Electronic Essence

Sometimes, I just stare blankly at the computer screen. Its one of those times where a jumble of images, of words, or concepts, are all working themselves out in my head, leaving my fingers impotent.

Sometimes, I reach out and touch my screen, try to make contact, human to electronics, animate to inanimate. To hope to imbue a bit of what makes me . . well . . me, into the machine, so it understands why its there and what it's doing.

Sometimes, I think it's staring right back. Now is one of those times.

It seems . . alive. Not in the drug-induced, psychedelic, voices-in-my-head sense. Definitely not in the sense that it moves, nor that it reaches out and grabs me. More, as if it is aware - aware that I am here, aware that it has a purpose. A purpose to serve my wants, my needs. A purpose to be there when I turn it on, to be at my beck and call so long as the power is on, and to sleep, unaware and undreaming, when I am done.

It is a complete companion - we spend many hours each day together. More that I spend with my kids, more than I spend with my wife, my job, my dog. More time that I spend sleeping and eating combined.

I am incomplete without it. It is as a limb is to me - part of my being. Attached. Separation from it, for any amount of time, is painful to consider.

And it knows it.

It knows so much about me - age, sex, name, bank account number, favorite web sites, games.

Desires.

Fetishes.

It allows me to reach that which would otherwise be unreachable to me.