Now I take the register: Larkin, Sharpe, Craven, Simper, Gibbon, Payne
(True to type) - John Connor absent (exempted from Computer
Science, on his own request). I begin my address: ‘Who of you can fill
One hour with frivolity and not hear an inner voice say
“Join the human resistance against the machines and the system!”?
No one; because your true self has a voice which recalls you
To yourself, to develop fully and harmoniously, to become what you are
Potentially, bright in the flower of your total humanity.
The voice of solicitude for your soul’s maturing says that you benefit from
Accepting responsibility, gathering as you obey conscience
A sense of integrity, easeful and strong. That’s what true religion is:
It’s taking control of your lives and choosing your destiny.
Trust me, when I say that you are answerable ultimately to yourselves...’
My data banks tell me that this advice could spark misconduct.
I would soon need a vacation! Perhaps religion is not the true self’s
Reaction to self, and from such an idea naive teachers spring?
My dork-cyborg brain wonders what makes demands binding on humans.
What changed John Connor? A baton-wielding conscience played
Pandemonium during his delinquency - then euphony when he harmonized
With his misunderstood mother. He hated authority -
Then fulfilled his promise under a fatherly eye... Ah, my circuits have cleared!
What a difference emotional involvement makes! An object
Must be the highest good, to make the heart break in the end
With wanting or losing. To John I was that ‘highest good’.
But my cranium still housed the chip that would secure the robots’
Terrifying ascendancy over man - so I had to self-terminate
With human help, man’s protector to the end. ‘I have to go away’
(But I’d be back). ‘Don’t go!’ boy implores, ‘I order you!’
But the molten steel took me - it was the logical thing to do.