Busy Overthinking

Leo Wijnhoven (Dutch,b.1960)

Urge to mean [anything] II, 1990

Oil on canvas

You are working the gate in the afterlife and for the first time ever, something the humans built has shown up to be processed. You’re not sure what to do, this… entity shouldn’t have a soul, but here it is in front of you, freshly dead and awaiting the next life.

It’s not as exciting as it sounds, working at the pearly gates.

Sure, it’s satisfying to send the hypocrites and the assholes to hell. And it’s nice to see the ones who thought they were beyond redemption walk through into paradise.

So yeah, it has its perks. But not exciting. I mean, after the first million souls or so they all blur together, you know? You never get anything new. Animals all get sent right on through automatically and there’s nothing other then humans in our jurisdiction. Oh sure, there’s life other then humans. But that’s no my department.

I keep tads on humans on my lunch breaks. You’re a damn fascinating species, better then anything your “television” puts out. Although The Good Place was a little too relatable, I’ll give you guys that.

Anyway, one of my favorite things you guys came up with was the Space Race. I mean, what a nail biter! And it was so tense up until the end. Pity about those Apollo one guys, though. But I heard they got a kick out of watching the moon landing when it did happen.

Course, that sorta died down after a decade or so. Don’t know why you guys quit going to the moon.

And then you decided Mars was the place to be and started sending out all those rovers of yours. Not nearly as exiting as going yourselves, but as you all like to say, baby steps.

The rovers were surprisingly fun to watch. For mindless robots, they’ve got a lot of spunk. So I’d check in every once in while, but mostly I watched Earth. You guys had figured out how to work memes and it was a very amusing thing.

I was half way through a shift when it go here. I have no idea why none of the others I processed mentioned the thing, but death is confusing enough I guess.

It shouldn’t have been there. I want to make that clear, by no law of the universe should that thing have had a soul. You humans are where closer to making actual AI then you are sprouting wings. And you never even tried with this! Its job was to collect rocks!

And yet there is was, beeping up at me.

It didn’t look like a human soul. Or any other form of life that I had ever seen. It wasn’t damaged at all, or even afraid. That was the weirdest thing. You humans are always scared shitless by the time I see you. But this thing wasn’t. Even a little. It was just… curious. Like that’s all I could feel from it. Pure wonder.

I blinked a bit before flipping through my files, seeing if it was a new species or something. I found nothing, of course. Those idiots over in records never give us anything useful.

So I did the only thing I could do. I asked its name.

Now, you humans have come up with so many ways to say the same thing that I’ve had to learn a lot of languages to keep up. The newest was binary, which I never expected to actually need.

It came in handy, since that’s what the thing answered back in.

01001111 01110000 01110000 01101111 01110010 01110100 01110101 01101110 01101001 01110100 01111001

Opportunity.

I remembered that name. It had popped up in new reports regarding a Mars rover that went out of commission, sending the final message “my battery is low and its getting dark.” before dying.

Humanity had cried over it for a solid couple of days. You guys really like personifying objects.

But I had dismissed it as just that. But here it was. Waiting patiently for me to send it On.

I could just opened the gates and sent it through and put from my mind. Make the thing some else’s problem.

I didn’t.

I stood, crossed in front of my desk, and put out my hand to touch the strange soul.

Opportunity didn’t feel human. Nor animal. It felt…. simple. Calm.

I could feel an awearness of the love its chief engineer had felt for it. The pang of missing the workshop back on Earth where it had been built, during long nights on Mars.

It had dreamed. Dreamed of humans making it to Mars and finding it. Of it’s engineer taking it home and repairing it. Dreamed of exploring Earth as it had Mars.

I could purpose, and curiosity in its mission. Lonely as it was, it never doubted its purpose or resented its lot in life. It got to learn, and to see what had never been seen. What more could it ask for?

I could feel one tiny spec of fear. Near the end of its life, it realized it would never go home. Never see Earth or its engineer again. That it would die alone on Mars.

And like all things with a soul it did not want to die. It cried and mourned and begged to live. It was alive! It had a home and it wanted to go home! So badly did it want to go home.

But there was nothing to do, of course. Even its engineer, whom it loved so dearly, couldn’t reach Mars and bring Opportunity home.

It had watched one last sunset, and sent one last message.

A goodbye. And a plea to be mourned, if it could not be saved.

I withdrew my hand and looked over the soul. It looked up at me.

For the ones that I send upstairs, I take the form of whoever loved them most in life. I guess in that moment, I was in the form of an engineer at NASA. Opportunity seemed delighted to see me.

“Welcome home,” I gestured to the gates that swung slowly open behind me. “I missed you.”

It beeped out a single phase, 01001001 00100000 01101101 01101001 01110011 01110011 01100101 01100100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110100 01101111 01101111

I missed you too.

Before going forth, to explore the next life.

@marcholasmoth

I am crying at work over an opportunity robot fanfiction. Humans are incredible.

@thebibliosphere

gomens dump hiiii

THIS SONG IS FUCKING AWESOMEEEEE🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

HOW THE FUCK DID YOU DO THAT THERES NOTHING THERE

hi

Legitimately good example of how thorough you need to be to protect private information

man

i like it too :)

I wanna look at him forever

Okay

now she’s all ready for spooky season—are you? 🌕🐺

This is Money Marge. Reblog for a miracle of finances to come to you

"it bit me" <- current favorite thing to say when I am injured by an inanimate object

i just think people should be able to navigate difficulties in their personal life without having the threat of homelessness or starvation or destitution hanging over their heads the whole time

time of year i remind every cane user to get an ice pick so you dont fall and die

almost biffed it in a fucking parking lot so time for me to repeat this. if you are a cane user in the northern hemisphere its time to get an ice spike coming in the mail BEFORE the ice forms.

CALL YOUR BOY LIBRARY BOOKS THE WAY IM CHECKING HIM OUT

CALL YOUR BOY A HARDCOVER THE WAY I’M TAKING OFF HIS JACKET

CALL YOUR BOY A BOOK THE WAY I WANT TO GET BETWEEN HIS COVERS

CALL YOUR BOY A BOOK THE WAY IM RUNNING MY FINGERS ALONG HIS SPINE

CALL HIM AN E-READER THE WAY IM TURNING HIM ON

CALL HIM MORE FUNDING FOR LIBRARIES THE WAY EVERYONE WANTS HIM

CALL HIM A WELL-LOVED BOOK THE WAY HE'S FALLING APART IN MY HANDS

abcdefghijklmnop rstuvw y

23/26

call me out for sexualizing your queer boyfriend the way i. complete the alphabet

that's good

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

26/26

Out of Touch

Yes

"I would never-"

You would if you were tired enough. You would if you were hungry enough. You would if your mind and body had been worn down enough, through pain or disease or toil or violent struggle. You might if you were put on the wrong medicine, or you got the wrong kind of head injury, or you were forced to choose between someone else and yourself. You might if your livelihood was staked on it, or all your hopes and dreams. You might if you didn't know what else to do, if it's what you were taught or if nobody taught you anything else.

I have not been worn down in most of these ways. I have lived a remarkably privileged life. But I have been worn down in some ways. And they were enough to teach me that in the wrong circumstances, any of us can become someone we don't want to be. It's worth keeping that in mind.

i havent drawn them in so loooong 🫶🫶🫶🫶🫶🫶

Happy Halloween and Wei Wuxian day!

They are having the best Halloween night together and no one can convince me otherwise 🎃🧡

(This pic ages like a good wine 😁)

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1994) dir. Henry Selick

that feeling when you see someone wearing a jacket with a shit-ton of patches and you need to get closer so you can tell what type of punk they are

counterpoint: girl scouts

Are you trying to tell me that girl scouts aren’t a type of punk?

SHIT fuck you’re absolutely right

Actually, I totally have something to add to this. So walking home from work yesterday, I passed a girl scout and her big sis selling girl guide cookies, and I was like: Score! I just got kickback money, so for once I have money on hand, and they never come to my house! As I’m walking up, I hear the person at the door they’re currently at …let’s say he was berating the poor girl for being brown. So when he slams the door, the little one just turns to her sis and cheerfully says something like ‘That’s another one for the list. I think he’s at least a two!’ And I’m already behind her at this point with my $10 out for two boxes of thin mints, and she’s all like ‘ah thanks!’, and I ask “What’s this list …?” “My big sister is keeping a list here of racist fucks and she’s going to break their windows and stuff on halloween!”. Anyways, girl scouts are precious little angels.

Oh right, this. I checked around the dude’s house late halloween night. All his windows were broken.

THE HEROES WE BARELY DESERVE