message. I had not found this message, but I will live this message. I remember that the box of liquor had told me: "'You'll find that all great ideas seem absurd at first.' 'Looking back won't get you ahead.' 'If you lose your sense of direction, find your sense of humour.' and finally; 'Life is a mystery to be lived, not solved.' This was my way out, to think about people planning against me, and I could believe they were machines. They truly were machines. The three in front of me had told me so. "The way to continue our exist is beyond nature," I tell them, "but, the way is before nature."
I take a drink from a bottle in front of be about that I know nothing. "Cheers!"
I wipe the excess from the corner of my lips and smile. They pale skinned children laugh. The fat one says: "It comes before nature."
I weep. "You're the best friends I have ever had."
Guess what? I past out and say, "I love you all."
Chapter 4: Limitless
By: Cornel Kennedy
In stressed situations, I like to grab by hair trying to run my fingers through its knots, but there are no knots in my hair. There is no hair. It's like I have been recruited into a cult, but I don't know from where this comes. Nature? Is there a part of my humanity that rejects the process of brain washing? A lack of one? I think it has existed before the nature in the world in which I exist.
I wake up. This is the dream I have had many times in this year. I am in a vessel of some sort, to that I can find no end. Prehaps there is no end.
The fish food is on the table near the tank and I put some food in not fully aware that the tank is dirty. But I constantly find motion in a toxic environment. Fish have evolved in a way that they can adopt to continuous change. In this instance, they are subjected in the neglect of their water, and swim around in their waste until they are dead. I believe that some have adopted to this and are tolerate of the dose of poisons in the water. In the dose is increased steadily, then the subjects can survive and will be immune to the same about of dosage. This is the same with drug addicts. They cannot get the same high all the time from the same dose. Their bodies will adapt and require a higher dose to get to the same level.
I remember. Everything.
The pills that they had given me no longer erased my memory; everything around me, I knew, is not real. I could feel something in my throat. I had thought it was words that I could never know or release, but what stuck into my throat was real. Everything around me was red.
I kick and moved around, like it was my first time for motion. I pull my weak arms to my mouth and eject the object from my mouth that digs deep into my throat. It was like it did not end, and I pulled harder until the whole contraption cleared by throat. I fought to the top. A slim layer had covered the top and I broke free from it. All around me, as if I woke for the first time, had seemed weird. I could not drink enough to come to this conclusion. Around me were pods; many pods that had carried people just like me. I lift my arm. It is thin, so thin. It is bone and skin. Under the red goo that covers my body, my veins pop out of my arms. Bolts of electricity run down the pods. I was a battery for the machines and had woken up form the truth.
Suddenly, I am ejected from my pod and am sent down a long tube. The tube is round when it is smooth, but certain parts cut my flesh but I cannot scream like I have never breathed for myself. An ending opens and I shoot down into a lake beneath me. It is filled with body parts. I swim to the closest edge and hang on with my small limbs. "I don't know where I came from," I scream and pass out.
When I wake up, my arm is tired and ready to release the pipe on which I hold. I sink below this foul water and a cold body wraps around me and pulls me out. My eyesight is dead and the lights are so bright. Angels lift me up and put me down to rest. "Where am I?"
"Welcome to this world." A deep voice says. "Sleep now."
I comply.
With no agreement, I awake. It was like in my dreams where I am trapped in an unlimited space of reality. "Where am I?"
"This is the real world," I see Morpheus say. "You are one of the few would have exited the Matrix without our help."
"Huh?" I question. Sitting up, I pull the plugs from my body. "But, I took the other pill."
"But your body has been resistant to that pill. You are self-awared. What you always wanted to be." Morpheus says. His hands that are plumb with fat rest me down on the table. "You are out of Samsara."
The light above me gives Morpheus a halo. A fair face enters the screen. "Trinity," I speak.
"What is it?" she responds. I can only see her dark hair hovering over me.
"This doesn't invole an anal probe does it?"
She laughs with beauty. "We would do anything for you."
No one thinks more about awakening than I. I burb instantly and the reak of my breath is alcoholic. Why did I remember this dream? I had completely missed by bed and lie in a mess of dirty clothes. It is comforting, but I think I know too much for my own safety. At times, when I dream, I am released from my body. It was almost like what ever inhabited by body would know that it did not belong in there. I could move freely. It was hard to move too far, and I could never go down the stairs. But what I have remembered of my dream, I had shot down a long shoot and Trinity, and Morpheus were there. Where was Neo?
In question haunted me and dragged me from reality until I appeared at a table surrounded in darkness. Three children, two boys and a girl, sat at each side of the table and had hovered cards in front of them. They were light blue in skin tone and had flatten noses. Cards floated in front of me as well. "Where was Neo?"
"Outside this limitless prison," a fat boy replies in his gravel voice. It drags on with a low register and will not be interrupted. "Neo has evolved."
"I do not understand," I say to them as my five card hand reduces to three and replaces them with two other cards that float from the deck in the middle of the table. "A single animal cannot evolve. It is the random change of the whole population."
"That is nature's way," the slimmer boy says. "This is a different kind of selection that Neo had gone through. To put it into words you can understand, he has mutilated."
"A freak," I put bluntly. They giggle in excitement, as I think they have much more to tell me.
"As are we," the plumb child says and his full house rests on the table. "We're a produce of what would have happened if our advancement had not been stopped by the machines."
"Not a freak," the girl across from me with no nose and a glow to her speaks and her flush lands down on the table, "but, what could have been."
A four of a kind drops down for the slim boy, "We are a change of becoming the next one."
My hand drops down but I am not interested in the game. They wear their bedtime clothes, and I give them a small smile. "It gives me a hint of satsifaction that I am the next one. It is not exactly a place where you are holding up the line but a position were I am envied."
The pots in front of us reshuffle but I am focusing on the movements of the chips rather than the victor and losers.
"We are experiments," the young girl with pony tails says. They look sick, and in my stick like body, I may be sick as well. "the machines need to end this war so they artifically select beings like us to provide them with more power. With most of the population, there is a slow change in the exchange of memes."
Memes are a unit of information that can be exchanged between two minds. They are like genes but instead of sexual reproduction, it is what cultures have excepted in their way of life. This explains why a person will be so forceful when trying to induce a friend into a part of this culture, be it drugs or a certain band. Survival of the fitness is how information reproduces.
"You're right," the chubby boy says looking deep into my eyes. "Because information has become the new way of storing information, there was a degression of what genes could change physically. This is why the machines have taken over. There is a shortage of change in genes to provide life with the needs to survive the environment."
I did not have to ask for an explaination as the girl picks up were that boy ended. "Like humankind, the machines are running out of resources. There is a form of pollution with that the machines had to deal. They need enegry. Given us the possibility of unlimited power, they have provided themselves with an oppurtinity to tap into our enegry we create."
"But, they can't contain such power," the slim boy warns with a harsh high voice, "it is the hope of humanity that one of us will break free from this prison."
I drum a finger on the table. "I fold."
"It is not that easy," one of them tells me. They are all wise in their own way. A debate starts that involve evolution. This is not the debate between evolution and creationism, but one of the pace that evolution progressions. I admire their positions and their agruments, but I am somewhat unattracted. They converse about the layers of fossils and how the gaps can be explained with reasonable terms. For me, and I dare not insert my opinion, I think that things had to move slowly. There were no large gaps, though I do like what the girl talks about with the increase of evolution.
Once again, I say, "I fold."
They break out of their debate and see into my stained brown eyes. "We are equal."
"Thank you," I say and nod my head. I smile and laugh so loud and violently that they drag their chairs back from the table. They know my thoughts and when I see my pile of chips, they seem large than the rest. I push the chips away with my own hands and shake my head. "I'm drunk. I'll tell you; I'm drunk. I respect you as much as the next professor, yet I am not the one. What can I do to help you?"
"This is our path to become the one." The girl says. I like them, I like them all. "What we know of DNA is but a program. When this system finds out which is the strongest of us, they will cause a reaction to try to contain us. It has never worked, but it is for the survival of this earth. The sun, though in reality has been blocked from the true surface, will be the death of us all if this cirlce continues. We wish to help the machines, but as living creatures, we may also adapt to their scheme and ruin it."
"The machines must learn the Way," I tell them though I am a bit uneasy with the idea of the machines, which I can no longer ignore. Drifting off is what makes me a companion to these freaks; a group in which I belong. Everything I saw was a conspiracy that had lead me believe hat there was some hidden message. I had not found this message, but I will live this message. I remember that the box of liquor had told me: "'You'll find that all great ideas seem absurd at first.' 'Looking back won't get you ahead.' 'If you lose your sense of direction, find your sense of humour.' and finally; 'Life is a mystery to be lived, not solved.' This was my way out, to think about people planning against me, and I could believe they were machines. They truly were machines. The three in front of me had told me so. "The way to continue our exist is beyond nature," I tell them, "but, the way is before nature."
I take a drink from a bottle in front of be about that I know nothing. "Cheers!"
I wipe the excess from the corner of my lips and smile. They pale skinned children laugh. The fat one says: "It comes before nature."
I weep. "You're the best friends I have ever had."
Guess what? I past out and say, "I love you all."