I am a miracle of modern science, propped up with pharmacological concoctions of all shapes and sizes, washed down with the distilled tears of a dozen bloody resource wars — more to come, news at 11. Shoveling sustenance born, too often, from the sweat on an exploited brow, enjoying the feast of a corrupt and corrupting system whose periodic disruption I experience as inconvenience. Although I too have suffered, still suffer, under her hands; my sickness is her fruit.

I am an unmitigated mass of organic intelligence peeling sensation off the irreducible cosmic miasma like a silverback gorilla peeling open a banana. Worlds held in jittery electrons, dancing along wires, singing yes/no, ones and zeroes. With all the advances in technology–small miracles–they have yet to duplicate my spiraling neural net.

I am held in place by a hundred-million tiny ribbons tied with the delicate hands of sub-molecular machines that look like rejects from a Rube Goldberg factory, spooling and unwinding strands of deoxyribonucleic acid in the deep purple ether.

I am a history spanning innumerable moments of joy, sadness, sanity, madness, love, hate, triumph, defeat, exhilaration and despair. Taking on the role of child, sibling, parent, student, teacher, subordinate, co-worker, boss, friend, lover and, yes, enemy. I have risen to the occasion and run away cowering in fear. I’ll be gone tomorrow, yesterday I wasn’t here.