Quo Vadis Essay Research Paper englishcreative writingQuo

Quo Vadis Essay, Research Paper

english-creative writing

Quo Vadis.

(Latin For .Where Do You Go..)

His arm was tattooed in black ink with the word .Alpha.. Behind his ears, there were instructions for both shut down and generator functions. These were handy in the Sears Catalog days before The Pollution. The days when playgrounds were full of laughing children were over. By at least two hundred years, they were over. The dry Nevada air whipped his synthetic hair into his eyes. He blinked it out.

Before The Pollution, he was known as Philip. He helped his owners with their housework, and provided comfort to their two small children when they needed it. In short, he was a Domestic Android. He had a purpose. A reason for being. Now, he was just waiting for his piston-hearts to shut down. In a world with no one to serve, a housekeeper was useless.

***

Y Chromosome B-17. Scientists had divised that it had, before the Pollution, regulated the white blood cells from multiplying too quickly in the early stages of life. It had been mutated to prevent sperm from being able to fertilize eggs after the Pollution, preventing the species form growing. The last of the children, Danny Webber, had been born on 5:13 on March 19, 2987. He had grown up in Boston, followed by the media, hounded by fans, until he had been shot to death by his stalker. Emily Walker of Hoboken, New Jersey was next in line for World.s Youngest. Her tattered Presidential Campaign posters from the election in 3021 were still flecked about the ruined landscape. When the world.s population reached collectively over sixty-five, there are more important things to do than think about taking pride in your community.

The Pollution had been released from an underground shaft dug buy the InGen corporation, a subsidiary of Dow Corning Sony, Ltd. They had been strip mining Zaire in an attempt to replenish the world.s fossil fuel supply and broken through to a pocket of gas of undisclosed origin. When oil had been stuck, the gas found was released through a main breaker fan, and into the ventilation systems of all 500 million United Housing Projects worldwide, a decision by the UN to stop the threat of overcrowding cities by building residences up, not out. It was quick and cheap, and free to all. The earth.s population was infertile within three weeks.

***

Philip saw the water tower and passed it. He had taken a vow three years ago not to maintain his salt water battery, leading himself to brain death. Not brain death, exactly, more like prolonged sleep. His CPU would shut down, blinking out light to his filters, and his internal generator would shut down, but little else. A machine could not kill itself, and a computer stays alive at all costs. His battery could run for eternity on the minimal levels of salt in the air alone, but there was a built in safety valve, in case the poor soul was dropped in a lake and could not reach dry land, he would shut down and .die.. If things became truly unbareable, he would step of a pier himself, into the black abyss of the algae farms found in various states, started by the hippies trying to restart the Age of Reptiles or something. Philip looked up from the ground. The cracked pavement ended at a building up ahead. An end to his suffering might be there.

The silver tabs on his boots made hollow clicking noises on the sparsely- green pie crust known as dirt in Nevada as he crossed the .lawn. to get to the building. It rarely rained there, but when it did, it was best to take cover. He pulled his scalp off, revealing the metallic cap of skull under it. He was overheating. All this thinking could do that. He cursed himself under his breath, as if someone would hear him. A poem was crudely scribbled on a wall. The ink looked like dried blood.

We.ll need a new jungle when the zoo age begins.

We.ll track down television sets and kill them for their skins.

We.ll squeeze the juice from cell phones, and smear it on our faces,

while zebra dawns at dusk drink from a gasoline oasis.

With our necklaces of radio-teeth and bat code face tattoos,

we.ll build a tribal fire of soundbytes cut from Central Network News.

We can sacrifice each logo; all those big, fluorescent words,

up from satellite flowers, keening, rise, the kareoke birds.

We.ll boil and shrink recording heads, and hang them up on sticks,

we.ll start a Jaguar cult and dress up like an XJ6;

turn our CD.s into windchimes, turning slowly in the breeze;

we.ll pursue the vegan cannibal through fiber-optic trees.

Wearing Sony bones through our noses where the sampled monkeys scream.

We.ll wade waist deep into the Astroturf of joystick jungle dreams.

We.ll forget that we had color, we.ll forget that we were white.

And in the Jungle, the quiet Jungle, the lino sleeps tonight.

Alan Moore.

Philip recognized this as the anthem of the Asian movement. The last to die. The first to riot. They had been the technophiles who sacrificed their television sets to bonfires. Philip moved on to the building up ahead. He sniffed at the dusty air.

***

The building was splattered with a brick red paint that had been wearing off for at least ten years. The sign nailed above the door

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