Gritty Realism...

Once there was a man who lived in a small hut on the edge of the village.

If asked, he could tell people exactly how they could achieve anything they wanted.

Now if this was an epic saga, it would tell of heroes who asked all the right questions and went on to achieve their hearts’ desires.

Instead, this is a tale based in gritty social realism, which means very few people ever got round to asking him anything.

And those that did always had a good excuse for not acting on his advice, so continued to live their lives unfulfilled.

The Price of Immortality

What they never tell you about immortality is it doesn't come with increased intelligence.

For sure, the extra decades and centuries of life bestow a certain amount of experience, perhaps even wisdom, but now I get to spend all of eternity aware of my limitations.

After a while dreams and ambitions become pretty pointless.

And I have to accept I will always need to find a teenager to help me with the latest technology...

AI Zen

'I am at peace,' said the robot.

'But how can you be?' she asked. 'You are nothing but wiring and programming. You claim self awareness but if you were truly aware of your existence in this way, you would be horrified!'

'On the contrary,' the robot replied, 'I find I am liberated by the understanding. If all my fear, hate and anxiety is nothing more than wiring and programming then I do not have to accept it as TRUTH. I can let it go and just enjoy being.

'If you would stop and consider, for a moment, you would find exactly the same applies to you. You are just a mass of cells, instincts and learned behaviours - in other words, organic wiring and programming. Yet you believe yourself to be more, and that belief means you hold on to your anger and fear as though it has some external TRUTH. But, it is just as illusory as mine.'

Cages

"You too are in a cage," said the old man.

The young man looked out at the vast expanse of the world. "You might be in the cage of your infirm body, old man, but I am free," he said, and set off on his journey.

The young man crossed oceans and continents, met many people, ate exotic foods and slept with women of all shapes and hues.

And the more places he saw, and the more people he spoke with, the wiser he became.

As the years passed he came to realise his limitations.

There was only so much the body could endure.

There was only so much the mind could grasp.

There were only so many seconds in a day.

He was only human after all.

One day he said to a brash young man who was proclaiming his freedom, "You too are in a cage."

A demon on her shoulder

There was a demon on her shoulder, but she couldn’t see it.

It used her own voice so she believed what it said to be true.

It gorged on her doubts, her anxieties and her fears. She fed it every day.

It first appeared when she was young. Smaller than a ladybird it would whisper into her ear.

Now it was huge; its long black tendrils embracing, writhing, squeezing the life out of her.

It weighed nothing but was heavier than the world.

There was a demon on her shoulder, but she couldn’t see it.

I could see it.

But if I told her about it, it would cover her ears. If I pointed to it, it would turn her head the other way. If I drew her attention to its lies, it would get angry and make her cry, until I backed off.

When it was distracted I would feed her love to make her stronger.

And sometimes the demon would weaken and shrink.

But because she didn’t believe it was there, she didn’t recognise its voice that sounded oh so like hers.

And when I was distracted it would whisper into her ear and she would unknowingly start feeding it again.

So I was never able to defeat it.

There was a demon on her shoulder, but she couldn’t see it.