March of the Meat Machine

It’s the end of the day. Another “consultation” and more bad news. I trudge along in my black coat, a wool cap protecting my head from the cold wind, with a backpack over my shoulder, a gym bag in one hand, and in the other a set of techno-med images that seem to confirm there is a brain somewhere inside my head.

But the images only prove that there is a three-pound piece of meat inside my skull. And at the moment, that’s all it is: a piece of meat. No mind, no soul, just a meat-based computer executing an application called “walk.”

And a piece of meat is all I am – a meat machine marching slowly along the cold, slushy street and the crowded stairs and passageways of the subway in accordance with the meat computer’s instructions. As my brain tells my legs to put one foot in front of the other and my hands clutch the bags that dangle by my side, I just lurch forward, without expression, without thought, without feeling – without anything that might mark me as more than just a kind of organic robot.

I lag behind a wave of humanity moving from one station through a cold gray passageway to an adjoining station. They move past me and, for a moment, I am walking alone. Until the next wave comes up behind me.

In that brief interlude between waves, I wonder. Why am I walking through this place? Why am I in this city? Why have I been here for so long? Why has my life come down to a series of numb zombie walks through soul-less metro stations or along the same old gray streets? What has happened to me? Where did my spirit go that has left me to just exist inside this cocoon of flesh, blood and bone?

As I stand on the platform waiting for the next train with hundreds of other meat machines, I look at the concrete wall across the tracks. I wonder if this is real or if I am having one of my strange dreams. It would be better if it was a dream because I would wake up and snap out of it. But that’s not my luck.

Maybe I’m a ghost. I am moving like a disembodied spirit. But that can’t be; a spirit is still something of a soul, I suppose. And I am without spirit or soul. Imagine being emptier inside even than a ghost.

Neither am I dead, at least not completely. I live, but in every sense that matters, I am lifeless. Where is happiness? Where is love? Where is passion? What happened to reason? For that matter, where, even, is pain? I feel nothing, I am nothing.

Happiness? Were you ever here? Perhaps once. Before the shapeless black apparitions rose up from below and blotted you out. Larger and hungrier they became, sucking what happiness remained, faster and faster until there was no more. The light of joy finally went out for good, and I became one of those shapeless black apparitions myself.

Passion? The fire died, little by little, until all that remained were a few smoldering embers. And then they went cold, never to blaze again. The ashes have been cold for so long, it’s like they never held warmth in the first place. I can’t remember.

Reason? How can reason survive in a world that makes no sense? Everything I see – in the news, at work, in people around me, in everything everywhere – makes no sense anymore. It’s a card game with nothing but jokers. The world is broken, the people are broken. I am broken.

Love? It never existed. What I thought was love flew away long ago, far before I realized it was gone, replaced with tantalizing lies and sweet self-deceit, circus acts and predictable practical jokes for the mistresses of ceremonies.

Jump, jump up on the pedestal! Do tricks for me! Entertain and please me! Then go back to your dark little cage, and don’t let me be aware of you until I require you again.

Come on, Charlie Brown! Kick the football. Don’t worry, I will hold it still this time. I promise! Once again I trust, and yet again she pulls the ball away at the last moment. I fall on my ass as I’ve done so many times before, and she laughs the same evil laugh as each of those many times.

Love and trust: the moronic blabbering of self-loathing fools in a carnival sideshow.

Happiness, love, passion, friendship, trust, loyalty, basic human decency: all just so many lies and illusions.

But wait! I do feel something. There is pain.

Alas, it’s not pain of the soul or spirit. How can it be when there is no soul inside this meat machine? I can't cry; I've forgotten what that was like. No, it’s just physical pain. The back, the hip, the knee. Trying to stand up on a moving train with my hands full, while smug young nobodies sit with their faces in their smartphones.

I would hate them… if I could feel anything.

And so I push my way out of the subway, acting on instinct. Like salmon, we all flow in unison toward the stairs and climb up to the exits. I wonder if the other fish are as devoid of feeling as I am. To look at the faces, you would have to think so: there are almost never any expressions on the faces of the Kharkiv metro. But most of them probably still have some things to cling to that help them believe… in something. Good for them. I wonder what that might feel like. I wonder what feeling might feel like

The “walk” application in my meat computer guides me out of the metro and out to the cold street. And more slush. I trudge on to spend another empty evening of an empty life in an empty apartment so that I can “rest” for another empty day at an empty job tomorrow.

And the meat machine marches on.

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