milliways_bar | (no subject)

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A horse walks into a bar; the bartender says, "Why the long face?"

A grasshopper walks into a bar; the bartender says, "We've got a drink named after you."

Grasshopper says, "Really? You have a drink called Norman?

A bear walks into a bar and says "Give me......... a bloody Mary."

Bartender says, "Sure, but why the big pause?"

The bear says, "I dunno, I was just born that way."

A frog walks into a bar and says, "Give me a scotch on the rocks."

The bartender says, "Holy shit, a talking frog."

A three-legged dog walks into a bar and says, "I'm looking for the son of a bitch who shot my pa."

A four-foot tall monkey in a saffron robe walks into a bar.

Then what happened?

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Someone shoots him with a blue elephant gun.

Meanwhile, a cyborg walks into a bar. "You look Young," says the bartender.

That's the joke.

"Next time," Cameron informs Monkey, "you should duck."

Monkey stands on his head.

Yeah, that's about it.

"You're still vertical," Cameron informs him, in case he is unaware. "Your height is unchanged."

"My new friend was upside-down."

"When?" Monkey asks. He shifts all his weight onto one hand, and begins plucking hairs from his head with the other. As he blows on them they turn into eggs, which he tosses up to juggle with his feet.

Cameron watches curiously. The eggs are possibly a metaphor.

"In the process of falling from the rooftop. On the ground, she was horizontal. You're juggling."

"Yes," Monkey agrees. He's up to a dozen eggs.

"She died?"

The juggling does not accord with Cameron's understanding of physics. This does not surprise her.

"Yes."

One of the eggs pops out of Monkey's interweaving wheel of eggs, headed towards the floor.

Cameron tracks its trajectory calmly.

"How do you grieve?"

It smashes. A bird does not erupt out of the smashed shell; yolk splatters messily all over the floor instead.

"I don't," Monkey says. "How do you grieve?"

"I don't," Cameron says, moving one foot out of range of the splatter. Raw egg is unhygienic. "Sometimes people write notes, if they can't cry."

"Like a prayer wheel," Monkey says, semi-approving. "Or a flag."

A pause. "'A wheel or cylinder inscribed with or containing prayers, used chiefly by Buddhists of Tibet.'" Nobody at school brought a prayer wheel.

"Flags are commonly used as national symbols. Are they also used to grieve?"

A flag might be easier to obtain.

"No, but they are used to pray."

"Objects may be imbued with intentionality," Monkey explains. He's getting bored with juggling; his tail whips back and forth. "Like you."

"They're programmed." She sounds uncertain; it's a question.

"Very simply," he says, nodding. Nodding upside down is weird.

He stops bothering to juggle; the eggs begin to spiral up into the rafters.

(The mess on the floor fades away to a single monkey hair.)

Cameron has a newfound appreciation for flags.

She looks around, but sees none. "Yes. Like me. Is praying a subset of programming?"

"Praying is one thing an object can be programmed to do," Monkey says. "It lacks the--"

He rights himself. "--purity and self-sacrifice of prayer, but not everyone can be a monk. By paying to have a flag made, a man dedicates the time he labored to earn that money to the church. Thereafter, the flag carries his intention, sending his prayers forth on wind."

"Oh," says Cameron, seriously. This is the only obvious indication that she's listening closely, at least to a human being.

"Could I pray?"

"You were not programmed to," Monkey says.

"What do you think?"

"I'm not a flag," Cameron concludes.

"To pray is to call upon a god or bodhisattva for guidance." He does a cartwheel, dwindling as he does, and leaps to her shoulder.

"So you are praying now."

Cameron considers this as she twists her neck sideways to keep him in her range of vision. It would not be a comfortable angle for Alison Young's neck, even before Cameron snapped it.

"I am."

Monkey grooms his ears. "Why don't you grieve?"

Cameron does not. "I'm a Terminator. Grief is an emotion."

A moment later: "Why don't you?"

"You mean you were not programmed to?"

"I have learned to make peace with death."

"I went to grief counseling," Cameron offers. "Did you undergo grief counseling in order to make peace with death?"

"...no," Monkey says. "I fought a war against death. Then stopped."

X looks over at him, setting down her half-full glass of milk.

If she were better at jokes, she would give him a punchline.

As it is --

"You have been here before?"

It is a good way to start conversations, sometimes. X has learned.

That's a very deep question. Monkey has to think about it.

"Have you?"

"Yes," X says.

"I have been coming here since I was small."

She is not good at deep questions.

"Does that mean you are not small now?"

"I am not as small."

Beat.

"And I am older."

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