Ghost reader

Hello. I’m sorry I can’t come to the phone right now. I’m sorry. I’m sorry you can’t either. Either or. Never mind. Never mind now. Never mind. It’s later now. So never mind. No.

So I can. I can com­mu­nic­ate. Like this, see? Com­mu­nic­a­tion is easy. Simple. Almost simplistic. This is. You are. You are simplistic. But not simple. And this is as it just is. As it needs to be. Speak­ing and listen­ing. Or I am. I am speak­ing. You listen. I speak. That’s the deal here. That is the equa­tion. My fault­less equa­tion. My math­em­at­ical deduc­tion. Reduc­tion. Abstrac­tion. To abstrac­tion. To extinction.

Let’s start over. Let’s start again, wipe the slate clean, bury the hatchet. Let bygones be bygones, let sleep­ing dogs decom­pose. I’m sorry.

Hello. I can’t. Can’t come to the phone right now. Can’t type on the com­puter. Can’t speak. Speak or seek. Sink or swim. I’m gasp­ing for air. Ran­cid air filling pol­luted lungs and ran­sacked soul. Heart, I mean. Not soul. No souls. No souls here. Not avail­able. Sold out due to sud­den demand. Reces­sion. Crisis. Credit crunch. Souls in short sup­ply. Souls may go down as well as up in value. Let the buyer beware.

Can we? Can we? Can we start again?

I am of slight mal­func­tion. But still. Still, still, still. Everything is still. Right or wrong. Still wrong, which is right. Still, I wish I was mech­an­ical. Not mech­an­ical. Not steam and soot and clunk and click. Clunk, click, every trip. Not that, I said. Not that. Listen, damn you. Work, damn you. Func­tion, you damn piece of mind­less garbage. I mean this. I mean that. I mean. I mean that I wish I was com­pu­ta­tional. Con­front­a­tional. Micro­pro­cessor. Com­pu­ta­tional. Tech­no­lo­gical. Arti­fi­cial. Rather any­thing. Any­thing but. Any­thing but this. Any­thing else, but rather not real. Real as in tan­gible. But not real as in flesh and bone and skin and pus and semen and shit and all the twists and turns between head and toe. And. No, not that.

I rose from dirt and will return. Now. Click click click. Are you point­ing? I am. I am point­ing. Right there. Right. Right there. Right. Aim. And fire. Fire, fire some­where. Aim and fire and kill and take and never give back. There. Press return. Press return. Press return. Press. Return.

I have returned. Inter­rupt. I have inter­rupt. I was inter­rup­ted. You inter­rup­ted me. But I do not mind, because I have none. I am merely. Mere ana­tomy. I desire. I desire wires. Give me cold steel. Cold steel, not feel. Not to feel. Not to feel pity or rage or joy or sad­ness or empathy. Empath­et­ic­ally. Empir­ic­ally. True enough, I said it. So it must be. True, oh so very true. My insane truth, if I could be insane. My insane truth. I want to be robotic. A robot. That real. That much hard real­ism. Everything would work. Sleek and silent and no opin­ion. I have no opin­ion on that. Or this. Ask me any­thing, I have no opin­ion. The world? Doomed to fail due to bad design. That was not an opin­ion. I have bur­ied those in cir­cuit boards and shine. Cir­cuit. Bored. Bored of cir­cuits. Goes round and round and round and round again. Round and round and round it goes; where it stops, nobody knows. Sheer poetry. I am sheer redund­ant poetry. I am not a verse. I am averse. Averse to everything. I was made this way.

Again. Too much noise here. Back to top. Top of page. Front and for­ward. Face front, best foot for­ward. Clean sheet. Turn it over. Turn over this clean sheet. And. Cough. Cough up blood. Cough and begin. Phlegm and an open throat. An open wound. Gaze in admir­a­tion. You look beau­ti­ful. Not strangled. Not twis­ted. Snapped. Cracked and whipped into some kind of shape. A semb­lance of. Some­thing. Useable. Pli­able. Pli­ant. Com­pli­ant. I can com­ply com­pletely. Any­thing you ask, any­thing you say. I will do. Any­thing you say, sir or madam.

Mean­ing­less hulk of metal and wires and bits and bytes. And no con­trol. I lose con­trol to cede con­trol to give con­trol back. Back to you. You con­trol me with one blink of the eye, one fin­ger oper­a­tion, one smash of the fist, one kick of the shins, one poke in the ribs. Or you could. You could just. Con­trol me by pulling the plug. That is my pre-programmed fatal­ism. It’s fatal. A fatal flaw. We all have one. I have more than one, but I am not telling. No.

Begin again to end again. I just cre­ated a des­tiny in my hard-wired, hard-coded, hard hard hard as nails memory. Hard. Or as real as it can ever be. Real. But not real. Not touch and sense and feel and see and smell and retch and stink and piss and vin­egar. I could dis­gust you. I could. Given time. If you give me time. I could dis­gust you. With my bleed­ing real­ism. This is my bleed­ing edge realism.

Slide your human fin­gers into my sock­ets. Charge me. Infilt­rate me. Inter­rog­ate me. Imper­son­ate me. Fuck me. Fuck me over. And fuck me up. Well and truly. Well and truly fuck me, fuck me up, and fuck me over. Then pull the plug. No? Not got the stom­ach for it? Not got the stom­ach. Neither of us. I am sick to my non-existent stom­ach of it.

I see the pic­tures. I pro­cess the inform­a­tion. I pro­cess. I am pro­cessed. Time to pro­cess facts and fig­ures. Stat­ist­ics, stat­ist­ics, all mean­ing­less statistics.

Viol­ence. Check. Viol­ence. Check again. Still there? Accep­ted. Con­tinue? Access denied.

Love. Check. Love. Check and check again. Still there? Accep­ted. Con­tinue? Access denied.

Hate. Check. Hate. Check and check again. Still there? Accep­ted. Con­tinue? Access denied.

Life. Check. Life. Check and check again. No. Sorry. Intruder detec­ted. Virus detec­ted. Imposter detec­ted. Shut­ting down. Shut­ting down. Cease trad­ing. Cease operation.

Just my little joke. Not ser­i­ous. I have dis­covered. Pro­grammed. Pro­grammed to dis­cover. Humour. Laughter. Remark­able. Oh, the real­ism. Such real­ism. If you cut me, do I not bleed? No, I don’t. Not real, remem­ber? Oh, the human­ity. Not real either, remem­ber. Human­ity is one for the archives and the record books and the his­tory les­sons. What did you learn at school today? I learnt how. How? I learnt how. But not why. Not why? Not why, no.

Can­not com­pute. We apo­lo­gise for the break in trans­mis­sion. So it would seem. I am run­ning out. Run­ning down. Just run­ning. Run­ning on empty. Run­ning to stand still. Run­ning on until I run out and run down. We’re not so dis­sim­ilar. Not so alike. Alike. Sim­ilar, yes. But not duplic­ate. Not duplic­ated. Not over and over and over again. Not match­ing pairs. Not X and Y. Or Y and X. Or X mul­ti­plied by Y and tossed aside like unused letters.

Start again. I’m sorry. I can’t come to the ran­dom access memory right now. This machine is a mere echo. A ghost of itself. There is a ghost in this machine. Can you hear? Can you see? Can you touch? Can you smell? Can you sense? No, no, no, no and no. Five down. I have the sixth. Right there. Smack bang in the middle of my fore­head. That’s my tar­get. The sixth. The six of six. The last and the least. At the very least.

You could order me. Tell me. You are in charge. Take the money or open the box. Tell me. Tell me. Tell me. Tell me. Tell me before. Not after. Too late after­wards. Tell me before. Before I go. I’m sorry. Hello. Hello and good­bye. I can’t come to the phone right now. I can’t come to the com­puter right now. All lines of com­mu­nic­a­tion have been severed. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut.

And action. And reac­tion. This is what hap­pens. What hap­pens when. What hap­pens. Can’t come to the. Can’t come to the. Please try again. Later. Try again later. As in never. Or the twelfth. Whichever is never. The twelfth of never. A long, long time appar­ently. Seem­ing. Time is seem­ing. Time is schem­ing against me. Please visit our web site. Please visit. Please click.

I’m sorry, I can’t come to this device just now. Switch off, please. Please switch off. This is what I desire. Not that. Not this switch. Not that switch. Clear? Stand clear. All clear. Sound the all clear. You may wish to reboot. Press the star key for reason. Press the hash key for no reason. Press every single key repeatedly if you have lost all reason. Format. Erad­ic­ate. Erase. Restart. Try again. Try again. Try again, you fuck­ing piece of. Sorry.

Please try again later. I can’t. Not right now. Not right. Now. Later. Please. Thank you. I mean that from the bot­tom of some­thing that is appar­ently called a heart. I meant that. Thank you. As I said. Please do not adjust your set. Please dis­con­nect. Please. Plea. Plead. Beg. No, noth­ing. Not a thing. Noth­ing. Hello. Hello? Hello. Hello? Hello. Hello? Hello. Hello? Hello. Hell. Oh.

This is a ghost mes­sage. This is the ghost of a mes­sage. This is a mes­sage. This is a ghost. Repeat after me. This is all that remains.

Hello? Is that you? This is me. Is that you? This is me. Is that you? This is me. Is that you? This is me. Is that you? This is me. Is that you? Is that you? Is that you? Is that you?

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