phil
The mechanical dog is the mechanical man's best friend. They oil each other's hinges. They peruse the Popular Mechanics magazines. They even spend their evenings filing away each other's burrs.
And they never break down, because they have each other.
Have you seen that very evocative piece where a robot is programmed to scoop the oil that keeps its gears from rusting back into itself... and if it fails, it will die. We say die for things that we know aren't alive. The battery died, for example.
Why. Is there no better word for it? Or does die just mean cease to function...for batteries, you can recharge them... And if die just means to cease to function, why is there no more specific word for biological death. For the tremendous grief that comes with recognizing that someone you love will never function again. And that all you have is memories
I think the mechanical dog and the mechanical man think there is no permanent death. Even if they rust, someone could come and repair them
In the grand scheme of things, maybe that's what's reassuring, too. Maybe we're in a big bounce kind of universe. And yes, a trillion years from now, the universe will contract...everything will be dead... but it'll bounce, and maybe in the universe that arises nothing will happen. The physics won't be right, but it'll bounce once every trillion years for forever, and if you have forever, and an infinite number of chances, maybe a universe so close to this one will arise, and all the people we mourn will get to have some extra time living in that one, and they will be, for all intents and purposes, the same people...they'll even have our experiences and memories, but instead of dying when
when
When they did, they won't die, and they'll live as long as we thought they would.
And since that'll happen someday, instead of feeling...sad... we can feel impatient. And impatient is fine.