Wednesday, September 24, 2008

The Machine God

The people dig through their pockets, bring out their leather wallets, and place their earnings in the patient machine's famished mouth. Its green lights display its unsleeping hunger, and its emptiness arouses the emptiness in others.

The devoted pay homage to their everlasting idol(one of ruin, no doubt) as they traipse by with practised poise. It accepts with engineered stoicism--like the golden calf of ancient myth. It towers, nine feet tall, a droll hum rumbling from within its monetary breast, affecting the thoughts of all who glimpse its immobile body.

Some pray with wanton fingers, tap-tapping on the sacred number pad, praising the puppet whenever their selfish stomachs grumble. The buttons are shiny white and make pleasant beeping sounds when depressed: a bleep that causes conditioned mouths to water.

The machine god always produces with blunt precision any time it is correctly hailed, and there are few who have incurred its absent-minded wrath. It reacts to requests with punctual predictability. This is why their worship is wildly reactive and forever involuntary.

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