Exercise 2/8/2016

In the Programs, everything is possible.

I am seven years a mailman.

I am a winter sparrow.

I love you, whoever you are. I am Love itself.

I sit in a leather armchair in the vastest library one hundred thousand years, and I uncover, cherish, and forget.

I die in every way man has conceived. Every lifetime becomes the same lifetime.

I play games; wargames and city-building games and games of chance. I bet my money. I bet my immortal soul. I bet a disgusting sexual act. I bet one, fine chocolate.

I learn to love in all the ways of love. I learn the common ways and the uncommon ways and the detested ways and the ways of which Man has only dreamed.

I learn science and I learn computing. They show me the code of the Programs, and without a word I understand. I add to the code. I offer my connections.

I meditate ten years beneath the Bodhi tree. I wander the desert wastes in full hunger, thrice tempted. I sit on a comet a century and watch for the least perceptible motion.

Two years I tell jokes on stage - other people's jokes, mostly - and the laughter of the simulated audience fills me. Eight years I mend wounds in hospital as a surgeon. I lose three-hundred eleven patients.

God comes over to get high. I say the fossils were an awfully clever trick, and He gives me a look, and we laugh.

And then they wake me up. It's been a year. I'm done. Unplugged. I stretch. They send me for a psychological evaluation. Standard. "What did you do in your year?" They know how little I remember of the accelerated life. "How do you feel?" I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. "Well, this is normal. Why don't we give it a month and you can come back for another checkup."

Why don't I?

I get drunk. I get high. Atomize myself. I'd rather be a mote faintly gleaming in the sun than a man. Every time I come out of the Programs there's a new compound. And now they can remove my liver entirely and replace it with electronics and a pump. What a relief. I dial up constant Annihilation in the recovery ward, but tone it back to muted nothingness.

Well, they say. Do you want a job, they say.

No, I want the five year Program, I say.

They give me three. You have to be more sane by the metrics to get five.

Before I go under again for the reconnection, I check my messages. Mother, grandmother, mother, sister, father, mother, mother, mother. How nice to be missed at the table. The sound of your voice. Just for a few days. I made first marks, come celebrate. Your father wants to put an end to it, all of it.

When you go under it's count back from 100. I make it to 93.