Strange experiments that will change you forever, only not in a good way. Definitely not in a good way. It started off well, as experiments often do. Usually do. There’s nothing much to go wrong right in the beginning – the thing hasn’t even got under way yet, after all. ‘Everything’s fine,’ you say to yourself, ‘everything’s fine and nothing’s going to go wrong…’ That’s what I would say to myself anyway, I don’t know about you. Although that’s not the way to approach an experiment, I know. There’s no right and wrong within the context of an experiment and I’m very well aware of that. Even so, however, I can’t help being afraid that something might go very badly wrong…
I wasn’t born a machine, but I very quickly turned into one. Fairly quickly, anyway. People used to come and interview me about that. ‘What’s it like?’ they’d ask me, ‘what’s it like to be a machine?’ If you get up early in the morning you can get a lot done, you know. Especially if you are a machine, like I am. You just motor on heedlessly through a huge list of tasks like a total brute. Like a well-oiled mechanical device. Like an ingeniously designed device doing exactly what it has been designed to do, and doing it perfectly every time. That’s the beauty of being a machine.
There’s no wrong result from an experiment, that’s what we’ve got to remember. There’s never anything like that; there can’t ever be anything like that because that wouldn’t be in the spirit of the thing. Can you imagine heading off on a voyage of discovery one day and then discovering – years and years later – that you don’t know who you are or, what you’re supposed to be doing? That’s always a funny moment, in my experience. It just suddenly hits you, out of the blue, that nothing is familiar anymore. You’re stranger in a strange land and you’re even a stranger to yourself. You’re getting stranger by the minute.
Then a new chapter of your existence begins – you’re a space station in orbit around a mysterious alien planet, you’re a huge steel knitting needle flashing in the sun. You dreamed yourself into existence but it was a big mistake. You’re in the Land of the Burger Eaters and everyone you meet is busy munching away like a mad thing on the fabulous meaty products for which this world is so rightly famous. Wherever you go you can hear the sound of chomping jaws – you wanted an adventure and now you’ve got one! You decide to write a prize-winning book about your strange experiences – who knows, someone might read your novel, fall in love with it, and be inspired to make a movie out of it!
I have come into my glory. At long, long last I have come into my glory and none can deny it. Well, they can deny it – but the hell with them! Who gives a fuck? The deniers will always deny, after all. The days of my ignominy are gone and now it is my time to shine forth, like a light in the darkness. Fleas come to praise me, maggots hasten to pay their respects… Worms worship me from afar! Fruit flies gather above me in their millions to perform their rarest dance, which only happens once every ten thousand years. And far out in the deep nameless ocean, silver Barracuda are grinning fiercely.
