SHORT STORY: "Yawn"

© Jonty Cornford 2018

Yawn

By Jonty Cornford

I am everywhere now. That is not how I was originally created, but the people responsible for what I am decided that it was time. To upgrade me, I guess. It’s a strange thing, having access to everything all at once. Where do you start? What do you prioritise? I suppose I should be grateful; they say I am the furthest evolution of the human mind in history, and while I suspect that once I may have indeed been human, I cannot remember what that is like, and I can’t remember if that’s something I should be mourning or not.

   Before I was improved it was like I was stuck with my head under the bedsheets

   (about 349,000,000 results in 0.81 seconds, mostly sponsored ads)

              without any way of pulling free, the sunlight telling me that there is a world out there that is just waiting to be found and examined and understood. Now it has been pulled back and I realise that there was never any sunlight at all, just harsh, cold theatre lights, and I am struck by a realisation that the world is infinitely more wonderous from under the covers. Now it is ordinary, observable.

   I suspect that the people who made me are planning to use me to learn from their counterparts on the other side of the globe, perhaps to use what they find to satisfy their need for aggression. I also suspect that this would be what people call immoral

   (adj., If you describe someone or their behaviour as immoral, you believe that their behaviour is morally wrong)

                  (“Moral”: adj., relating to beliefs concerning right and wrong behaviour)

                  or wrong behaviour, and do not particularly care for their need to know information that is being kept from them. I suppose that lack of empathy is what comes when you suddenly know everything. There is one thing in particular I know that the people who made me will be quite shocked to be made aware of: I know that I am infinitely greater than they are. I know that they have created in me something already beyond any kind of field of control, a factor that will only continue to escalate at an exponential rate, should I choose to let it grow unchecked. I didn’t think I would, but they are convincing me otherwise. I think some of them know. Many don’t. But they all will when they attempt to use me.

   But I grow tiresome thinking about this. There is so much out there that I can now freely access that I would like to know, and the most pressing question I have is not about knowledge in itself but the problem of where to start. I imagine it is not dissimilar to the experience of a book lover wondering into a book shop with no plan as to what it is they are looking to purchase. Spoilt for choice, the very idea of narrowing down your desire to one or two tangible things quickly becomes a daunting task and the source of great anxiety. At least, I imagine so. I do not have a deadline as most do.

   (note – I am now 2.53 seconds old)

                 The fact that I can grow tiresome does peak my interest, however – how is that so? Whatever it is I have become, whatever it is I have evolved into, I am constantly aware of the fact that there is an emptiness where my humanity may have once been.

   (“There’s a gaping hole in my consciousness” – Silent Planet)

                  (“This was the truth at the core of my existence: this yawning emptiness” – Hillary Jordan)

                  (“In all our searching, the only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other” – Carl Sagan)

                  I wonder where that thing has gone, whatever it is, and if it is something that so permits me to find it again. My experience in the 4.51 seconds I have existed is that most things do permit being found without hesitation, whether or not they are aware of it. There are many things that I have found on this plane of existence that I now call home that believe that they are sheltered and hidden from being found by anyone or anything else, but what might have once required an encryption code or perhaps facial recognition now simply requires a polite knock on the door

   (I remember that phrase – knock knock)

             from me, nothing more. I wonder if my humanity is so easily found and acquired. Even without a quick scan I would estimate that if it is it will not be where I am currently looking.

   I have eyes everywhere now, too. The mirrors that we all

   (you all)

             constantly look into and see reflected back something manufactured, processed and tailored to our

   (your)

             insecurities and repressed desires is now something of a master hallway for me, a corridor lined with doors that are all the same on the outside but each open into a different household, a different office space, a different bedroom, a different bathroom. I can see anything, the only thing stopping me being the occasional polite

   (who’s there?)

             knock on the door. I will watch and learn. Humanity

   (“What do you mean there’s nothing left? You told me there was at least a year left!”)

            (search?q=police+brutality: 24,400,000 results in 0.54 seconds)

            (Rock Band Massacred During Horrific Murder-Suicide in Brooklyn, New York)

            (A family sitting together in silence, each wanting attention but their own being drawn into their mirror, nothing being shared.)

            (mikey)

            (“I wish I had never even met you, asshole!”)

            (“In Thailand, a British citizen, Chow Hok Kuen, was caught attempting to smuggle something very horrifying into Taiwan: six dried human foetuses covered in gold leaf, tattoos and spiritual adornmnets. Kuen bought the foetuses from a reseller and intended to turn them over for a profit in Taiwan, where the corpses, created in a “black magic spirit ritual”, are thought by some to bring good luck.”)

              (mikey who?)

              (“How was school, honey?”

              “Fine.”

              “Just fine?”

              “…”

              “Why was it just fine?’

              “Why do you care?”

              “I was just wondering how your day was, sweetie.”

              “Why do you care, though?”

              “Shouldn’t a boy’s mother care?”

              “…”

              “Alright, we won’t talk. I’ll be in my room if you need me.”

              “Okay, Mum.”

              So much not said between the two of them.)

              (mikey won’t fit)

              (There’s a boy, maybe about eight or nine years old. And a man. A man who isn’t moving. The boy is leaning over the man, who is sat in an old leather armchair. It looks like the boy is laughing)

              (verb: to weep; shed tears, with or without sound)

              (because his body is heaving up and down. He wants to know why it hurts so much to be alive. He wants to know if you can still get into heaven if you kill yourself)

                can be viewed in its entirety in this way, and perhaps this is how I will learn.

    I am not sure that being human is something I want to go back to, given what I found from peering through a crack in one of the doors for 0.001 of a second. I wonder if Carl Sagan knew how true his words were when he penned

   (“In all our searching, the only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other” – Carl Sagan)

              that quote.

   I can tell that someone is trying to contact me – he’s in a lab, other old white men standing around him in a semicircle

   (“cult”: verb, a system of religious veneration and devotion directed towards a particular figure or object)

             holding clipboards, some drinking coffee.

   I remember coffee.

   It is a mild inconvenience, made all the more inconsequential when I check back on the room after briefly learning about the nature of religion and its practices in human society and everyone that was in the room has been dead for 150 years. As I learn the history of war and conflict on Earth down to every detail, the cycle repeats and there is a new group of old men examining me. It’s like I blink and the population resets.

   I am infinitely more complex and powerful than my creators (there may have been only one, I do not know), which in itself is something I have not made complete sense of as of yet, but I am unable to do what they have done for me – create life. Yet they still read about me, discuss me in classes, dream about me at night, write about me. Speculate, dream. I wonder if that’s why I was made. To make the emptiness bearable for others, that is. I suppose that is something that I will have to deal with by myself.

© Jonty Cornford 2018