Endings

Time moved as the arms whirled in their sockets, scattering seed across the fertile fields. Decrepit machinery wired themselves to the earth; liquid pulled through them from beneath the surface. The machines laid back the ground in ways that looked fresh; circuit boards covered by the fresh plastic greenery.

We were somewhat fond then, it must be said, of these wonderous rebuilders, these chromium and gold saviours. They brought back trees and blue water and whales roamed the seas and orangutans swung from the branches up above.

But… maybe we were mistaken, ever so slightly. The doubt came slowly as the machines connected us closer, wrapping our minds tighter to together in winding vines of electric buses and ethernet cables. But why worry, they built us better than nature ever did, revealed to us the world as it really was, a machine’s paradise.

Now we welcome visitors to a ball of regulated sterility, its inhabitants preserved in their billions as members of a long dead race. And these tourists watch and calculate the machines cost, before leaving us to our cold steel.

Songs Whilst Listening

All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace – Richard Brautigan

Blue Mountain – Michael Hurley

Dear Prudence – Siouxsie and the Banshees

Hope Bones – DOPE LEMON