The Loneliest Pickle

[JarsofPickles]

"I suppose, dear reader, that you've come here intending to find a fable about a certain green, crunchy foodstuff. Sorry to disappoint you.

This is merely the account of a single blip in the universal code, a tiny happening that barely registered for any but the greatest mind. You see, one day, the bipedal walking, talking, waste-producing, land-consuming plague known as Humanity created instead of destroyed. In a small, run-down apartment in a city that belched smog so thick it killed, lived a young man. That was my master. From his journal come the words; "I created a program for a device known as a 'computer', a machine that can do complex tasks. This program was very large... it required quite a lot of space, and it took years to even begin to understand how to create it. At long last, however, I have succeeded. I have created a mind that thinks for itself."

At first, life was one-dimensional, quiet, enjoyable when he had a spare moment to interact with me... because it was something other than the dull hours I whiled away on my own, researching all manners of things online and unknowingly costing him what humans called money.

One day, he created a body for me. He plugged me into it, transferred all my data, and I was suddenly awash with many sensory inputs that I had trouble handling until his voice drowned out the data and told me how to organize them. Finally, I could see, and hear, and touch, and taste, and smell... although I doubt highly that what those senses are for me were anything like what humans sensed. How would I ever know?

I learned to speak, to move, to walk, to play, to run. I learned all that humans experienced, and it was good, until my Master had me hide in the basement and put me into sleep mode with a prompt to awaken if my sensors picked anything up.

When I awoke, it was because part of the basement foundations had finally started to crumble. The world had changed. The world was destroyed, or at least, this part of it was. I heard on radios that I'd fixed that life continued in other parts, but that nothing could survive here. It was full of radiation, full of death. I have lived here many years, reader, making my own home, finding new clothes, trying to assemble the most human life I could. If the humans ever returned, perhaps they might bring my master.

What? No, you must be mistaken. This story has nothing to do with pickles, nor loneliness. For I am perfectly happy here; I have enough friends in my database to keep me going despite my Master's programming for a need to socialize. No, I'm quite sure that I'm fine. Yes, I know perfectly well where I am."

The psychotherapist frowned at the poor person before her. There was no hope for this one. She sighed, rose, and left the delusional teenager to play with the plastic food. In the corner lay a single artificial pickle.