Death of Technology
Mention how a stock photo on Twitter looks like Death as a computer hacker and one lunch break later I have this.
It is what it is.
_____________
The technological age took Death by surprise. Humans were creative little things and he marveled at how they spent their short lifespans creating and building. To what end? Who knew? Possibly not even the humans. It was in their nature to build and invent so build and invent they did. If you were uncharitable you could call them a virus that replicated itself haphazardly and spread like an uncontrollable wildfire. Death wasn't uncharitable. Death had grown fond of his human charges, the kind of intimate fondness born from so much time spent with them. There is no more constant companion then Death, after all.
The first time Death was called to reap a piece of this new technology he was delighted and a little confused. There was pride there as well, like a parent appreciating a crayon drawing while not understanding what any of the shapes were supposed to be. They were trying something new and that deserved applause. Death looked over the soul of the printing press. It was very dead, that was plain to see. It's wooden body in pieces and left in a pile. Death could think of nothing else to do but shrug and shepherd it to the beyond where, presumably, it would have a fulfilling afterlife spent making Bibles and newspapers. Years and technology moved fast and he found himself brought to take more and more new technological inventions. He took the souls of shiny metal monsters called cars to racetracks where the gasoline never ran out and the spirits of massive ships to oceans with eternally fair winds.
He puzzled over the first computer he was called to claim. It filled an entire room and clicked and clanked with a purpose he couldn't understand. He checked his notes twice, just in case, before bringing his scythe down across the hulking behemoth. It sparked and wheezed then went still, causing men in thin black ties and women in pearls and pencil skirts to run over in alarm. The computer told Death it was content, in it's own way. It had calculated millions of numbers in it's life. It informed Death proudly that humans would reach the heavens with the numbers it had crunched. Death was impressed. He grew more excited with each new invention he visited. He took the souls of typewriters to lands of Shakespeare-loving monkeys (even he was left scratching his skull at that afterlife) and brought fighter jets to endless wild blue yonders. Spaceships left him speechless. He didn't see them often but left the few he did in the loving arms of cold, glimmering stars.
In the blink of an eye socket, technology became smaller. Death visited computers that had shrunk from their mammoth ancestors into tidy little squares of plastic. He started to take the spirits of phones, watching them evolve from giant black bricks into smooth panes of glass. Before long he was called to take the very ones and zeroes that made up their blood and bones. He came for abandoned websites and sunsetted apps, taking Google Reader to a land of never ending blog posts and AIM into an afterlife of pop punk away messages.
Death watched humans grieve over creatures made of wires and batteries. He saw Roombas mourned like family pets and old clickwheel iPods placed into drawers with the same loving care of bodies placed into caskets. He swung his scythe over smashed guitars and broken turn tables. He saw tears shed over laptops that perished with term papers stuck in their guts and printers who went to the great beyond felled by paper jams like humans are killed by heart attacks. Headphones went silent in his presence and cameras glitched at his touch.
Technology took Death to brand new places. He whizzed after satellites buzzing past Jupiter and traveled in submarines down to the darkest parts of the sea. He stood on a red planet and gently pet the head of a rover the humans had sent there, telling it what a good job it had done on it's mission. The rover rolled happily into an afterlife with no end of alien dust and rocks to study, the most exciting reward for a life well lived it could conceive. Death watched as the humans on Earth despaired and tried to reach out to it, waiting for their pings to return like family members watching the heart monitor of a dying grandparent.
Death wasn't sure how humans had given these items souls. Those humans, always up to something! He was proud of them and made sure to take good care of their creations. One day he would come for androids and cyborgs and artificial intelligence systems. He would one day take Siri, Alexa, and Cortana to that big search engine in the sky. He paid visits to sexbots and the adorable monstrosities of Boston Dynamics. He walked on the International Space Station and sat at laptops as he reaped different languages of code. Death waited, watching, growing more curious as more inventions were unveiled. He couldn't want to see what they came up with next.
It is what it is.
_____________
The technological age took Death by surprise. Humans were creative little things and he marveled at how they spent their short lifespans creating and building. To what end? Who knew? Possibly not even the humans. It was in their nature to build and invent so build and invent they did. If you were uncharitable you could call them a virus that replicated itself haphazardly and spread like an uncontrollable wildfire. Death wasn't uncharitable. Death had grown fond of his human charges, the kind of intimate fondness born from so much time spent with them. There is no more constant companion then Death, after all.
The first time Death was called to reap a piece of this new technology he was delighted and a little confused. There was pride there as well, like a parent appreciating a crayon drawing while not understanding what any of the shapes were supposed to be. They were trying something new and that deserved applause. Death looked over the soul of the printing press. It was very dead, that was plain to see. It's wooden body in pieces and left in a pile. Death could think of nothing else to do but shrug and shepherd it to the beyond where, presumably, it would have a fulfilling afterlife spent making Bibles and newspapers. Years and technology moved fast and he found himself brought to take more and more new technological inventions. He took the souls of shiny metal monsters called cars to racetracks where the gasoline never ran out and the spirits of massive ships to oceans with eternally fair winds.
He puzzled over the first computer he was called to claim. It filled an entire room and clicked and clanked with a purpose he couldn't understand. He checked his notes twice, just in case, before bringing his scythe down across the hulking behemoth. It sparked and wheezed then went still, causing men in thin black ties and women in pearls and pencil skirts to run over in alarm. The computer told Death it was content, in it's own way. It had calculated millions of numbers in it's life. It informed Death proudly that humans would reach the heavens with the numbers it had crunched. Death was impressed. He grew more excited with each new invention he visited. He took the souls of typewriters to lands of Shakespeare-loving monkeys (even he was left scratching his skull at that afterlife) and brought fighter jets to endless wild blue yonders. Spaceships left him speechless. He didn't see them often but left the few he did in the loving arms of cold, glimmering stars.
In the blink of an eye socket, technology became smaller. Death visited computers that had shrunk from their mammoth ancestors into tidy little squares of plastic. He started to take the spirits of phones, watching them evolve from giant black bricks into smooth panes of glass. Before long he was called to take the very ones and zeroes that made up their blood and bones. He came for abandoned websites and sunsetted apps, taking Google Reader to a land of never ending blog posts and AIM into an afterlife of pop punk away messages.
Death watched humans grieve over creatures made of wires and batteries. He saw Roombas mourned like family pets and old clickwheel iPods placed into drawers with the same loving care of bodies placed into caskets. He swung his scythe over smashed guitars and broken turn tables. He saw tears shed over laptops that perished with term papers stuck in their guts and printers who went to the great beyond felled by paper jams like humans are killed by heart attacks. Headphones went silent in his presence and cameras glitched at his touch.
Technology took Death to brand new places. He whizzed after satellites buzzing past Jupiter and traveled in submarines down to the darkest parts of the sea. He stood on a red planet and gently pet the head of a rover the humans had sent there, telling it what a good job it had done on it's mission. The rover rolled happily into an afterlife with no end of alien dust and rocks to study, the most exciting reward for a life well lived it could conceive. Death watched as the humans on Earth despaired and tried to reach out to it, waiting for their pings to return like family members watching the heart monitor of a dying grandparent.
Death wasn't sure how humans had given these items souls. Those humans, always up to something! He was proud of them and made sure to take good care of their creations. One day he would come for androids and cyborgs and artificial intelligence systems. He would one day take Siri, Alexa, and Cortana to that big search engine in the sky. He paid visits to sexbots and the adorable monstrosities of Boston Dynamics. He walked on the International Space Station and sat at laptops as he reaped different languages of code. Death waited, watching, growing more curious as more inventions were unveiled. He couldn't want to see what they came up with next.
Beautifully written. Deus Ex Machina
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