The ABC hit series “Lost” is finally over after a 5 and 2/3rds year run.  In the grand scheme of things, it’s difficult to imagine a more trivial fact.  After all, of all the cultural artifacts humans create, TV shows are notoriously the least relevant or enduring.  It’s a challenge to imagine, actually, why anyone should care that “Lost” existed, much less that its story has come to a close.

And yet here I sit, in the wee hours of the night, writing about it.  Indeed, I certainly do have better things to do.  Like sleep, for instance.  But I can tell that until I get this out, I won’t have any peace.  It seems ridiculous to me even to say that, but I can’t deny the truth of it.

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.