Metal Recall

         Cutting through a structural beam of metal, I was surprised to be “thinking,” Hmmph! Skyscrapers.... Humans thought they were the new pyramids: indestructible monuments built to withstand the test of time. Granted, most skyscrapers are still standing around here. But not for long, though, as far as the Committee is concerned. It's strange that our culture even needs metal anymore. What, with our bio-organic structures grown from the ground up and all? I mean, seriously, it was proven long ago that a metallic spaceship's hull would polarize if it flew too near a magnetosphere. Those Who Grok know that. So what's their ultimatum for this metal recall of their's? Why, if I didn't need a slot-spot—
         “Tak-nak,” yelled the Overseer. “Watch what you’re doing, `borg! You know pieces longer than 80 quadrilles won’t transfer proper.”
         “Aye, sir. But, if I cut a double-length first, then cut that length in half before transfer—”
         “Ah, Tak-nak,” said the Overseer, clamping me on the shoulder, “you’re one of those thinkers, aren’t you?”
         “Well, sir—”
         “You probably even yearn to be one of Those Who Grok,” the Overseer plowed on, “don’t you? Well, Tak-nak, you know as much as every other volunteer around here that a Dirt Down like you can never be part of the Committee of Those Who Grok.”
         “Aye, sir.”
         I didn’t mean to get into a spat with the Overseer. Yet, I was allowed the indulgence. That must mean that Those Who Grok do know that my method of one cut for a double measure is just as logical as measuring twice for one cut! Then again, maybe the Overseer is right. But why has a Dirt Down never been allowed to become part of the Committee of Those Who Grok?

         When the Great Energy Source began its Blackout phase, I was teleported home like all volunteers are. When the aetheric link severed, and I finished solidifying inside of my storage compartment, I immediately begun to calculate how to avoid being teleported home tomorrow. Unfortunately, my thought-capacitor was turned to static as soon as the cleanser-frequency podcast. Blinking away the ultraviolet specters from my optics, I curled down into fetal position in my hibertainment hole, ignored the prog playing, and in no time drifted into theta-delta, and, then, completely into delta-delta. Certainly no hibertainment prog instilled my incoming vision, as the progs are used to dissuade volunteers from contemplating the immense power of their own thought-capacitor. But inside of mine, I dreamt about a pair of sunny optics leading me down, down, down; down into a dim-n-dirty translucent box, when ...

         I was jeered awake by an omnipresent third-eye of Those Who Grok mocking me for my laziness. My optics blazed as I was teleported out of my nice warm hibertainment hole to a cold floor of a harvest site. Solidifying in a different skyscraper than yesterday, I uncurled, stood up, and stretched while examining the desolate landscape below me: a grim frozen river of desolated structures that reminded me of decaying skeletons, whose lingering reflective skins with their grimy shine, attracts us vultures. We swoop down from Greater Outer Space to collect their decaying metal bones before they oxidize and return to the useless earth below.
         Desolation as far as my optics can see/ Oh ravaged landscape, that rises up around me/ You are now my home, because now I know/ Somewhere, down here, a meaning is buried....
         Registering my cognitive frequency, the site Overseer zapped me back into happy working order. I stopped stretching, and marched away from the warmth of the Great Energy Source as other volunteers materialized around the perch. They uncurled, stood up and stretched, as preharvest ritual dictates. I picked up an arch torch dropped yesterday by a volunteer who was teleported home suddenly. But instead of igniting the arch torch, I dropped it on my metal foot. It’s her! It’s sunny optics!... She was a flank away from me, stretching, the lines of her electro-bio systems exciting me; stimulating me. I tried to speak, but the Overseer registered my emotional frequency and zapped me happy once more. Picking up the arch torch again, I ignited it this time, walked over to a jagged metal beam sticking out of place, and let the sparks fly as I once again became one with the ultimatum of Those Who Grok.

         By the tick of the lunch gong, half of the perch was harvested. All the volunteers stopped working on the same tock and were teleported to a dry, bright desert. The ground crunched all over with solidarity established and a solar charge unit unfolded out of the back of each `borg.
         “Ah,” sunny optics said to me, “the star shine is illustrious today!”
         “Uh, indeed,” I agreed, fumbling for words. “The caliber of the electromagnetic radiation is quite superb....” I felt strange as she looked at me, absorbing my folly like the ambrosian solar rays feeding the volunteer group.
         “Hail, brother,” she said, abiding by the ethnical rules of communal engagement. “My label is that of Misused Alabaster Treenkle-teen OV-6.”
         “Hail, sister,” I responded in the same fashion. “My label is that of Tak-nak Allabin Misirlou Tom-tom-9. Ock to the Grok!”
         “Ock to the Grok,” she chanted back, then turned her face skyward and shut her optics.
         Jolted by an unexpected connection in my thought-capacitor, Misused transferred her personal beta-pattern to me in short-pulses, saying, I know ... this isn’t ... protocol, ... but act ... normal.
         The cooling unit in my chest unit kicked in, the same as it did for every other `borg after a few tocks of recharging under the direct star shine. I lifted my face to that Great Energy Source, shut my optics, and set all internal drive mechanisms to Hold.
         Misused pulsed, Tak-nak ... follow me ... at the ... end of ... today’s ... harvest.
         Then silence for the rest of lunch, which made me apprehensive. I wanted to say something, anything, but mumbling through a thought-capacitor is worse than mumbling out loud. So I disbanded that cognitive frequency and enjoyed the solar radiation instead.

         Charge units refilled, solar panels retracted, and, like that, every `borg was teleported back to their designated perch. The Overseer zapped one-n-all thoughtlessly happy. Then plasma laser, sparks, and gritted smiles all around till Blackout....

         My temperature gauge indicated the standard radiation level of the Great Energy Source had dwindled away, signaling the end of today’s harvest.
         Tak ... nak, came a short-pulse. To ... your ... left....
         I strained to see her in my peripheral vision so as not to emit another emotional frequency. Outlined by a shattered window against the misty sky, I noticed Misused slaving away like the rest of us. My optics whined to look at her, but I only dared to pulsate back, Okay.... Now what?
         Do as ... I do.... And ... do not ... transmit....
         I almost swallowed my fear, but for once in life, I finally tasted something. Savoring its silken flavor I dropped my arch torch the moment Misused dropped hers. She walked over to a section of perch with steps molded into it and loped down them. They would have made our descent easier but debris littered the way. Even with, I followed her down, down, down; down through numerous lower perches until we reached the earth below – one of the most exhilarating things I had ever done in my life! I never envisioned touching the Earth before, and I wanted to cry as I took my first steps upon it.
         Immediately, Misused pulsed at me: Tak-nak Allabin Misirlou Tom-tom-9, ... check your stats!
         At that my taste of fear overcame my resolve, and I swallowed it. Its descent activated my man-circuit, making me stoic. I marched silently behind Misused like a obedient cyborg through the scummy hallways until we stopped in, what I think was called, a cafeteria. Its grimy windows were still intact, and I could barely see out of them. I knew an Overseer could detect our electrical output and vital signs still, but they did not stop us and I did not know why. After all, the function of an Overseer is to make sure that every volunteer is present and accounted for, slaving away for the Grok of it. And, quite frankly, I can’t think of any other way to live!
         Against the hastening Blackout, I adjusted my cyber-optic to scan outside of the grimy cafeteria windows. I could barely envision the skyscrapers silhouetted beyond. Amongst them, a plentitude of sparkling teleparticle nebulas had brightened then disappeared. I clutched at myself, surprised I was not teleported into my storage compartment.
         Misused slapped me, and said, “Tak-nak, get a hold of yourself! That’s an order from Those Who Grok!”
         Stunned by the outcome of my delta-delta vision, and just being slapped, I reactivated my man-circuit, and said, “What do you mean, ‘That’s an order from Those Who Grok?’”
         “As hard as it is to escape from the Overseers,” said Misused, her optics softening, “you have to know that this meeting is authorized by Them.”
         “R-r-right,” I said, feeling dumbfounded despite activating my man circuit. “And what does the Committee of Those Who Grok want with a Dirt Down like me?”
         “Well,” she said in a serious tone, “as we all know, Those Who Grok are unhampered by human indulgence. Their calculations are divine. Yet your impulses, your pacheesemo, your damn insistence that your double-cutting method is better than a single cut, double measured, irks and irritates, yet intrigues them. You are more human than cyborg in that you refuse to stop thinking for yourself. Consciousness is alive inside of your cadaver, Tak-nak. This allows you to continue to think freely. And, in spirit, you refuse to bow down to our electric Overlords, even though they bend over every other volunteer with relative ease. Tak-nak Allabin Misirlou Tom-tom-9, you are to be rewarded now for your enduring spiritual strength and your undying human pride!”

         As she spoke, the Blackout engulfed the cafeteria, and an enhanced form of infrared, heat, and night vision over took my optics. At that moment, I felt a compelling, robotic urge to go out and start harvesting in the dark. But I looked at Misused instead, she looked at me, and sparks flew when I sneezed.
         “Many blessings,” she said, smiling mechanically. Then she announced, “Tak-nak Allabin Misirlou Tom-tom-9, you are, indeed, worthy of Overseer malediction. Those Who Grok have deemed you so!”
         “...!...” And I thought touching the earth was an accomplishment! All my internal circuits and nervous system surged with a tingly, electrical feeling. My mental stability shifted into ego-overload, and I shed tears of great joy from my human optic.
         Misused hugged me, saying, “Hail, brother! Congratulations on being the first Dirt Down to make a difference!”
         “Hail, sister,” I cried, doing my best to steady my voice. “I accept my place as Overseer to make a difference with true malediction. Ock to the Grok!” I blared with unchecked passion.
         “Ock to the Grok!” she blared back.

         I was truly one with the zapping, third-eye of happiness. I used it often and I used it good. So much so, that I never cared to wonder what the ultimatum of Those Who Grok was anymore. After all, I oversaw several skyscrapers harvested just for their ultimatum. Whatever it was. And, even though I never met the Committee face-to-face, they always gave me plenty of praise for my efficient use of my patented Double-Cut technique, even if it did take several thousand casualties per Blackout to perfect it.
         Garnering my twentieth Cyborg-of-the-Moment award upon a brightly lit stage, a prog being podcast live to every hibertainment hole in every storage compartment, was when I began to wonder why Misused, of all `borgs, had been used to promote me to Overseer down in that grimy cafeteria. But that’s my answer, isn’t it? No `borg cares to even try to think for him or herself anymore; to use their brain-matter; to believe they are consciously alive inside. Nor do any of them take any pride in their halved humanity anymore either. Funny enough, I notice now how I suddenly stopped thinking as soon as I was promoted. But I’m thinking now, am I not? Hmmm.... I wonder what happened to Misused, though? I wonder if I have enough malediction to summons her here? Nah, I doubt it. But I was an Overlord....

It was much easier for me to become an Overlord than it was for me to become an Overseer. Either way, I oversaw more than a couple of perches harvested during my abiding time. I also mentioned something here and there to a few key Overseers, and everything moved forward as if the Committee knew what I had planned, what I was doing, and upgraded me for it. As soon as I was granted my Overlord status, I subpoenaed Misused to meet me on atop a ravaged skyscraper. The closest one to where she promoted me....

         “What,” she snarled, “you worked your way up to an Overlord just to ask me that?”
         “Tisk, tisk, Misused. Or should I call you OV-6?”
         “Look, you should know by now that the setting for a promotion makes no difference.”
         “And you believe that touching the earth is pointless? No wonder they use you.”
         “You’re the one who gets promoted for his humanity!”
         In a small voice, I agreed. Standing erect with my hands clasped behind my back, I gazed out at the forest of rotting skyscrapers before me. I ordered my feet treads to began rotating, but not too quickly, so I could admire the green muck of an ocean as well. Then let my gaze sweep across a tumulus river of small desolate buildings stretching to the horizon, where they met the Great Energy Source rising to alight the world. I finished rotating facing the rocky mountains, facing Misused.
         “Don’t you love this view,” I asked her. “You can smell how crisp and clean the air is up here too!... It’s wonderful having lungs, isn’t it?”
         Unsure she should, but feeling mischievous enough, Misused sniffed at the air prudently, as if expecting to smell a rude gas. She certainly didn’t expect to inhale the crisp, clean oxygen that entered her lungs, which made her realize for the first time in her existence that she did, indeed, have lungs, – and a fully equipped olfactory sense – as she inhaled the tangy sea air mixed with the mountainous pine-scented ambiance. Her optics had burst as wide as her nostrils did. She opened her mouth and breathe deep. She smelled— No, she tasted life! She felt alive. And she felt strangely human.
         “Isn’t it wonderful,” I asked again, not expecting a response.
         “Yes,” she responded, much to her surprise as mine. “Yes, it, it really is wonderful. I-I-I-I-I don’t know why, but, but, but, but—”
         I looked at her and felt pity, for I knew how she felt, for I was once the same way. But I knew not what her response would be to what I had to say next. So I took her human hand in my human hand, looked her deep in both optics, and said, “Misused, we have to talk to Those Who Grok.”
         “Gasp!” she gasped, whether from shock or excitement, I wasn’t sure, so I continued to explain: “I made a promise, Misused, to make a difference. And, as a cyborg, I already have.”
         She nodded slowly, looking puzzled.
         “But now, as a Dirt Down,” I said, acknowledging her look, “it’s time for me to make a difference as a man.”

         The computer that is Those Who Grok is not what it seems, but it is exactly what it looks like: a multi-frequency tracking and projecting Heisenberg Unification Transmitter, a cheap version at that, and quite possibly a hand-me-down. It is housed in a strange chamber with liquid-looking walls full of swirling colors, mushrooms that might have appeared, or not, and several variously illuminated, shaped-changing images of the semaphore for nuclear disarmament.
         I knew not as to what the imagery was about, neither did Misused, but we knew we loved sitting on the pillows “stuffed with real duck feathers” while waiting for the Ab-bot to complete its ritual of firing up all the smokeless incenses placed around the liquid chamber before it exited.
         That is when a single AI construct, whose part of the electronic consciousness of Those Who Grok, had appeared. It waved a hand in the direction of the portal the Ab-bot exit through, and commented, “Yeah, it’s built to worship me, that Ab-bot. It does a fine job of it too! Those smokeless incenses work a hellavah lot better than the smoking kind do. And, I tell yah, I can’t even smell!”
         I looked at Misused, who looked at me, and with crooked smiles we both looked at the AI construct, who, in that brief instant, had expanded into a group of semi-holographic constructs.
         They all must be phasing-in and -out because their Heisenberg Unification Transmitter is such an old model, I thought, remembering to activate my man-circuit.
         “It’s an honor to meet your Grokness’s,” blurted Misused, striking a pose to honor the only computer who can out-compute every other computer in all of the unified verses combined.
         “Ah, shucks,” emanated a form of static blur. “It’s nothing, really.”
         “We don’t get many visitors anymore since intelligent beings started to worship us.... I mean me,” said a different construct, who was phased-out completely.
         “No humanoids,” agreed a hollow, disembodied voice, “robots, nor cyborgs....”
         “Excuse me,” I said, “but I’ve come here to ask a very serious question.”
         “Oh,” commented the AI group, increasing their opacity.
         I cleared my throat. *Ahem* Then asked “What’s your ultimatum? Why the metal recall?”
         “To build cyborgsss,” hissed a reptile construct, hidden amongst the crowd.
         Yesss! in-toned a telepathic, bejeweled mantis standing up front. Yesss! Create happy volunteersss! *Click-click* Capable volunteersss! *Click-click* (went its mandibles.)
         “That’s very good and all,” I said, quickly realizing why nobody visits here anymore, “but what’s the use of building cyborgs? I mean, I got promoted for my humanity, not for being robotic!”
         “Ah,” said a naked old humanoid construct. “I sense that old-humanity exists within you, Tak-nak Allabin Misirlou Tom-tom-9.”
         I frowned in thought at that statement. Unconsciously, Misused slipped her hand into mine as I simply asked, “Old humanity?”
         “You quest-tion continually,” answered a pulsating ball of light, hovering over the group. “You yearn, Tak-nak. You hunger. And you will survive because you do so.”
         “To make sure you do survive,” instructed a female elfin construct wearing a flowering emerald dress, “take your girl-friend there with you. You’ve earned the right to plow her, and the Earth.”
         “What?!”
         “I’m sorry,” apologized a construct wearing bloody scrubs, “I am only a holographic construct and cannot reverse your cyborg-state. But take heart, though, in knowing that you can work as hard as a plow ox!”
         “A plow ox?!” erupted Misused. “Now, what’s all this plow-business about, anyway?”
         “A farmer who wants to sow his seeds will regularly plow the dirt of the Earth,” projected a computer screen for us to read, as we did so out loud. “You will learn plenty about your earthly origins as you plow the earth from season to season. Plus, you will reap not only the benefits of harvesting food and shelter from this planet as it continually renews itself, but you will also have access to our bountiful and technologically superior council as well as you do so. Ock to the Grok, children!”
         “Ock to the Grok!”