The Nebuchadnezzar magazine

By E.K. Anderson

Genre: Gothic fantasy/Horror

August 3, 1950 – Chicago

–A momentary lapse of reason

I was out of sorts on the day I left my wife. 

That day, I lied, as I had numerous times before. I told my wife that I was out with a few old college friends, having drinks at the local pub on Aberg Avenue. Gambling hadn’t come to the fore then, but I’m sure she had her suspicions. Her reasoning—and my defense–was that since I was born into a good Christian family, I would honor our marriage. I told her I would not cheat as ungodly men do, and this verbal affirmation lent credence to the claim. However, resolute I was in this affectation, this changed when I met the girl.

Everything changed after that. 

For weeks, I’d been wrestling with the decision. Of course, like a demon’s possession, it only stirred my state, and darkened my mood. To stifle my state further, I began to drink with the vague illusion that between the glasses of scotch I’d find a revelatory notion to impede my doubts.But with the residual pang of suffering, I resolved to annul myself as one would an exorcism. 

I called Hughes, from the theatre, and resolved that night to pack my suitcase, and leave for the last bus station of the night. The day I left our home, I knew I would never return. The body I occupied was miles away from the mental task I had set for it. I kept to mine most perfunctorily — brutishly set in the throes of my directorial work at the Guild.

My solitary nature of course, did not bode well for the discourse of our marriage — and my wife, being perceptive to my level of aloofness took to the seas of her adventure, without a word. I told her that I was going to complete my work, and that was that.

And then the thought came most immediately to jump and rid myself of the searing emptiness. I resolved to leave that night.

And leaving my ring upon her pillow, I left.

I’d been staying with an actor friend. (Squatting, was more so the word). Most days I’d set up my study in the basement of the theatre, typing away at something to rant about. 

The following week, my wife’s letter came in the mail.

Good riddance, scum.

Off to meet a sailor in Prague. 

Despite the inner calamity I felt, I did not question the conditions of her departure. I was a fool for allowing an open marriage, and my karmic self-indulgence had finally paid its pang due.

I set the envelope upon the desk of my study. The golden ring I’d set upon the pillow was smelted thin, hammered into a disc of flattened metal.

The day I left, I was still honing the particularities of the play. The Theatre’s production of a Midsummer’s Night Dream,  had fallen through to me.   As director, my task was to find an adequate substitute for Queen Titania. I suppose, I’d been looking for an excuse; a partial-solution to the slew of dreariness I’d been feeling lately.

I’d been writing on spec for the theatre’s production of a Midsummer’s Night Dream. But my inspiration started when I caught sight of her. On set for her audition, I saw the woman with the countenance of Circe. She drew breath, and I sat in stark admiration of her presence. I gave her the part.

*

The girl entered the Pub late one evening. It wasn’t that she’d entered by herself modestly. It was that she entered as majestic, and placidly as a moth. Allured by the woman’s appearance, I’d observed her from the inside of Lorcan’s pub, sheepishly. I was still married then, and my wife had been away on a directorial production. It was the anniversary of our wedding 

Grateful for the shield of bodies from my other bar patrons I contented myself with a drink to celebrate the New Year.  She sat languidly upon the patio bar bench, toting arm in arm alongside a young student from the Actor’s guild. In her hand was an Old Fashioned drink– sour or sweet — I could not tell. But from the restaurant’s veranda 

Wan and scarlet-haired, she rose from the bench.She seemed like the compilation  dreams were made of.

I ordered an Old Fashioned Sweet. 

“Complements of the house,” Lorcan said. “Courtesies from Morgan Le Fey Celeste. On the house.”

“Interesting,” I said. “I will be sure to thank her.”

I was a Marlon Brando in those days. Beset by a bit of fame, I could play the lofty pride of the part. I was Flint O’Toole. A casanova on the rebound. 

Morgan was an actress, or so she told me, and I believed her because she looked like Greta Garbo. She had sunshine in her eyes, and a voice that matched, which made me reminisce. When she spoke, I felt young again.

“My name’s Flint O’Toole,” I told her, my voice husky as tarnished leather. “Like the city in Michigan.” Hers was Celeste. I told her that I ran the actor’s guild. 

“I’m a teacher,” I said.

“Of what sort? Theater?” The girl twirled her scarlet hair. The sprigs tumbled over her shoulders like a bloodied cataract. She popped her gum.

“No, history. Western Civilization. Ethics.”

“At the university?”

“Yes,” I said, “But I also direct in my free time.” 

“Tell me about it.” 

So I did. And she told me about her experience in showbiz, and how her long lost manager had sold her out for a blonde with knee high stockings. She’d resorted to waitressing, and dancing at the gentleman’s club part time. Her story was lavish and piteous, so I  accepted most of it, subconsciously. I shunned from any mention of relationships, or my wife. With time I could tell her fondness for me had grown, so I asked her out. 

I thought a simple dinner with a movie was sufficient. I took her to Caelum, a five star restaurant, with water carafes, and pallid, bored waiters. 

As I sat across from her, I caught the smell of patchouli. Her smile was an effulgence that sprung from her face. I could see that her hair was flattened, matted down like rose petals. On her head she wore a sort of crown with miniature crystals—diadems she called them. Truthfully, I didn’t know why she wore it, especially on an outing like this. I wondered if I had expelled some indication of wealthiness, because I most surely wasn’t.

“Where are you from?” I said. I noticed a dialect in her words, with vowels slightly more enunciated than I was accustomed to in the Midwest. 

“From out West. Those places you don’t ever hear of.”

“And in what specific place were you born?”

The girl sipped her tea. “A place out East. I’ll tell you about it sometime.”

*

We stopped at a drive-in. 

The movie was an Alfred Hitchcock flick. Truthfully, I don’t recall much of it, besides a sea of black birds–maybe crows, enveloping terrified women in pencil skirts. I think it was because, I kept thinking—in rumination—how I’d lost my wife’s trust, and were I to come clean, under the toil of guilt, how the divorce would affect our kids. I thought about where I’d live with such a modest income. I’d meant to exit the car, or do anything for fresh air.

“I think I should go,” I said.

“Where?” Celeste said, her pitch heightened with the heat of passion. In the night her red hair caught moonlight, and intercepted it into platinum. She smothered me with ripe breasts, and flicked her tongue.

“Home.”

“And where is home, love? Tell me, my King, where is it? ” she said. I cleared the haze from the glass, and gazed through the car window. Outside the sky lighted periwinkle, and the sun set on a graying countryside. Elm trees sprouted around us; the drive-in screen that rose like an edifice was gone. The car was in the midst of a forest clearing. 

“I don’t know.” I managed. I felt a sullen longing, a deep hurt in my gut. My jaw tensed. I looked to the passenger seat. 

The girl’s face contorted. I saw the sinews of her visage twist and turn. The underlying muscles undulated, rippling through flesh. Perspiration festered at her brow.  Then with sudden alarm, the superficial skin broke, molting and shedding to reveal the thing beneath. The crown plopped on my lap.

The thing bore no likeness to the girl, and in that moment of flight, I could not recollect what the original succubus had looked like. The skin I had sloughed away in the usual way. The moult was all worn. Her head began to gyrate, pulsating segments until her abdomen split forth from its center like a ripe cocoon. 

Then oozing forth the fleshy body crept out. A bright red abdomen set in a black body. The spider moulted. 

It burrowed its head in the crevice of a deer carcass, and gorged on blood. Under such corporal stress, the body of the deer shriveled. The effect like a rose, withering. 

And again its body turned, towards the sound of my breath.

After gorging the great insect gyrated, rolled back its eight eyes to white. The exoskeleton burst. 

I ran through the pines. I did not stop to see again what form the dreaded creature took. 

Before running, I’d caught sight of the reddening malice, how its eyes had glossed over white, and the image stuck in the recess of my mind. I ran through mist along a gravel path, until my feet met concrete.  Then, I breathed for a count of ten and ran again.

Wherever I was, did not bear a resemblance to Sixth street. As I scouted vainly for a landmark through the mist, I realized the forest, in all its splendor, was a continuum. Here and there, the path, the trees, the clearing—all of it mimicked. 

A torch flickered faintly in the distance. Humidity had quieted the flame in the brazier, so that it hissed, a maddening red. It stood upon a small brick edifice, painted white: a booth. The toll attendant wore a jester’s hat.

“Lui qui rira bien rira dernier. You got that?”

I shook my head. 

“It’s just a joke,” said the attendant. “You’re thick aren’t you?”

“I suppose.”

“You’ve also got wyvern troubles.”

“Excuse me?”

“Wyvern. Those draconic creatures with two legs. Emblem of Wessex. Whore of Babylon.”

Then, I understood.

“Yes, I have had—excuse me—how do you say?

“Wy-vern.”

“Yes, that kind of trouble. How did you know, and do you know which way to—”

“Civilization? The world? That’d be through this booth here. What if I told you, that at the Edge of the World there is a Mad Jester, who laughs at the sheer futility of everything? He cackles at the pursuit of nothingness, the vast chasm of meaning that is lost to meaninglessness, et cetera. Death especially, that’s a hoot.”

“And what is the toll?”

“Get him to stop laughing.” said the Jester, through exasperated breaths of laughter.

I heard the creature treading the gravel, through the mist. Then, I saw it: a hideous ebony serpent—the hide of the woman still adhered to its tail. I was astounded at the breadth of its wings: great black parasols that loomed over the country road. And then with sudden clarity, its form now in full view, it glared at me, and me at it. Its eyes rolled over white, as saliva frothed at its muzzle. Then, it charged.

The Jester laughed, of course.

I pressed a picture of my wife, up against the pane. 

“Ce un belle femme. She’s beautiful, you know, ” he said.

I nodded vigorously, “Yes, she is.” He chuckled, but gazed longingly at the photograph.

“Are you going to let me pass?”

“Yes, yes. That’ll certainly do.” said he, and The Jester stopped cackling. 

*

He printed my ticket, and slid it to me, slowly. 

Regrettably, I handed him the picture.

The boom barrier inched upwards, like the second hand of a clock. My heart beat in tandem, and as it rose so it wiped the fog away, like a squeegee. Through the airy medium, the action revealed a vista and I saw the World, from the Edge of the World.

I saw the skyline of New York City, the mundane municipalities of Annapolis, the dunes of Gaza, and the slithering bend of the Seine. The waters of the Atlantic trickled at sunset over the rim of the horizon. All of it, a sheen flat as glass.

And then, I jumped into the murk of it all, narrowly missing a bite to the rear. I bounded into this world, immaterial. 

THE MIRACLE MACHINE

by E.K. Anderson

The man donned uncannily neat attire and bore the likeness of the Bourgeois. He wore a cravat and ornate cuffs, reminiscent of seventeenth century Parisian bankers and businessmen. Trimmed and flush with his jaw line was a graying beard, with patches of black like ground pepper. Pants perfectly tailored about his legs, his slim countenance implied one of guile, authoritative and classy measures. In his left hand was a pocket watch, one in which he concerned himself with constantly, as if by some way his gaze could hinder time. In his other he carried a half-full glass of moonshine He was a rebellious man by nature, free of the shackles of faux pas, unspoken nuances and taboos of society.

“Punctuality is a virtue Dr. Mayson,” He looked again at the pocket watch, facial expression as crude as a stone etching, “As it seems that you are the only interviewee, I’m willing to overlook the minute fact of your tardiness. I recommend an atomic clock. They’re the best,” said Arthur Morgan.

In the doorway, surgeon Richard Mayson Ph.D, stood somewhat confounded and uneasy, believing that he had in all truth reached the premises a minute early. In his hand was a jumbled collection of papers: his polished medical resume, the papers he had written for Cambridge academia and any spare credentials he could manage to gather about his second-story London studio. Clumping them together in his left prosthetic, he shook hands with the man.

“I’m honored,” he said in a stunted manner, “I apologize. I’ll take up that recommendation.” He lied, knowing quite well he would not.

Through his bifocals Mr. Morgan peered at him hauntingly, the moonlight refracting in the lenses, “Come in.”

Richard stepped over the threshold. Already like some irritant or foreign matter, he began to reject his notions that the man was in any way sane. The mansion, had little in it, which surprised him. A myriad of corridors, ran perpendicular to each other; both upstairs and downstairs, leading into grey and dusty rooms. Tapestries both as large as his head and the size of a man lined the walls. Green velvet draperies hung lankly from the Venetian windows. The room spacious he felt small, the rotunda wavering above him like a sky about to fall. He saw what looked like a replica of Creation of Adam, the fresco from the Sisteen Chapel (which he had always wished to see in person). A brick hearth, burned steadily, hardly crackling.

All about, in tandem, he heard the tintinnabulation of clocks like miniature glockenspiels. It irritated him, a throbbing nuisance at the back of his head.

“I’m a bit of an antiquary. My associates regard my house as noisy and mad labyrinth, unusual really. Yet I enjoy the ruckus. Hearing the seconds, the milliseconds of the day as they pass tend to inspire me. Do you find it quaint Dr. Mayson?”  

“Fine. It reminds me of Mister Gepetto,” he said mistrustfully, “Pinnochio.”

Mr. Morgan clicked his tongue and raised his brow, “Fair enough. Moonshine or Scotch?”

“Scotch,” He preferred no alcohol but felt obliged to be courteous, “Just a little though.”

They sat in the middle of the rotunda, adjacent to the stairwell and juxtapose to a small table with an unusual colorful fish centerpiece. The room still, tension affixed in a single state like dry ice.

“Chinese fighting fish are my favorite,” said Mr. Morgan, “They are not a dog or feline, but they are ever enduring, quite resilient to change—the aquatic equivalent of a cockroach.”

“Don’t they fight? I mean if they’re put together?”

“Yes. This one lasted longer than the others. Battle of the fittest.” In the aquarium, he now saw two fish, their bloated bodies inflated twice their normal size. They bobbed up and down, their eyes glazed over, dead.

“You do this for sheer entertainment?”

“Not for sport, my good doctor. Science.”

It was then that he remembered the three indications of a sociopath in the discipline of Psychology: Bed-wetting, arson, and animal cruelty. So far the man had already gotten one.

“Before we begin, I can assure you Mr. Mayson that what I do is completely legal. Pristine and free of swindling. A monetary interchange, for a service. There is nothing shady about that. No loopholes, no thrifty advances, just an equal exchange,” Mr. Morgan smiled.

Richard Mayson did not like the sound of the man, his inflection had a conniving aura to it; he had the air of a mortician or a crafty door to door solicitor.

“And the expense is?”

“A penny will do.” The ‘service’ for a little loose change that might have easily tumbled out of his pocket unbeknownst to him was all he needed? Surely there was a twist.

“Why so cheap?”

Mr. Morgan took a sip of the liquor from his glass, sampled the moonshine and grinned politely. “I won’t be a financial burden to you Mr. Mayson. After all this is an interview.  A penny saved is a penny earned. It truly is a small price to pay. Yet on my behalf why not capitalize?”

Richard felt his tailored pockets; the only thing that came up was nothing more than the cold copper coin, the last remnant of the suit he had bought. Reluctantly he paid the man the remaining sum.

“One thing I must tell you is that there is a contract, just as with any job. Here,” said the employer, handing him a thick wad of paper,s the size of a manuscript, “a pen to sign.” He ruffled through the rest of _.

He took it reluctantly.

He could have read the minuscule writing; he could have mentally underlined and scanned all areas, all unclear ambiguous statements—the impurities.

But he didn’t.

He signed his name in careful orthography in the blank. “What’s the—”

“Date? The ides of March. The fifteenth to be exact,” the man smiled taking the pen and stuffing it in his suit coat pocket, “the day corpses lie in the streets.”

“Can you tell me anymore of the position?” said Richard tentatively.

“Unfortunately that cannot be done. Not yet anyway. All I have been instructed to tell you is that you are about to enter a machine.  The subject of which can be described as a test.  Of what sort? I cannot say.” He poured himself some more moonshine from the flask, deliberately letting several drops fall into the miniature aquarium. Immediately, the fish with tattered fins breathed the alcohol through its gills. The result was a feral creature, attacking its own reflection.

“Where exactly is this test?” Richard said, choosing to ignore the fish.

“This way.”

Richard carried his scotch with him. The man led him down the ivory stairwell, into a far more grandiose room than he had seen, thus far. It possessed the sterility of a hospital ER, yet spanned farther back than a quarter section of a football field. Oddments, Petri dishes, chemical tubes, DNA jelly, Bunsen burners, neon containers of solute. But what took his attention away was not the sheer quantity of equipment but a generator unit, stashed in the center as the main cornerstone of the laboratory. He still heard the clocks, the sounds followed him wherever they went.

“I believe this has been the reason for your intrigue, Mr. Morgan and inversely my life’s work in the making. It can be perfected but the premise and overall objective works.” They walked closer; the machine looked very much like a titanium box with a series of hoses and cogs about its central interface. A spring-like contraption, antennae-like sat atop it.

“Tesla coil?”

“Yes. It’s far more efficient. Eighty-five percent electrical transfer. I prefer to use that as my energy source.”

“Ah,”said Richard sounding amused, “ May I now ask what it is?”

“It’s a machine, meant to manifest and trigger your sentient capabilities more or less. An enhancement allowing you to delve into the greater recesses and conduits of logic not normally visited, since only 10 percent of the brain’s thinking processes are accessible under normal conditions.” He smiled through his beard in a gregarious manner, “Simply put, a dream machine.”

“A machine for catching dreams? You mean to tell me that you can take an intangible thought and make it concrete enough for another to witness?”

“Not necessarily. For discerning them. There is no eyewitness but the dreamer. However given a sedative, such as what was put in your share of moonshine, one can relay the visuals far easier after the point of visual stimulation.”

“Visual stimulation?” Dr. Mayson smirked. He was beginning to laugh impulsively, whether it was the liquor or the outlandish information that was being force fed to him like an infant he did not know, “And how exactly is that accomplished?”

“Electrodes. Implanted in the brain’s pleasure and visual receptors. Implants– should I say– appear to be your area of expertise.”

“Surgery. Yes,” Richard said astutely, “But I’m in no way about to undergo any procedure that would strip any person of their freewill. Altering another’s faculties for a laboratory significance is beyond me.”

“You have already accepted the job offer Mr. Mayson, as well as volunteered to be our first guinea pig.” Mr. Morgan unfurled the contract from his pocket. In minuscule writing, barely enough for him to see, Dr. Mayson read the words… and his signature.

“You will profit much. Half the shares.”

“Potential shares,” began Richard. He was skeptical but wished to inquire more. “And how will this make a profit?”

“Economists my dear sir, economists. The world’s businesses and corporations. Imagine if every fluctuation in the stock market could be foreseen, every variable accounted for—predestined all with a single prophetic dream. Clairvoyance achieved.”

“But you said it was a dream machine,”said Richard, “How does prophecy relate to dreams?”

“God bestowed man with dreams, Mr, Mayson. It is thus up to man to to decipher the cryptography of conceptualization. It has often been said that there exist three dimensions. Some have alluded to a fourth such as time, but I propose a fifth which is metaphysical.”

“Which is?”

The man smiled and swelled his chest, clearing his throat with a slight smile.

“Thought. Or more so consciousness.” 

“But,” began Richard, “Thought isn’t concrete. How could that which is not physically existential be a–”

“Dimension? That is where you are gravely wrong,” said Mr. Morgan who had taken the liberty of reclining on a laboratory bench, “Regard it as a deviant of Time which is immaterial: that which stays afixed, but in theory may well be manipulated to one’s bidding, can be warped. Such is the same principle with thought. Unseen, it exists on its own separate plane. In part its origin is physical: existing in a precognitive form, manifest in every neuron impulse, every synapse overload, every rudimentary cell process and in turn electron revolution. The question, and sense of better judgment, is what is the catalyst for thought? Where does it originate?”

Richard stood smugly, arms crossed. He could not question whether the man was at his wit’s end or an intellectual heavyweight. In his brain the two portions of rationale and blind faith warred, amplifying the nausea of the drug that had been administered to him through the alcoholic beverage. How near or far from the truth the idea actually was, was frivolous. He needed an ibuprofen.

“I don’t know.” Simple and precise. He found the man’s subtle aggression irksome. “I suppose I’ll find out won’t I?”

“Perhaps. But only with your expertise. We are both men of faculty, do-gooders are we not? Let us reach a consensus. I will grant you sixty–no–seventy percent of the shares. Surely you must acquiesce to that.”

Richard stood dumbfounded. He felt numb. The salary would exceed his surgeon compensation, allow him to pay off any remaining medical and residency loans.

But he was still taking a gambit.

“There may be certain physical repercussions,” said Morgan. He had finished his flask, and sipped distastefully at the remaining melting ice, “Of which I won’t sugar coat.”

“As is with anything there is always a catch. If so I want to hear them before–”

“You set foot in the machine? That can be arranged. Psychosis is one. Also an effect similar to a hallucinogen as the residual drug is still in the system. Nausea and vomiting as symptoms. That sort of thing. I won’t bore you with the pharmaceutical implications.”

The prospect of a sanitarium seemed dismal to him. He couldn’t throw away his career for this. Nor could he toss the potential monetary gains from out his head. This was nonsense. “What’s the probability?” he said impatiently.

“Less than 1 percent.” From his suitcoat pocket was a silver flask, shining bright against the lab lights, Richard saw the distorted refraction of his face. This, Morgan poured in his glass.

“Toast,” Morgan said.

“Toast.” They clinked their glasses, the sound pealing—resonating throughout the room.

He stepped in the box, underneath the Tesla coil.

“I wish you Godspeed on the Primrose Path, Mr. Mayson. ” said Morgan. He took the penny from his suitcoat and raised it up in the light. “E pluribus unum,” he read on the inscription, “One out of many.”

The door closed, the tumblers clicked, the darkness ensued. Richard did not know for how long he had been in the machine. Minutes? Perhaps hours. He shuffled sheepishly in utter darkness; he paced uneasily—and fell. He expected to hit his head on the far wall. He expected to have been hurt and bruised, bashing his head in.

But he didn’t.

The first thing he ascertained, or rather perceived was that the box was far more spacious than he had deemed. He had fallen—yes—that was true, but he landed, not on the rusted iron floor of the machine. In fact Richard wasn’t sure he had landed at all…

By some unseen force, it occurred to him that he was suspending; he felt wind whip his hair—tumbling into some intangible, nebulous void. He felt heavier, as if gravity had increased 3 fold. His head ached.

Light.

He saw that now. A pinprick below the canvas of black beneath him. Yet it increased exponentially…perhaps he was accelerating faster than he had deduced.

The pinprick grew larger, like a nearing halo. A portal. And as quickly as he had fallen, he had stopped. Gravity had neutralized had it not? Now he… floated.

In haste he entered the aura, almost numbingly at first. But something even more had surprised him. He could feel his right hand. He looked down. The prosthetic was gone. In place of it, was a hand—very much like his left—with feeling. He pinched it and winced.

The universe had employed a nasty trump. This was unwarranted, unjustified nothing short of miraculous. It’s just a dream. Only a dream. But a wonderful dream it was.

He floated further. From his vantage point, he saw clouds. Towering nimbus, with mountainous facades. He saw the flash of lightning and felt the resonance of thunder deep within his chest. He felt rain dappling his cheeks—flecks of snow too. Yet the light still bathed him. He felt like basking in it, reclining into an everlasting slumber.

Henry David Thoreau’s essay, “On Civil Disobedience,” holds true today.

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.” – Henry David Thoreau.

“What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.” – Henry David Thoreau.

There are times when a leader has gone too far, and projects on to others. Trump has done this. He has gone too far.

Considering the recent stream of events, the callous nature of his public outrage and the derivate nature by which Trump’s post has garnered his network of supporters has further split the MAGA crowd from those who believe in human decency.

We are experiencing a moralistic split.

What then do we do in times of unrest?

It is plausible that we make take the path of our predecessors. It is plausible that we start from where the Civil riots began.

But it is more important to remember history. It is more important to recognize that we as human beings are the free agents of our marked free will. Violence is not the answer. It never is, and I could have used choice words I should not have, but I did speak out and say it wasn’t right. We as human beings have the ability to take a step back, pause, and reflect at the outcomes of our circumstances, and that we have a choice to conduce how change will occur.

Accountability it seems for the President is quite difficult. It takes one to know one who must be accountable. It also takes one to know that accountability is the only way forward, especially for forgiveness to occur for others and oneself.

Glossing over an error, does little address the issue. In fact it compounds it by several factors, and it requires an acknowledgement of the thought patterns that brought you to where you are in the first place. I have come to understand that truth distances us from the person we once were. It embodies wisdom officially, as it is practiced on a daily basis.

It’s a challenge, but it is a challenge worth undertaking, because in that process (and this is new to me), you discover more of who you are.

There are times when balance is needed. Stoicism, I suppose — not in the sense of avoiding the emotion, but in acknowledging erroneous behavior.

People are not vessels of responsibility, or reproach. If an electronic system such as a circuit is malfunctioning, factors could be considered such as the resistors, or motherboards that are contributing to the issue. At certain points the person in question may be blamed for its construction, but not from natural wear and tear of the system.

Such is the same case.

You don’t resolve something like this with more violence. You resolve his rebuttal with personal reflection, stoicism and art. Through the process of creation as a part from his fake A.I. video one creates realism.You learn to satiate your anger, and let it not cloud your judgement.

We are born for times such as these.