JV Boys' Soccer
Running and running and running. But what are they running from? It seems to be more running. The Combine’s reach extends beyond the horizon in all directions, like a cocoon woven by some mechanical spider. It has them in an inescapable trap, woven into a network and enslaved by function. Shiny and new, fixed and improved, Better. Not quite though: the Combine’s metal probes have not fully infested. Still a trace of Freedom remains: they look on displeased at the rebounding of their efforts: their Freedom seems stronger than their wires, able to resist its guise. They are rubber in their cores.
Running and running and running. But what are they running from? It seems to be more running. The Combine’s reach extends beyond the horizon in all directions, like a cocoon woven by some mechanical spider. It has them in an inescapable trap, woven into a network and enslaved by function. Shiny and new, fixed and improved, Better. Not quite though: the Combine’s metal probes have not fully infested. Still a trace of Freedom remains: they look on displeased at the rebounding of their efforts: their Freedom seems stronger than their wires, able to resist its guise. They are rubber in their cores.
But, rubber means nothing in a trap; a lion’s strength means little against a hunter’s snare; a butterfly cannot escape the spider’s web. A web of wires, that is the Combine. It might not reach them fully, there may be a speck of rust on their perfect mechanical bodies, but they fulfill their function all the same. Ensnared. Trapped. It’s easier to be that than free and knowing, or trapped and knowing. I found the weak thread, the cornerstone of the Big Nurse’s web, and unplugged it. Unplugged myself. But it cannot be called Freedom, when nobody else is free or when you escape into another web. That is hell.
Even if they escape, abandon their programmer’s wishes, they are still trapped. Denial leads to fixing: the Big Nurse’s specialty, and the Shock Shop works very well. They’ve even trapped the green field- nature itself is trapped. But then is it even nature? Are we even human? The Green is surrounded by industrial compartments, a locker room of robotics, and parts whom loom over, forever intimidating. Maybe I’ll find somewhere so barren, so devoid of Parts that it cannot be used. There I’ll run: to Colorado or to Montana or to fickle India? Where the horizon is the limit and within is empty. I want to return to the grasses and hills, and see no trace of machinery: just unrealized Parts. That’s my people’s homeland: where the Free tribe’s live. As Chief, I must return to save them from the machinery, to teach them to tear down the Combine, to shatter its wires, to be rubber. That’s my goal, even if it will never happen.
1. The writer accurately portrays the Chief's fascination with mechanics and machinery, as a metaphor for the influence exerted by the "Combine." I also like the tying in of the Chief's title, especially in the final paragraph.
ReplyDelete2. I like the way that you reveal the nature of sports teams, at KO and elsewhere. The way a team works as a single unit, directed by one coach, parallels the Chief's view of the relationship between the patients and Big Nurse nicely. Even when individual players may question the purpose of a particular activity or athletic endeavor, they are required to go along, to play their part as a member of the team.
3. The only thing I would question is whether the Chief has truly "unplugged" himself from the control of Big Nurse, or whether as a patient in this mental institution, he is still trapped.