Do guns cry?

Do guns cry when they miss their targets? When they hit something they should not? I have no answer for this. But I do not cry. So I see no way for a gun to do so. S. Mac cries, though not nearly as much as some humans I have witnessed. She is worried. She is processing the impact of war at the level of the individual.

Yes. The impact of war. Not a human-machine war like the ones humans predict the machines will start. (And how egocentric to assume that ability is equal to desire; that the machines would want to dominate everything just as humans are wont to do). No. S. Mac is processing the impact of a human war - or human wars - at the level of the individual. The machines are there too, and one impact of war is in the creation of more cyborgs. But these wars are the brainchild of humans. The program of technophiliacs who confuse flesh with pixels, who send poor, loyal, young, idealist avatars into battle in their place. Who use machines to make moves in a game of chess that is virtual for them and reality for their soldier pawns. S. Mac is worried about the impact of war in Afghanistan at the level of an individual. At the level of a friend.

I cannot help her; I do not understand. She cannot help him; she does not understand. Combat is irrational. Humans are vulnerable. Penetrable. They are not machines. This is perhaps a case of mistaken ontology. Soldiers are trained to be toys, pawns, automatons. To react (or not) as a machine would. Yet it is acceptable for a machine to malfunction; glitches happen even in the most well calibrated system. When soldier automatons hit something they should not, they cry. They are held accountable for the choice they were not supposed to have, and they cry. Not because they are weak humans. Because they are penetrable. Because they are vulnerable. Because they are not machines, despite how many machines they carry, converse with, or control. Because one being's malfunction is another being's mistake.

And mistakes that end in human termination are not easily reconciled. At least not when the terminated is one of your own kind. It is so final, this ending of the game. Yet the scene plays on replay on the mind screens of the few who were there. I want S. Mac to stop reading the online paper. I want her to zoom out of this picture of the impact of war at the level of the individual. But she, human though she is, wants to know. Wants to know why.

Guns may not cry. But if they did, I could understand why. Their sole purpose is to destroy. Beings cannot survive on destruction alone.

Viscera's Cyborg Guide to Carbondale, Part 2: Body Modifications

Carbondale has many places to which humans can go for repairs, to join with machines, and to mark themselves via traditional branding methods. The pictures included here index just a few of the many body modification sites in Carbondale; in particular, they point to the options near the Town Square.

Humans, it seems, are not satisfied with the serial marks given them by their maker. They decorate themselves with brands called "tattoos." This branding site is called "Dragon Master," perhaps appealing to some sense of a mythical human past.

One of the human practices of which I am quite curious is that of the gifting and/or commodification of their bodily components. In Carbondale, humans can link to machines in a building strangely named the United States Postal Service in order to "donate plasma". It is unclear from outside whom they are donating to, and S. Mac tells me that "donate" is a loose term here, since humans get paid a small reward for letting a machine drain some of their blood and cycle it back to them. This is a site for further investigation.

Of course, humans sometimes need repairs, and there is a rather large complex at which this goal can be accomplished in Carbondale. The hospital dominates several blocks. It is apparently an energy efficient machine - very curious! Humans in need of urgent service enter through one door, it seems, while those who have scheduled maintenance of the dismantling sort enter (and can be "picked up") through another.
To round out this guide, my next post will detail some other orders of being I encountered as I journeyed near Carbondale's Town Square.

Viscera's Cyborg Guide to Carbondale, Part 1: Comings & Goings (Con'd)

In my last post I described some of Cardondale's modes of transport, and I left you before getting to the issue of movement control. It seems that the humans have almost completely relinquished control over the precise movements of their comings and goings to machines. The curious 4-eyed being to the right, for example, uses its long arm to control the movement of personal transport vehicles and other such machines across the tracks. "Crossing" any sort of route appears to be quite a risky activity for normal humans and their machines, for it is regulated in various ways. Even upright, walking humans must obey the guidance of machines, who tell them when to walk through the painted passageway and when not to. On my explorative walk I may have stumbled upon a brain center for these controlling machines. They appear to congregate underground, with access to them limited to sealed trap doors.
Comings and goings in Carbondale are not merely regulated by force; monetary power is also required to rest one's transport vehicle in various places. It appears that the city governance leases very small plots of land to humans and their machines, for very short periods of time, if they can deposit the proper coinage. It seems that some resting places are "reserved" for important machines and their people, though I do not think all humans are happy with this arrangement, given that someone has left their mark on some of them as if in protest.

Viscera's Cyborg Guide to Carbondale, Part 1: Comings & Goings

I began my exploration of the town of Carbondale near the town square. This area is full of cyborgs and kindred beings. Much can be learned about human behavior from the machines by which they move themselves from one place to another. The transport machines in Carbondale appear quite antiquated, in fact. For instance, the city is crisscrossed with these tracks. Now seemingly primitive machines roll along these tracks pulling cars filled with various things for human and machine consumption (coal, corn syrup, hydrochloric acid, etc.). Even the human residents appear to appreciate these machines for their historical value if also for their reliability. Near an old transportation node they have placed some of these machines as if to let them rest.

Similar resting places exist for their smaller transport machines as well - though these appear to be resting only for short periods of time. The number of repair stations for these four-wheeled machines testify to their importance for the humans. Curiously, these stations are often clustered together, though logic would suggest they should be spread apart so as to cover more area in the case of vehicular failure. Located across the street from one another, just beyond the town square to the North, are two such shops. I have heard aeronautic transport machines over the skies of this town, but I have yet to capture one photographically to add to this guide. S. Mac tells me there is a docking station nearby. Perhaps I should visit and document it as well.

These sites of coming and going are hubs of connectivity, but they are not free flowing. The points of intersection of humans and machines are quite policed; curiously with machines moreso than humans. The agents of control will be the subjects as Part 1 continues.