Life in a Hi-Tech Burrow

Life in a Hi-Tech Burrow

After having finished his work at the internet,
Mr.  Rejuvebot peeped out through the peep-hole in the door;
Viewed the pall of acidulous smog on the Metropolis
And felt safe within his burrow.
He heaved a measured sigh out of his synthetic lungs
And asked his fleshy-fibred She-robot called Mona Lisa to enliven him.
As desired, she massaged him, swabbed his body with a perfume and
Adjusted his heart beats and the insulin level.
On time, his dinner was spooned out to him in a capsule.
Mr. Rejuvebot had yet to go miles before Mona Lisa would lull him to sleep.
At the flicker of his eye, the screen flashed
And the chip behind his neck tallied the graphs.
Then he did some shopping through the mobile
And had a glimpse of the ancient art.
But when he was having a furtive look at the porn,
Mona Lisa snorted and snuffed it out.
The She-robot knew well that he was too brittle to relish juicy thoughts.
Now Mr. Rejuvebot craved for Nature;
He turned to a flowerpot and caressed the only flower left there.
The pot had proved worth the water it consumed.
The sole flower was sheer poetry, a rare Wordsworthian luxury!
Soon his mobile rang and he found himself in a business conference;
Thereafter, he attended a social gathering of his la-di-da friends.
His day was not yet over, though he was feeling exhausted.
It was important to be well abreast of the latest election results.
However, the trend gave a nasty jerk to his mitral valve.
Mona Lisa’s glassy eyes were already fixed on him.
The She-robot lost no time.
The cell-sized robotic surgeon, Mona Lisa’s distant cousin,
With nanometer needle, was pressed into service.
An SOS was flashed to the nearest Heart Institute in Space,
Stereoscopic surgery through a satellite did a wonderful job.
Waves, rays and antibodies synchronized,
And within minutes, the signal of “Quite Well” beeped.
Mr. Rejuvebot beamed his thanks and
Corners of Mona Lisa’s cheeks curved upwards.
Mr. Rejuvebot checked the age of the fleshy bag he was in:
“Two hundred and ten!”
Then he consulted his biological clock and mused,
“Was he at the bottom of the barrel?”
His telomere gauge still showed “forty years plus” in the balance.
He signalled his jukebox to skylark his evening;
And within the hologrammatic cube, volumetrically appeared
His wife, happy but a bit stiff;
She had left this planet three decades back
To make room for a bit of freshness here.
Mona Lisa was alluring but was doubly removed from reality.
“How loving and how unselfish his wife had been!”
In the ocean of time, she still existed in some other universe.
But Alas! she had left him alone.
It was no use brooding over the meaning of life.
It had always left him melancholic.
But the distance from despondency to cheerfulness was just a switch away.
To snap out of his melancholy,
He flicked a finger at the Mood Box for a waft of cheerfulness.
Anon, the musical fragrance enlivened his face.
“Brain! Heart! Was there anything else except chemicals?
As for the mind, was it anything except software?
A link between soul and the fleshy brain, perhaps.
But whose finger was writing the Script of Life?
Had the spiritual chip been loaded with a programme?”
Mr. Rejuvebot was lost in the dense fog.
His mind again lurched to philosophy.
Why was he afraid of actually what he was?
“If Soul is unborn, then it must be eternal.
Death is nothing except going back to the realm of the First Cause.
Is the Universe a huge Organism evolving from subtle to gross or vice versa?
Nothing can be bigger than the Supreme , nor can anything be smaller.
All dimensions begin and stop with His will.
Or is Creation passing through expansion and contraction in a cyclic order?”
Mr. Rejuvebot tried to grasp the nucleus of the Whole
But appeared to be reaching nowhere.
He visualized the layers of darkness and he visualized the layers of light;
Both appeared to be fleeing from each other
And yet converging at One Point!
“Is my foot, my hand, my nose, my eye, ‘Me’?
If not, then where lies the real Rejuvebot?
Is life only combination of cells sans a kernel?
What’s it that animates and governs the dead matter and how?
Isn’t each atom a thought aware of itself,
A part of the Universal Consciousness?”
Would he ever be able to wriggle himself out of the confusing depths?
Was he searching without what was already within?
The thought electrified the neurons of his brain
But the flash was again intercepted by the white dark.
He had been permitted to get preserved his cells for his replica.
It was safer to depend upon his DNA
Than to depend upon the invisible Soul.
He couldn’t suffer to be reduced to ashes forever.
But wasn’t his DNA itself divine and spiritual?
Even his ashes would be so.
But he must rise from one of his clones; money was no problem.
He must rise like Phoenix…again from …
Mr. Rejuvebot started dozing fitfully.
Mona Lisa whispered “Good Night!” to him and
As programmed, she lulled him to sleep on time.

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