Dear diary,
So then I go over to visit my friend Freud at his pyramid, and he smokes cigars while I drink absinthe.
We enjoy an elaborate conversation, which encompasses many topics. Then, for old times’ sake, we decide to try to invent a cognizant being. So I head out and rummage thru the recycling bins of many of our neighbors and return with a barrowful of electronic gizmos that people had thrown out.
“Does any of this stuff still work?” Freud asks.
“I assume not,” I say; “that’s why they tossed it out.”
“Try giving them power, one by one, just to make sure,” sez Freud.
So I do this, and nothing turns on.
“We’re going to need to do a lot of soldering of wires,” Freud remarks, looking deeply concerned and stroking his beard; then he puffs his cigar and adds: “we’ll also need to create a functioning mind.”
I smile and remark: “Well, if anyone can do it, you and I can.”
Freud puffs his cigar again and then looks up at me to note my facial expression. He shakes his head.
So we get to work soldering the nonfunctional fragments of gadgets together until we have something that resembles a human arm.
“Look at that!” Freud sez, while using the joystick on the control panel that he fabricated to lift and lower the fake arm that is hardwired to the console; “it’s responsive!”
Next we build an electronic brain, and we program the thing so that it has an imagination and can do math. Then we indoctrinate the thing with our shared views.
“This is going to be an interesting individual when we are finished with him or her,” Freud remarks.
“Please pass the pliers,” I say; then I tighten the pelvis onto the prototype’s torso. “Now, what should we do about legs?”
“How about those marvels over there,” Freud points to the heap of scrap parts in the wheelbarrow.
“Those vacuum-tube things?” I say.
“No,” Freud frowns, “here, I’ll get them…” he puffs his cigar and sets it carefully in the emerald ash-tray near the workbench; then paces over and retrieves the pair of objects he was indicating.
“Ooh!” my eyes light up, as he passes me one of the items while he holds the other — I caress its form admiringly: these components that Freud has found in our heap of scrap parts are, in fact, the glass legs from our shared favorite movie: The Saddest Music in the World (2003) — “Why didn’t I think of that!” I say.
So I weld these beer-filled appendages onto the pelvis, and now our humanoid can stand and strut about awkwardly.
“It will acquire grace in time,” Freud remarks; “do not worry: I have taught it how to learn.”
“You blessed it with the ability to poeticize?” I gasp. “When did you do that!?”
“When your back was turned,” sez Freud. “I wanted to surprise you. — Yea, our creation cannot write a good poem, but it can err.”
I marvel at our newly ambulant creature, as its gait, before our eyes, begins noticeably to improve. “Are you sure that it won’t defy its hard limit and eventually beget a canonical masterwork?”
“No doubt,” Freud puffs his cigar. “This is not even a question.”
So, for the final touches, as a sort of polish to our golem, we wrap its electronic vitals in pigskin, and append to its epidermis the fabled “third sex”.
I down another absinthe, and Freud lights a new cigar, while we stand and behold the results of our collaboration.
Freud begins to chuckle; then he sez: “Give the poor thing a robe. Otherwise I’m not going to be able to hold it together.”
So I make a blue mantle out of ox-hide and drape it over our now-finished soul, and we christen this manmade contraption Moses.
“Should we put horns on it or not?” I ask. “I mean, just as a brand or signature.”
“I don’t want horns,” murmurs Moses.
Freud puffs his cigar and nods a few times, thoughtfully. “Yes, give him a couple small horns on his head.”
Freud helps me hold the creature still, while we do this.
§
When we release our intelligent machine into the wild, there are amusing consequences. Our fellow masters so many magic trix that he ends up frog-plaguing Egypt and leading a successful revolution: he manages to steal the entire working class! They physically abandon the country and emigrate elsewhere. He then develops two improved tablets of law and an entire judicial system, out of thin air, which he enshrines within his own self-authored holy book: he positions these ideas as the centerpiece of a terrifying tale, which is how he persuades his populace of their value.
“Our boy’s a genius,” Freud smiles uneasily, beholding what we wrought; “I admit, you were right — we created a monster.”
§
Rumor has it that our lad, being able to mate and bear offspring with any gender, brought to term a lovechild fathered by our other cyborg Leah (a solar-powered female Leo Tolstoy); and this newborn droid that Moses birthed ended up being the first of a whole host of diminutive species of robo-butlers that share the same codename: the infamous Devlins. (Again, this is only a rumor — I myself don’t believe it; I’m just relaying it for the record.)
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