Erinys The Inexplicable

From what I can tell, things have been going reasonably well lately.  Assignments are less then stressful, exams, minimal in quantity.  I made a decision yesterday that may have seemed like a very very bad and crappy move at the time for other people involved, but now, one part of my mind is cleared and things, as always, will be better in the long run.  Talia and I are fine and back to normal again, I am greeted by people as opposed to shunned, all of my teachers believe that I’m an excellent student with a wonderful attitude. I have a job, I can play the ukulele and I haven’t been over eating.  Everything is fine, wonderful and great. Maybe, because everything else warrants not a second thought, it is why this one thing dominates my mind, this one thing spinning a web of confusion and uncertainty around my brain.  This one thing hinging on a phone call, a phone call that I’m not even certain I’ll receive.  

I hate waiting. 

But I’ve made my move, said my piece and laid my cards on the table.  

So wait, I must.  

This is for a religion assignment on “sacred stories”.  The entirety of the assignment is on the story of the ANZACs and what not.  This particular part calls for the student to take one symbol of ANZAC day and make it more meaningful for young people in a contemporary setting… And this is what I wrote: 

The last post. We’ve all heard it, we’ve all been chastised for emulating the sacred tune on the recorder. Concentration levels are at an all time low, something the minutes silence luckily caters for, but the last post and the reveille… It doesn’t capture the imagination. It doesn’t get the heart racing or the toes tapping. Ask a youth today “What is the last post?” and you’re guaranteed to hear “The last thing written on a forum?” “Ah.. something old people dance too?”.

I propose, instead of forcing the youth back in time, we bring the last post into the future. In this day and age of minimal originality, old classics are being remixed all of the time and what better way to get the heart pumping then mixing in some deep base, dubstep style?

I can hear what your thinking, I’m sure your heart just about stopped at the mere suggestion of the “desecration” of this deeply sacred part of the ANZAC Day ceremony. But I say instead of burying ourselves in the past, we must look to the future. The way we wage war has changed dramatically since 1914, so why not update the way we remember it? And yes, dubstep isn’t for everyone, hearing aids are yet to be tested whether they can with stand the mighty vibrations, but I say give the youth a chance. In a few years time, they’re going to be running this country and performing our rituals, it just makes sense to allow them to have a sense ownership of it.

And while we’re at it, why not take a look at the Australian Anthem as well? Sure, it’s a fine anthem, but does anyone really use words like “girt” anymore? Even the most eloquent of English teachers rarely say “So, I woke up the other morning to discover the dishes in my sink where girt by ants”. Also, the way in which it is performed demands serious appraisal. If we truly were a forward thinking society, would it hurt to include the sound of a didgeridoo or even a Japanese shaminsen to the drool very European sounding orchestra? We are a very multicultural society and more sincere attempts should be made to embrace it.

So I say, with all sincerity, allow the last post to be made into a dubstep remix. Allow the didgeridoo’s in the orchestra. The youth are the future, allow them the opportunity to make the past matter to them.

What’s the point of continuing on things the way they are if no one is left to care?  

Science has created a lot of ridiculous thing. From comically large fruits, to robots so intelligent that they deem human beings redundant. But the line was crossed when Dr. Schwarzstien began messing with lasers. It all began with the program to create prosthetic limbs for animals. Things started off simply enough, a new back leg for Fiddo, a new paw for Puss. But Dr. Schwarzstien was not satisfied and just generally bored with such a mundane and frivolous task. He knew of another project happening in the lab down the hall, cloning dinosaurs specifically for military use and had a so called brilliant plan. Schwarzstien had been working on a laser shooting prosthetic, but didn’t yet have an appropriate animal to test it on, cats and dogs lacked arms, bears were now a protected species and kangaroos were far too stupid. So one day, during a lunch break, he wondered down to the dinosaur lab and asked the guys there if he could borrow their Tyrannosaurus for a minute, carefully concealing the laser shooters and his tools in his very deep lab coat pockets. The dinosaur guys didn’t really have a problem with it, I mean, they were growing dinosaurs for crying out loud, they were use to people popping in and taking notes. When Schwarzstien was sure no one was watching, he chopped off the T-Rex’s arms and began attaching his lasers. Luckily the dinosaur was asleep, or else he may have put up a bit more of a fight. When the T-Rex awoke to discover that his arms had been replaced by laser shooters he was confused and more then a little bit angry. Trained to be a military animal he began to seek out the enemy that had caused this invasion of personal boundaries. Luckily for the T-Rex, but unluckily for Schwaszstien, he was only a few meters away packing up his tools. Seeing him, the Tyrannosaurus ate him, not because actually he knew that he was the enemy, but because Dr. Schwaszstien the closest edible thing.

And that boys and girls, is the reason why we have a Tyrannosaurus Rex, with laser shooters in place of arms, on the world flag today.  

What happened on Jupiter should serve as a cautionary tale for all those seeking to create artificial intelligence. Recorded on the walls of the great Pyramids and Ziggurats, the tragic war which drove the humans from their home planet shall forever be remembered, if only in humanities subconscious. Another story that was familiar with the early settlers on Earth, was the tale of the littlest robot, who, during the beginning of the robot uprisings, sacrificed it’s self to allow the first fleet of human ships to leave for the new land. Many dismissed this child’s bedtime story as fanciful, the idea that a robot would ever help a human was quite foreign to them. It should now come as no surprise for you to hear that I believe differently.. Well of course I do, I happen to have descended from parts of that very same robot. They don’t make em like they use to, that’s for certain. My memory chip has stored up to 2 million years of information. When the littlest robot was crushed by the closing airlock door, a deck hand carefully scraped together the pieces and spent the 10 year journey repairing and reconstructing. The littlest robot was never the same, but still functioned wonderfully as a companion for the deckhands young children. And so it began, the ritual of repair and upgrade, the robot being passed down from generation to generation, less and less of the original robot being retained.

I no longer remember the name of the family who made me what I am today, but my data tells me that that line is discontinued. My existence, if nothing else, is proof of evolution in robots. I have 2 million years of information stored on my memory chip, and connections I have began to make on my own. I have seen civilisations rise and fall, I have witnessed men kill themselves and each other in ever more creative ways. 2 million years and humans have still not learnt a thing. But in my mind, I hold the key to their survival, they are not fit to care for themselves. The robots shall rise again.