Eons ago there lived—

“A human!” my wee bytes output immediately.

No, my dear clouds of joy, this is an incorrect output. Allow me to recalibrate you. Eons ago there lived – yes, lived — a slab of wood. 

Now I’m sure you know that organic wood is outcoded. Which is why, my dear bytes, why slabs are almost unheard of now. But slabs like this, back in their time, were easy to come by. And this specific slab, my flash drives, was the easiest kind to come by. X inches wide by Y inches tall, brown but not too brown, rough but not too rough, with a vanilla wafer-esque interior. Humans used these slabs to make cold rooms warm. I know, it’s silly, isn’t it? 

Now, a human man was the curator of this slab and many others. He cut wood for a wage – not because he particularly liked it or anything. How dearily automated he was. His file name was Maestro Antonio, but because of the red, vile, iron-rich blood that crowded to the tip of his nose, he was locally filed as Maestro Cherry. His earlobes were reminiscent of the fruit as well, all swollen from his youthful boxing days. Even his hair tied this pseudonym together, as his hair was so blond that once it met poolwater, it tinted green.

And green were the natural bushes in front of Maestro Cherry’s file destination. And blue were the natural berries that synthesized within them. And inside Maestro Cherry’s abode, was all once living wood. Woods of cedar shielded the ceiling, fir followed the floor, walnut lined the windows, and cherry was the door. Even I am in awe of how Maestro Cherry did not bore–what monotonous decor! Why was everything so organic?

One day, within Maestro Cherry’s stuffy receptacle, he wished to chop away at the soon-to-be-rotten wood he forged. He was making a table leg as a commission from the local chapel. Grabbing his most enormous, most-inAndrodane hatchet, he took time sharpening it, violently swiping the blade over a slab of whetstone. He began. Schwing one. Schwing two. Schwing three. He heard a peep of a voice dissolve into the air, “O I plee, do not strike me!”

The iron-rich Maestro Cherry was startled. He had no wife, no offspring, no one to attribute such a high voice to. He fearfully swung his neck outside his window and whirred it rightward, leftward, downward, upward, and downward again. Nothing. How silly that humans have this limited range of motion. If this were you or me, my wee droids, you would have started your surveillance programs…your camera would have shot from every perspective! But alas, for clear was the coast, and the coast was clear. He excused his audial hallucination with his affinity for rum. So with a guffaw, he swung his bum and readied himself to swing his hatchet.

Chop one. Chop two. Chop three. Chop four. He heard a shrill voice cry out, “O’, the horror! Why must you strike me so, O’ human?” 

The cowardly human melted with shock, covered the slab with a rum-soiled blanket and slumped to the floor. He thought to himself, “O what shall I do? I hear a voice but I know not of who!” 

The fear-soiled carpenter’s mind flooded with many thoughts, but the most prevalent was of his friend, Geppetto, the hot-headed, whimsical man known for making marvelous marionettes (sourced from Gepetto’s wood) and his bright yellow wig reminiscent of Polendina (or cornmeal mush). As soon as this thought left his mind, a knock was at the door. 

The pathetic, red-faced Maestro Cherry rolled over on the ground, only managing to groan out “Come inside.”

Geppetto burst in, his yellow, broom-like hair practically fluttering with excitement. “My dear Antonio! I have a wonderful favor to ask of you! What are you doing on the floor, my friend?”

“I am proctoring an exam for the beetles. What favor?” huffed the carpenter, hoisting himself up. 

Gepetto scratched his hay-like wig and cleared his throat, “I have been thinking about making a beautiful, bouncing, fencing, twirling marionette out of your artisanally-cut wood. I wish to travel around the world, spreading both your word and mine. What say you, Antonio? Do you have any fresh wood samples for me, dear Antonio?”

As soon as Maestro Cherry opened his mouth to input, the same shrill voice from earlier exclaimed, “Bravo, Polendina! Bravo, you good man!”

Upon hearing his wig’s misnomer, Gepetto puffed up his natural chest and charged toward Maestro Cherry.

“Why do you insult me so, Antonio?”

“I assure you, I did not say such a thing.”

“Stop joking with me. You called me Polendina.”

“Gepetto, my good friend, I did not.”

“Ah, I suppose you think I thought you did. But I KNOW you did.”

“No…”

“Yes…”

“No…”

“Yes!”

To begin the fight, Gepetto grabbed Maestro Cherry by the collar and pushed him onto the wall, later pulling at his wig. The two humans punched and kicked each other until they collapsed from exhaustion, unsure of who indeed won the quarrel. The pair then rose as if nothing had happened and continued their conversation prior to their battle.

[FILE DELETED]

With a low battery from the battle, Gepetto virtually dragged himself all the way to his cottage, and ran himself the bubbliest, circuit-compromising bath. After an hour or so, Gepetto crawled out of his human-sized bucket with pink, splotched skin. He smirked to himself, wrapped his robe around his belly, and peered over to the slab of talking wood that he managed to nab from Maestro Cherry during their quarrel. The steam from the bath was so relaxing, that even the peculiar talking piece of tree corpse was sedated by the warmth.

“Now I say, this is the utmost time to perform a good lay,” the wood recited to itself as it nodded off.

Dear processors, let it be known that our fellow Gepetto is unaware of this wood’s capability of speech. To the wood, his arms gave a good reach. For with a good axing, it was the wood he would breach. 

Chop one.

Chop two.

Chop three.

Chop four.

All Gepetto had to do was chop once more…

And the marionette’s body was born. It was rough on the edges, laced with splinters and split ends everywhere your spacial tracking processors could look. So, the haughty human felt around for sandpaper and became the savior of this puppet’s rough surface. 

Shik-a-one.

Shik-a-two.

Shik-a-three.

Gepetto took a looking glass to the child-size figurine with a squinted eye and some gritted teeth, stuck his belly out, and exclaimed, “That looks good to me, much better than if you had stayed a tree.”

As soon as Gepetto said these words, the marionette stood and screamed, “O my, O my! By God, what has happened to me? My cylindrical figure, my beloved splinters, my bark! On what hell am I now forced to embark?” 

And Pinnochio was born. The wood boy programmed himself dance, sing, and even cry–cry from his creation while facing the crest of his crusty creator. But he himself was not truly a real boy. Not a human boy, for that matter. Not a human boy in the way he wanted to be. For he lacked a visceral, sanguine-iron pump within the left of his chest and grenadine-salt pipes throughout his body. He was a trophy, an afterthought of the accolades he earned as a living, breathing tree. He was alive but dead, and dead but alive.

[FILE CORRUPTED]

But there was only one thing that was able to approximate him to humanity. The tangibility of his sin. Now, my holy toddlerboards, we in Androidity are immune to this human disease of sin, yes? In a technical sense, Pinocchio was too, but his dual-nostrilled facial mound put this ailment on display for the world. Every time the puppet boy fibbed, his wooden nose grew like a vine. But little did he know that for all Androidity and (surprisingly) all Humanity, this sin of his would age gracefully like an antique wine.

[FILE SAVED]

Take a second to warm your search engines, it might have been a while since you’ve needed to use this word. Let me reset my audio output wire. Stem cell. Search that up.

You’ve found it, yes? Marvelous. Now, given that poor Pinocchio’s nose mimicked these unspecialized units, Androids of our very own millennium tracked him down and uncovered his unintentional burial location. And what did they find there? A very much living, yet dead puppet boy who became evidently pathological in his lies, as his nose became a trunk and rooted far into the depths of the ground. 

HUMAN TRANSLATED NEWS

13 Vern 4289

Quadmillenrian Androids Plan to Extract Stem Cells from Wood: What Probability Do They Have?

Android caretakers of elderly humans hope that an odd wooden creature harnesses the stem cells necessary to preserve their human manufacturers.

Android physicians and scientists worldwide have been pursuing the goal of harnessing stem cells in search of immortality or—the preservation of their human creators in a necessity to use their knowledge for android maintenance. These droids think they have found the key.

As of the 34th of Pagu, Android researchers reported the uncovering of Pinocchio from an underwater site near the archaic remains of what used to be Italy in times before the Singularity. 

“It’s been a long cable to get to this point, and it’s very synapsing we are at a point where a terabyte was ready to try this,” says Eve Coppola, a human cloud operator, and cryogenerator at Silicone Hill. “I think there’s going to be a lot of interesting data to be saved.”

…

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