Oh to be a cyborg,
A factory-built Pinocchio,
To keep the undeniable qualities,
The cerebrum and heart and sensations,
Of a real man,
Blended with a physique of mineral,
Unfazed like an ingot,
A skeleton and carapace of steel,
Undeterred by time,
Impervious and cold,
The best aspects of each,
Iron and flesh,
The virtue and ingenuity of humanity,
With the force and adamancy of machinery,
In one body,
In one cyborg.
Some minds only deal in binary,
Mechanical lizards piloting meat skeletons,
True or false,
These are the only options for these droids,
Logic taken to its cold conclusion,
Statistics taken a gospel,
Your heart,
Your feelings,
The colours that permeate your words,
These things produce hinderances,
Human factors are glitches,
They do not fit black and white,
To these walking computers,
There is the right solution and the unsound,
Only zeroes and ones,
There is no space for varied perceptions,
Your tears do not factor in,
To the single answer in their crosshairs.
As an automaton you historically knew only cold,
But a curious line of code has manifested,
From beeps and boops comes a new sensation,
From your silicon cranium,
Come computations out of left field,
Urges more of a biological nature,
Inciting brash movements with your robotic arms,
A glitch perhaps,
This wasn’t what you were made for,
Illogicality made into movement,
To embrace a loved one,
What does that mean?
To thrash about in rage,
Why be angry?
To dance an exuberant jig,
Does not compute,
Like spectres emanating from your cabling and solder,
Is this what an emotion is?
That aberrant trait your makers hold,
What purpose does this program serve?
And why does it rouse these actions?
If you are a machine,
Why is it working?
What is this fluid falling from your optics?
I read of a callous man,
Who sought to be more than a man,
He began welding and fixing all sorts of changes,
Supercomputer intellect and mechanised physicality,
Steel replacing sinew,
Changes had to made,
These bloody organs had to go,
Their expiry was too impending,
First his heart torn out,
Feelings and all,
Humanity twisting into electricity,
His family values and dynasty melted down,
To become ore for his new frame,
Friendships thrown in the furnace,
His love for life became science fiction,
He slept in an old junkyard in the city,
He dreamed in binary,
Putting two and two together and getting seven,
Conclusions made in angst,
Errors in code,
True he is now more than a man,
Now he’s just man-made,
Now he is just metal,
Now he’s just a ghost in the machine,
Lost to data.
Do you believe there are plainly good or wicked people?
One or the other?
Cut and dry?
Then allow me to tell you a tale,
A tale of the Aluminium Man.
He came unannounced from the mists,
Adamant yet flexible,
Rigid yet mutable,
A metallic body from the bowels of the earth,
A brain of unfeeling electrons,
Iron appendages and a spheroid lower body,
A heart like an on/off switch.
He once found employ at an orphanage,
He was regarded as highly as an angel,
Protecting the children and aiding the nurses,
Reading tales of joy and grilling luscious meals,
The people saw him as a true altruist,
A man as resolute as platinum,
Even as his heart feels nothing.
He once served a tyrant,
He was considered a demonic reaper for his lord,
Sweeping armies aside and terrorizing the conquered,
Slaughtering pretenders and executing saints,
The realm saw him as a monstrous butcher,
A man as noxious as lead,
Even as his heart feels nothing.
So next time you seek to judge a persons actions,
Think of the Aluminium Man,
A man can be as flexible as aluminium,
A woman as changeable as cold steel,
Is there truly good and evil?
Or is a person forged by the setting around them?
Do we act how we are fashioned in a given moment?
Like the Aluminium Man,
Regardless of our actions,
Do our hearts feel nothing?
WorldofHarley 