the call of the machine
From the novel Monopole.
When she left, I knew it was for good. I didn’t have any illusions about her coming back after everything I’d put her through—all the years of keeping busy as I sought the higher purposes required of me, her always seated second fiddle, so rarely at the forefront of my attention, especially once the technology began developing as quickly as it did in those later years just before everything erupted—nor could I seem to help myself from having any predilections about her leaving. I knew some old part of me would long for her deeply, but I’d moved beyond the inadequacies of my body and the emotional unrest resulting from the aversion to stagnation that only strange genius infects.
I felt with the soul of a robot—benign, unfettered, relentless—as she walked down the stairs from our house and drove away in the shadow of the moving truck. I knew the diseases of sadness and regret stewed within me somewhere, and while my brain delivered the synapses commanding the vibration of vocal chords required to call to her, to tell her I love her, to tell her she is more important, the machine had taken over. It pulled at me from the basement and I could sense its longing for completion. I knew without question that I had to heed its call.
