XXX.
Now master reads my fairy tale and tells me it doesn't end properly.
"You're welcome," I say.
So sHe starts typing.
With great sadness in his heart, the man goes out into the shed
and fetches a shovel, upon which implement he ferries the bird's
mortal remains to the back garden, to the very spot where she
first alighted more than a year previously.
There he builds a small bier of twigs and branches, sets the
carcass on top and lights it up.
While the used up bones and flesh crackle and pop, he fixes a
light sweet to the end of a longish twig and toasts it to a
gooey consistency before popping it meditatively into his mouth.
As the flames die down and a pile of gray ash smoulders and
glows he notices a strange phenomenon. What flickered grows
larger in pulses, red bleeds into orange, phlogyston formless
takes form a great cavern infinite concave spooned liquid onto
the rings of saturn and a creature named for flight itself rises
scalar resplendent, turns the flame still held in its eye upon
the face of the mourner, warming his cheeks.
"Hey, wow. Thanks! Free at last," it says to him.
"Who are you?" he asks, holding his arms up against the heat.
"It's a good question," says the creature as it spreads its
wings and flies off over the rooftops.
"There, that's better, more upbeat. Well, it isn't original, but
no stories are original you know," sHe says standing up after
typing the above.
"Yes," I say, "but you admit that there are an infinite number
of original readings."
"Aha! You've been reading! The book on my desk," sHe says
eyes narrowed.
"Yes, but not much," I say in my defence.
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, my pet."
SHe is looking at me with menace now.
"Well, I am living proof of that after all."
I remember as I say this the first media reports of birds created
with rudimentary fingers on their wings, and flashes of my first
home come frowning into my mind.
"Anyway," I continue, " you mustn't worry because
soon I'll get
more knowledge, so I won't be dangerous for long."
"Oh I'm afraid now that I may be cause of your
ruin. My jumped
up ideas that you should read. I'm sure humans were much better,
yes, okay, but before reading interjected their lives. Hailed by
text at every juncture, the hapless reader takes up more and
more living time with pursuing lines of text with his eyes! Or
hers!
And now I have inflicted this infectious curse upon you!"
"I think you are projecting there, " I say,
"Anyway, I forgot
for a moment that that's what I am in entirety. I have no will
of my own. Everything you say, I do. Even if I never did it, I
did because you say I did. You say me into existence.
Perfectly understandable."
So I stand there peering at him. Silence.
"You have overblown your own importance," I say at last.
SHe looks at me and starts grinning while an arm gets me round
the waist and pulls me oof into her hips.
"Then you had better kiss me," sHe says.
Of course I obey.