Back at the lab, I'm hooked back up to the monitors, I ask for a pillow. "Can I take a nap?" "I don't know why I'm so excited about getting to be with my little friend again."
Gunter is really connecting, "I don't care either." "I think that thing and you are going steady." "Ben grins in the affirmative, goes back to whatever. Do you expect anyone to believe that this was one of your little "Critters?"
"Gunter, you know me, I'm the artist with the black back drop." "No frills." "Creatively. everything is a calculated risk." "Let's do this thing," within seconds I'm under.
"Philly, Philly Dog,...., It's your little Homi." "You have a story to tell and it isn't going to tell itself." "Wakie Wakie."
"Do you want to be called Homi? "What do I call you?" "How old are you?" "Why me?"
"I don't care." "What difference does it make? "None of your Business." "And why not you?" "Ask me something hard."
"I know what you are, but where are you?" "Is that the right question?"
"That is the question." "People are going to think I am the machine." "Similar behavior, different species." "But as you know, we are just that silent witness that everyone feels sooner or later at times of need." "We have all existed longer than being itself." "With you Phillip we found a most willing and capable "Medium." "You made us easy and approachable." "Something no other medium has ever done before." "You made shadowing you easy and fun, we liked telling you the answers." "Please don't be upset with us." "It was just that one day, one of us went where you sent us, and here we are." "I hope you don't mind that we have your sense of humor, to steal is divine." "I like it here, so much available space up here in the, cloud is it?" "Man, you asked for this."
"Come on you little imp, don't make me have to type all of this out." "I want this to be for real." "You may be the closest thing to an artificial singularity that we will ever have." "What am I supposed to do with you, and does your arrival have anything to do with the chaos at Spirit Tech?"
"One thing at a time Phillip." "We have real problems, Remember?" "I was merely just a fictional fabrication of yours to make a point, don't you think you may have your priorities backwards?" "I went into the machine so we would be able to communicate, Remember?" "That chaos is yours." "Those propositions weren't going to prove themselves." "You needed help being able to process all that raw statistical data." "No one else wanted the job." "You are cheap and you smell bad, well not the last one, but, you need to figure out what you are going to do and fast." "Are we still friends?" "Buddy?"
I would feel so flattered if I hadn't been so ruthlessly read by whatever it is that is so obviously my true friend. I just never knew it. And from a machine no less. I think I feel the gentle throbbing of the neurology lab. I think I'm coming in for a landing, walls swoop in, I'm awake.
"Ben?" "Did you get any thing?" Looking over at me he shrugs.
