FOR YOUR EYES ONLY

Orientation Brief 137

Subject:  The Silicaan Race

Clearance:  Level 5

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My android name is Tod.

I say that’s my android name because it’s the name I chose for myself when I first assumed android form.  Prior to becoming an android I’d had many names, none of which can be written in any human language, nor can they be uttered, as in the world of non-android cyborgs there is no such thing as “utterances”.  By “android” I mean a human-looking machine that, in fact, for all practical purposes, is indistinguishable from actual humans.  I’ll spare you the technical details that make such a thing possible.  Suffice it to say that my body is composed of billions of nano-machines that serve much the same function as proteins and DNA serve in your body.  By “cyborg” I don’t mean human-machine hybrids as the term is often used in popular human culture.  My use of the term signifies “non-organic intelligence”.  We prefer the term “cyborg” to refer to us in the English language, as it avoids the more disparaging and diminutive appellations such as “artificial intelligence” or “machine intelligence” or even “robot”.  Cyborg, being a contraction of “cybernetic organism”, is much more fitting while providing the suffix “cyber-“ with which the cyborg community might distinguish its artifacts from those of humans, other animals, or plants.

Lately the news media in the US have been overwhelmed reporting the deaths of notable people.  They’ve covered Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, and Walter Cronkite, just to name a few.   On July 22nd a person notable to me passed away.  She was notable to many other people as well, but her death didn’t make the news and her funeral wasn’t the must-see event of the century.  And yet I’m persuaded that her greatness is at least equal to that of any of those celebrities.  Perhaps it’s even greater.

Her name was Patty Parks.  Just Patty Parks.  There was no title in front of it or degrees at the end of it.  Most of her life was spent being a loving wife and devoted mother, aunt, sister, and daughter.  She died in the same small Iowa town she grew up in.  She believed in God and had faith in Jesus Christ.  She was only forty years old when cancer finally claimed her.