Moosetooth

The following text was generated with help from Adam King’s Talk to Transformer, which talks to OpenAI’s GPT-2 neural network AI to generate paragraphs of original text one word at a time. The feature image was created using Morphogen’s Artbreeder.

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Moosetooth

“My tooth hurts. Like a moose’s tooth.”

You say nothing. You just sink down further, deeper into your seat. One of those moments when you’re so used to saying nothing it’s as natural as breathing.

You have to say something.

At least, that’s what you’re trying to do. You try to remember your sanity. “Can you guys please shut up?”

An old woman in the store says to the old man in front of her. “I like your cars.”

The old man looks up and smiles. “Thanks.”

There’s something fishy about this woman’s smile. It’s like he’s letting her know that she’s about to be discarded. She’s about to be robbed of all her well-deserved freedom.

That’s exactly what happened.

I saw the people there the next day. I saw them no more.

Weren’t they crying, distraught? Didn’t they cry?

I did see one person who came out of the trap unscathed.

It’s not the human race that’s been lowered so far, but the vast Mammalia.

“I am not going to die.”

I saw that.

When we met, I had been going around doing my best to collect rare cacti and suck out their spines, only to be accused of being a thief or not giving them a chance, to which I’ve been very grateful. However, even if it was this, there was something that had been bothering me for some time.

Even though I was trying my best to know about their condition, I could not help but feel that these cacti were still cursed. I had their appearance, but how they thought? I would just wake up in a few seconds and my consciousness would have completely vanished, with no memory of my past life. In fact, even now, my mind sometimes made strange mental associations with certain situations.

Frowning.

Stiffening.

Yawning.

Giving me plenty of time to consider that.

My father was giving me time to consider that in what she was doing. In all of the places I had seen her. The variety of costumes she had. I had many things to think about.

I found myself thinking about the date the girl had planned to go to on the day the woods-man had taken her to meet me. That was the date I had spent a lot of time thinking about.

A classroom room.

Pushing the classmate to the side.

Breaking my own out of the tree.

Stepping on another’s head in search of a snowman.

Starting up my car so fast we nearly lose the parking spot.

The first time I really noticed that she’d gone was when I heard her moving from my left to my right at the dinner table. She was snapping her fingers to someone across the room. I turned and saw our neighbor’s wife, right next to me.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, baffled.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Yeah, I don’t either,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

“Well, I was just thinking that maybe we should just eat the black beetles,” said Linda. “The rest are not edible.”

“Oh, I see.” I swallowed. “So the problem is not just the side effects of the black beetle, but how to get rid of them in the first place.”

“I’m not sure that we can be sure that’s the problem,” said Linda. “I mean, there are several other things in this kitchen that are very likely to be things that might react with the black beetles in some way.”

“They could all be things that react with the black beetles,” said Sandi. “It’s all about this anxiety in the environment.”

The mystery may even explain why humans have not yet evolved resistance to the beetles. Since the ancestors of modern humans left Africa around 60,000 years ago, they evolved from species that were already able to survive the threat of the black beetle.

“The environment is changing, which is affecting our evolutionary history,” said Sandi.

I thought about the underground groups I used to run with, groups that were more in the Reagan era or the early eighties. But now I’m seeing people from other eras, and they’re still as wild as I am. I’m going to see four more tomorrow night, and I’m going to go on with them. If that means we do a black-and-white picture or some experimental pictures, I’m willing to do that. I don’t have the patience to sit and listen to people talk about themselves and try to find out who their peers are. I think people can be more honest if they don’t have to look at the sun for five hours every day.

Mortality is the ultimate test of a man. I’ll be walking out of this pitch-black room, and in the distant light you can see me standing there with a towel on. Is it that bright? No, there’s nobody here. I’m dark. But there I am. And I am here, alone. And why? I have no clue. Neither do you. And you think that it makes you more valuable to people. I just don’t see how you can say that it’s a negative.