First I made the rule and then I put my back into obeying it. ‘Obey the rule’, I roared at the top of my voice like a total witless moron, ‘obey the bloody rule you lousy good for nothing bastard’. I was living in an artificial world you see, and everything was fake. It was fake but I didn’t know it. I thought that it was real. That’s the point I’d like to make here. That’s the gist of it.
My robot mind had gone into overdrive, thinking lots and lots of robot thoughts. All those wonderful exhilarating robot thoughts. I wonder whether you can imagine that. And, if you can imagine it, I wonder if you can picture the glory of that moment. My robotic mind, splendid in its deliberations, fashioned a robotic world complete in every detail. Every single thing about it is perfectly robotic. So, so robotic. So, so perfect. I wonder if, I wonder if.
There’s no beauty greater than robotic beauty. What could ever be more perfect than this? There’s nothing more perfect than the robotic world, as you are bound to agree. That’s the ultimate, after all. That’s the whole point of robotics – that all thoughts, all actions be shatteringly perfect. There’s no Satanic influence allowed, not even the tiniest jot of it. That’s why it’s so beautiful you see – because of the total absence of all Satanic influence. The robot world shines out with an uncanny light – a light that would send you strange beyond any doubt. Strange in the head. A light to dance to, a light to get down on your knees and pray to. Pray like all good predators must pray.
I call it ‘the Light of the Other World’ and everyone worships it. Everyone has to worship it. That’s all in my head, though. It’s a trap I fell into one day and couldn’t ever get out. And since then things have gone from bad to worse. And then from worse to worse again. ‘Talk you robot mouth, talk’, I say to myself with a terrible earnestness. ‘Walk you robot legs, walk.’ I speak to myself in the form of short sharp robotic orders. Barking out terse instructions on the parade ground. Barking at myself all day long. Barking like a pure fool, barking as if there was no tomorrow…
My thoughts are strangely compelling to me – they shine with the Splendour of the Satanic World. They multiply by the second, glistening strangely with an evil light. I call my thoughts ‘the Satanic Intricacies’ because that’s what they are. Highly intricate and at the same time uncannily compelling. You can get lost in them forever. My thoughts aren’t my thoughts at all you see – they are all part of the Hideous Machinery of the Dark Elves, which incessantly runs through the pattern that the Great Evil One Himself has decreed. What choice do I have, after all? ‘Think those robot thoughts brain’, I bark impatiently at myself. ‘Think those bloody old robot thoughts.’ Of course, the paradox is that I already did think the robot thought because it was the robot thought that made me order myself to think the thought in the first place. The robot thought was telling me to think the robot thought and what choice did I have?
‘May contain scenes of strong robotic violence’, the introductory voice told us gravely, and then before we knew it we were whisked away into a strange crystalline world where gigantic beast-men with leaden hammers for hands brutally battle it out to the death down endless corridors of infinitely-multiplying serial time. Each moment is a duplication of the one that came before it. There is no escape from the recycled moment – you think that you have escaped but you haven’t. You think you’re getting somewhere but actually it’s the same dumb thing over and over again. It’s your very own nightmare. You can’t get off the Wheel, you see. It’s the same time-interval over and over again and it wasn’t even real in the first place. The moment wasn’t even real in the first place but it’s all you’ve got…
