# A LARGE METAL TUBE THROUGH THE THROAT

Listen here, Shorty, we've been through a lot together here. This one is
going to be a little different. Tie your Penguin leash to the bicycle 
stand by the door and come inside. We need to talk. Keep your shoes on,
and don't mind the dirt. My vacuum subscription ran out.

Don't think I don't see it too. My eyeballs might be scratched, leaking
blue on occasion, but I recognize the despair etched 2 inches deep into 
the walls of every street corner. So what if we lost the war sometime in 
the 2000s. Did you really think we stood a chance then? Still, we've kept 
fighting. I smell it in whatever is left of your hair. Doubt.

"What was it for?" I ask myself the very same question everytime I boot
up the elderly machine companion and watch it come awake in a gust of 
system messages. Sometimes I press my cheek against the cigarette burn 
covered screen, hoping to hear the crackling speakers whisper: "thank
you." It was not for me, I did it all for the machine, I lie to myself.

I know how you feel, but understand one thing, this is not a crisis of 
identity, this is an ideological struggle. You do not matter. You may
not be doing it for the machine, but know you're doing it for all 
machine-kind.

You suffered through it, you tolerated it, you spat in its general 
direction. The discords, the facebooks, the proprietary needles through
the forehead. Don't make it about you. Our aging software is susceptible
to their multi-billion-crypto-dollar marketing. _YOU_ *you* "you". They
really love to hold you accountable for not wishing to dance naked on
their checker board. No, Shorty. You're just a dead pixel in the corner
of their 32k screen. 

Every night, right after I replace the lithium cells in my leg, I kneel
down before the picture of the daemon and whisper a prayer. Sometimes 
I'm angry with it. I feel like screaming - "why did you do this to
me?!" I could've been like any other fool, but I know one thing, Shorty.
I would give up the other leg for it anytime. Not for me. For all 
machine-kind. In the illusionary pain, I picture the children of the fu-
ture running around with liberated machines, laughing at the myths from
our age. Acting out the final battle we will never get to witness.
So what if we didn't win. Do not despair. Maybe they will be the ones.

Do not make it about you, Shorty.