Framed portrayal of unattached happiness supported by a stem, parading through botanical gardens. Surrounded by shimmering water dappled flower petals of alien species, a forest of dendrites - welcome. Blossoming ebb and flow surges veins of luminescent vibrant coloured structures - Osteogenesis imperfecta. Shattered structure of pollen, abatement movement falling to regenerate ones life once again.

I love you all.

A realm of buoyancy and delight. An untroubled realm, grown strong from the tender people that inhabit the lands and fjords. A realm of serenity and equality; a realm of goodwill. 

And then the tyrant arrived.

His lightest word was law. He was imperious and austere. He was violent. The realm decayed in his wake. The people were met with piercing shackles or disposed of. The realm was polluted with corruption. Everything became abysmal, and the world began to die with the murkiness the tyrant brought with him. The people were left with nothing but lament. 

There was no hope. 

If you die it'll all be better.

If you die it'll all go away.

If you die the world will be better: at least that's what people say.

If you die the pain will fade.

If you die they wouldn't hear, the twisted thoughts that haunt your ears.

But if you die you'll never know

What the future might hold

If you die you'll never be proud

Of the success you might've achieved

If you die the world might

Never again be the same

This is a… new development. Despite the many journeys amongst my many selves, this is a strange form even for the people that I’ve seen up to this point. How does one tell oneself that they are not… mechanical in any way? Because I’ve found myself strapped against a table and staring up at a trio of mechanical versions of people. Well, mostly mechanical. There are places where they’re clearly made of metals of some sort – they each seem to be of a different one – and others where it’s obviously flesh. And there’s a few places where the two materials seem to blend together to shift between different areas. For instance, one of them looks to be made of copper, his ear shining dully until it hits the temple and jaw where it blends into skin.

“What is this?”

The one that looks to be an iron composite of some sort leans over, grinning widely underneath a metal plate nose – a well-made one no less. Between the three of them, he seems almost like the leader, but the other shiny one, whose metal is oddly polished and one I can’t name, is sitting back watching it all like a sort of supervisor. The copper person is bouncing back and forth like a puppy pulling gears and parts out of everything and smacking them in a machine over my head.

“Well, we’re just wondering what goes on in the head of this places…” He frowns lightly, almost thoughtful. “Master? Controller? God? Whatever it is you are,” he sighs, happily leaning back and strolling around the table they have me strapped to.

“And… why would you want to know that?”

“Because we want to know why we’re metal.”

For a moment, I blink at the third bot person as he stares boredly at me. “I could tell you that without you opening up my head.”

Loud clangs echo in my ear, sending a headache through to my temple as I clench my teeth in pain. Glancing over, the copper man gapes at me, metal teeth gleaming and a speaker in the back of his throat. So they don’t actually have to move their mouths to speak, then? Maybe that’s just him, though. But they all sound rather mechanical, digital in a way when they speak. It’s more likely, since my mind is complicated and like heavy amounts of details put into all the things in my imagination, that they have either a sort of vocal chord data set or the actual vocal chords in them somewhere. If it’s the data, then it’s probably stored in their brain, which would send signals into some sort of nerve translator that would feed into a processor, then be translated into words to be spoken that would play out in a specific pitch or tone related to the emotional output of the brain’s thoughts. Opening their mouth might give a signal that a thought is meant to be spoken, in such a case. Interesting…

“You know why we’re metal?” the copper one squeaks, popping up at my side. “You really know?”

“Well, I’d hope so, if this is my own head.”

“Oh yeah. One of the people we tried to grab said something about being in a head.” Amazingly moving to my side, the bored one looks down at me with a very vague expression of thought. “So you’re more like a controller than a master or god. You create everything here?”

With as much of a shrug as on can give when strapped down, I blink up at him in a similarly bored manner. “Sort of. As far as my meditation teacher taught me, this is more of a subconscious to me than the actual mind. And everyone in it is me in one form or another.”

“But you’re a girl,” the ‘leader’ squeals, leaning back and looking at himself. “I’m not a girl! I’m a guy!”

“Don’t you know that both males and females have some traces of each gender? That’s why people become transgender or cross-dress.” Which actually makes loads of sense if one thought about homosexuality in such a sense. “You’re a guy because you embody one of my more masculine tendencies in my subconscious. And since the majority of the people I speak to in my head are male, I must predominantly identify with a more masculine figure. In other words, I feel more boyish than girlish because I’m more influenced by ideas and thoughts that would normally be considered male tendencies.”

“Is that why we’re boys?” the copper one hums, setting his head into his hands as he leans his elbows on the table. “I thought it was because we were built that way.”

Built that way? “If you were built to be male, then that means you would have more male tendency than if you were built female,” I muse to myself. “But since you were built, that also means that, if your influences become female, you could just as easily become a female yourself. It would just be a matter of switching parts… My mind must be very complex to have come up with that one. It’s starting to do very strange things without my permission as well.”

“Obviously,” the bored one huffs, turning away. “I’m going on a walk.”

“Be careful of water!” the copper one calls out. “We don’t want to rust.”

“I wonder,” the one of iron composite hums quietly. “I wonder.”

This is a very strange occurrence in my head. Really, when did my mind suddenly decide that I was some sort of mechanical person? Although, I have been thinking about mechanical engineering as a career. But that was decided to be purely a hobby last week, or so I had figured since mechanical engineering is pretty much inventing or building machines and that is not exactly my kind of fun. No one even trusts me with a lighter, forget the welding torch.

I used to think like you. I used to look for meaning. I used to want things to matter. I used to think that there had to be some greater purpose to my life, to my presence.

But there isn't. Nothing we silly little humans do means anything. None of it matters. Ultimately, nobody cares.

We're all beautifully worthless, you know. Everything that we worry and care too much about, every meticulously planned action and line, all were completely, blissfully unimportant in the end.

In the end, we all die. We are forgotten, if not soon, than eventually.

That idea used to terrify me, it used to make me wonder why I bother doing anything, why I bother placing value in anything.

But eventually I realized the truth: it's liberating. It's liberating not to matter, not to mean anything. Nothing has any inherent meaning, so it's your job to assign meaning. or not to. You can - and  should, I think - do what makes you happy, because that's the only thing you truly control. You should work for yourself, for your interests, because when humans have gone extinct, nobody will remember you anyway.

If you know what I now know, you'd be selfish.

I found you in a dream again, as our souls do often.

Immediately I felt whole, as if just the metaphysical presence of you is what I have been lacking all this time. We were lounging on a couch watching a movie, as if this was our typical Friday night. I could never tell you what movie, I was and am still too wrapped up in you to notice. I can still see the surprise on your face as the haze dissipated and we realized this dream shouldn’t be possible. Our fingers intertwined and the warmth we could feel radiating off of each other should never have even existed.

Your eyes, whether brown, blue or grey I can’t remember. It was more the feeling that came from them, safe, whole and complete. Your words still resonate within my head at times,

“I will find you, just tell me where.”

It was as if the universe was against us, we couldn’t tell each other how to find one another, it was frustrating and I could feel my heart begin to drop.

“What if we never find each other,” my question hanging heavily between us.

Your answer was simply to brush your fingertips across my cheek and shake your head no, “The world could never be that cruel when it knows we will never give up.”

I could feel myself begin to immaterialize. The dream I wanted to last forever was fading fast.

“When we do meet, how will we ever know this wasn’t just a dream but our souls truly finding each other?” My voice broke as these words formed from what was left of me.

Our eyes refusing to meet just stared at the hands we still had intertwined between us. Your laugh, oh how I will never forget this laugh as you whisper to me, “When I find you I will simply say… Polar Bear. To answer just say to me… Thank you, but I prefer Vampires.”

Bullying is what closes my lips

Bullying is what is of closed minds

Bullying is the fear coursing through veins

Fear that does nothing but binds

It binds the soul, and the heart

It binds what we're made of

Our insides, our intelligence,

Our creativity, None of it's above

Above the fear we can't control

Why we avoid school and the world,

Why we never speak out, say our word

Why goosebumps form, fingers curled

Curled into punches never thrown,

Tongues with words that never leave the tips

Creative imaginations that never expresses

Speeches that could inspire, yet never leave lips

You never see it coming, all the signs there

Never know where, never know when

It's happened before, many times ago

All we can do now, is prevent it from happening again.

So Cronus took his sickle

and marred the Earth

and was forever branded Titan

for it

but amongst cornflowers grew

thistle

and the harvest did not fail that year

or the one after.

And Zeus reached out and tore

thunder from the sky, but

it did not burn his palms

and he

soiled his fathers face

and shattered the marble

statues, yet

forming again from the ashes and dirt-

brittle and fair.

Thus Man took the temples and the cities

and tore them down, and from the

rubble, they pried

with bleeding hands

Glass and Metal

and built their own fortresses

and shaped the winds and storms that would

havoc their bodies-

stronger with the tide.

"Can you believe these people?" 

"Right? Absolutely insane." 

"Heh, horns, though. That's pretty funny." 

"Yeah, what's with that? I mean, I was an angel. Where did the horns come from? Did you tell them I was part goat or something? How did I end up with horns and you ended up getting painted like Gandalf?" 

"You know the human imagination..." 

"I know you went a little overboard on that one." 

"Well, I thought they would use it for like...space travel and world peace." 

"Yeah, that hasn't really worked out too well, has it?" 

"That's the danger with free will. You never know what direction it's going to take a species." 

"It's kind of taking them in a weird direction." 

"The weirdest part is that they think we're the ones doing it. I thought they would have figured out by now that they're responsible for their own destinies." 

"Well, when you load up a species with infinite free-will, thumbs and no common sense, this is what happens. You were there for my rebellion, right? You saw what a fucking mess that was. And we were angels. You thought these infants were going to do better?" 

"I hoped. Hope is a powerful thing." 

"Your 'hope' is laying waste to a planet and destroying itself from the inside out. Your 'hope' is breeding hatred and poison and creating a place much, much worse than any 'hell' I could ever build. And most of them are blaming it on us!" 

"Yeah. It's gotten a little out of hand. Oh, well. Maybe next time."