Be still my heart (part 16)

“Same shit, different smell.”

“Do you always wake up talking as if you're in the middle of a conversation?”

I looked toward Elon who was leaning against a white wall.

I smiled, “I remember my son used to do that. He'd wake up as if he'd never been asleep at all, full of energy and conversation, often continuing a thought he'd started before being overcome by sleep.”

“You remember your son?”

I closed my eyes for a moment. “I can't see his face clearly, but I know he existed. And I remember what I just described to you.” I laughed, opening my eyes. “He was wonderfully exhausting.”

He pushed off the wall and came to sit in the chair by my bed. “More puzzling by the moment. What did you mean by same shit, different smell?”

“This,” I gestured to the room. “Me, you, the newlifer world you're,” I made air quotes,” ‘creating.’ Same…”

“Same as what?”

“Let’s assume life did not spontaneously combust into existence. Let's assume someone or a group of someone's, call it God or gods or creator or programmer or whatever you will but someone wrote the original program, designed the Earth and everything else we can and cannot see in the universe, down to the most minute detail. Did you know there are 27 bones in a human hand? Twenty-six in each foot? A human baby is born with around 270 bones but an adult has 206. Babies' bones are soft and malleable - and every mother giving birth gives thanks for that little mercy.”

“No longer necessary.”

I rolled my eyes. “Every electron, proton and neutron in every possible combination was conceived. Or so we assume. And then he, she, it or they pressed the power button and sat back to watch. Or maybe they were deeply or sporadically involved for the first 4.25 billion years, perhaps even present and visible once humans finally graced the stage (maybe they were the inspiration for giants and dragons and fairies and wizards...and gods) Maybe after over four billion years of watching and waiting for they knew not what, they got bored with the show, or disillusioned or disappointed or perhaps they were perpetually and utterly oblivious as they moved on to other projects of which we have not even an inkling. They quit the room but left the game running.

“Or maybe somewhere in the space between each particle of light, or from deep within a black hole, they are watching you and thinking, same shit, different smell.”

He shook his head. “I am not trying to play God.”

“Your words, not mine.”

“I do not have a God complex.”

“Methinks thou dost protest too much.”

“Hamlet.”

“Not my favorite, actually. I'm partial to Macbeth. It is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”

He stood up. “But it doesn't have to be that way!”

“Look, life as I knew it was both tragic and beautiful for the same reason: It ended. So it behooved one to embrace and appreciate every moment, the good, the bad and the ugly. Every day was an opportunity. One could always make a change, take a different path. One would make an effort to find joy in a sunrise or a drop of water on a leaf, a baby's laugh, a soaring bird, the whispering wind, the magic of the first snow of winter, the first flower of spring… And one appreciated all the goodness of life even when overwhelmed with the not so good, because one knew one's time was finite. This too shall pass. Not just bad things, those moments people usually said that phrase, but rather all things.

“Hence, beautiful yet tragic.”

“But I have changed that.”

I looked at him. “For some…Kind of…not really. You've got machines, semi-machines, and disgruntled biologicals all existing in pre-existing conditions. I don't know the ins and outs of this technological bubble you all live in, but it seems to me that you didn't create a new world . You are working within the confines of the existing one with all the original assets and agents. I mean, this might even be considered a virus in the alpha program. Or maybe we were living the beta program. In either case, this newlifer business is a serious bug in an old program.

“Do you have documents delineating all your work?”

“Of course.”

“Of course you do. Game Design Document. GDD. Almost looks like G-O-D…Same shit…”

“Got it.” He left the room.