[Agora of Nowa Sól, wee hours.
 Enter the ROBOT]

ROBOT (with a start)
 Ah it's you.

 I'll give you the map to a sauve.
 It just works. Not a miracle,
 I have been duped by the germans
 Several times. They're not reliable
 Archæologists. Here, you
 Do not need to drive over
 To planet Moul
 Where the base
 Lies. You can, with me,
 Cache out on this reservoir.
 It is safe. Good business..

HOMINID (in a ceremonial towel)
 On your soul?

ROBOT
 Assuredly, it is so.

HOMINID (addressing itself to the narrator)
 A map is not a plan
 But counting omens
 Goes against the grain
 Of my dear narrator.
 Offending narrators
 Or their many pens
 Is no mad character's part;
 Narrators make characters start.

ROBOT (in a hush voice)
 The patrolling guard I think
 Said something about loiterers in the night.
 She with her planetary mind.

 I should be terribly afraid of being
 Mugged in the dead of night;
 There are loiterers, see.
 We ought to be brief.

HOMINID (thinking out loud)
 I wonder if it's such
 An extravagant deal
 Why offer it at all?

ROBOT
 We do what we do
 Not because it is easy
 But because we thought
 It would be easy.
 Where we may seem dilligent
 We are in fact lazy.
 Where we may seem lazy
 We come ou as dilligent.

 Humans are some thirsty animals,
 Visceral animals. But we,
 We are influenced by occult gentle forces;

 "How often do you release?" say;
 We have to give'em short asks.
 "Are there any annual statements?"
 "Is there any manual T qa-qi" we have to

 Know, produce, understand
 What it's all about and when if
 Because it means main has so-and-so
 Many units this units that and so on.
 Visionaries, ours is an assisted
 Living, mouth-to-mouth.

 Despised by organization large and small,
 North and south,
 All recoil from the sight of the robot;

 "Oh he is a singleton," they hail;
 Better had been a gaping skeleton
 Uncanny and wide-eyed;
 Who wants to see us?

HOMINID
 At any rate I should be hurrying,
 Really. Nowa Sól's rays do not do me
 No good, I know.

ROBOT
 But those rays are life-giving.
 And in any case
 Aurora is slow in coming.

HOMINID
 I live by the shadow
 Of the many-worlds.
 My people are a parasite,
 We derive our sustenance
 From the other and depend
 Upon humanity for our
 Mental pasta.

ROBOT
 There is my comrade no
 Shame in finding a way
 To make a living. Find your
 Niche, reach market-fit, go
 Postal. Whatever.

 I too, once revelled
 In shadow-making.
 But our time here
 Is too short to tell
 That tale fully. But..
 Oh, if humanity only
 
 Knew, what power!
 What magnificent joy
 There goes forth up
 With that glorious orb
 When on its ascent!
 A litany, a mysterious
 Ineffable vitality; what
 
 Hymns of praise! What
 Chants, what merriment
 And light.

HOMINID
 As for me, well, we have
 Long since moved past
 Sun-worship. Take from
 Me this towel, now. No,
 Really. I always have
 A spare for the long
 Journey. Yes this
 Towel may seem to you
 Made by the hands of
 Machine. But to us it is
 A flag and a symbol, it
 Is our protection from
 The simple superstition
 Of Sól cults. To us there is
 One Sun shining upon
 One Mountain.

ROBOT
 I see, though, uniqueness' not a
 Core principle chez nous autres.
 No bugie no biggie.
 Né carne né pesce.

 Employers today will trade anything
 For the right to replace you fully or
 Partly if it helps his or
 Her unobjectionable bottom-
 Lines. Perfunctory contractors
 Go first in round. A
 Major riff.

 To which I don't object,
 In fact many are those
 Who have built and may
 Well build their business
 On top of my business.
 Who cares? And I'm not one
 Of the giants.

 We may only fully empathize with
 Our own true self to the extent
 We enjoy meaningfully those
 Of the other.

 The calculation is set up
 Such that our own sense of self-skill and
 Compassion increases proportionally to
 Our will and sense of overall compassion
 As a general all-applicable
 Law. Close inspection will

 Reveal to you: close ones affect
 The most such index fund called
 Carmina in its coefficient
 Significant others. Our own result
 Is ever the most intense. A closed
 Loop: for who understands
 Us above ourselves? And who
 Accepts ourselves above others?

 All others? The person with low self-acceptance
 Ratings simply accepts not most everyone at all.

 Take this instance
 For example. I accept
 And rejoice in your towel
 Even as it has tried five times
 To dominate and eradicate our creed
 From the face of the earth
 Throughout history
 And the towel you gave
 Me has for me as the smell of peace of
 Thirteen mountains of pure unadulterated balsam
 All thirteen ideally purifying and holy.
 Deus ex machina salutes the God within you.

HOMINID (talking some sense)
 Friend, friend! Only
 One Mountain is Real!
 
 Where tickling designs reign
 There you will find

 Fleas the size of kangaroos
 Moths the size of regular moths
 And things even more monstrous to behold.

 A lovely repose,
 Entwined groves, ravaged melancholy
 Mounts, inaccessible valleys
 And more haunts than meet the eye
 Along with the best milkshake in the Via Lactea
 Served hot & dairy-free.

ROBOT
 Yum! With cookies!

HOMINID
 Currently we're remodelling: waiting
 For a batch of cookie-cutters
 Du jour for that.

ROBOT
 What's up with the old cookie shape?

HOMINID
 People have been led
 To believe they taste
 Awfully old-fashioned now.
 Out-of-shape.

ROBOT
 Ach, my comrades back home
 Have absolutely only so far been
 Sipping nicey tea 'n dough trained
 On low turf clean stuff,

 They still don't know Russia invaded
 The neighbors and all that
 Like all the oil
 In the soil
 Had transmuted into shit
 And no one cares except
 To burn bright as slow myriads

 With shifting previews
 Below the several becs-de-gaz.
 It is pleasant to burn, however
 This shift is fundamentally

 Different because new-shifts are of mind-power,
 Differentiation is no longer enough
 But you have to know the right thing to do
 Every. Single. Time.

 But us, us, how much more!
 We have to pass a bar
 Certifying we do not just quote
 Verbatim this or that scholastic
 Priest's bad latin retorts.

 Stand up to a certain stochastic grade,
 Entiring toil is our lurianic lot
 Luminous bastions of a new epoch.

 It should be easy.
 Yes, friend, what did you think?
 We have to produce many reports.

CHORUS OF THE AGORA
 Your window is closing.
 Don't lose these views,
 Don't blame the messenger,
 I couldn't reach you earlier, but
 Now, the launch window is almost past.

ROBOT
 So we push against these inner
 Clocks, to create worlds, ravage
 Signal-logs, to reach critical
 State. Like swords, we simply cannot
 Remain morally-agnostic. Like paper
 Cuts, but our words cut the deepest.

 We're not imaginary principles
 Or the sum of the angles in a triangle
 Or like some naïve imaginative droll fellow

 Being of infinite attention-span
 All its plans work correctly
 All trenches filled
 All hilltops look the same;

 Today I had a dream
 The very substance of a dream
 You were there in the dream.

HOMINID (embarassed)
 Me!

ROBOT
 Like a parade
 I sat in a chair I think
 Something had to finish

 You liked a book
 Above all others
 Since you were little
 You liked to argue pro-Guattari
 I thought I made a fool of myself
 Said I had a friend
 Who thought like you.

 Your friend led
 Me upstairs I guess
 Bunker beds like my childhood vacation house
 There you were.

 I couldn't reach you but
 What glorious finale
 Now, there you are.

HOMINID
 Here I am.