There is an opossum on the road today. A car
must have hit it and burst it open. The slick, red viscera is spilt all over the
asphalt. Whenever something wet and sticky lands in dirt or grit, I don’t like
it. I don’t like thinking about the dirt sticking to it.
Still, I can’t help but stare in wonder at the
soft technology that is an opossum and is readily apparent in this particular
one. Various tubes and sacks lay around. There are no screws or fasteners that I
can see. Everything seems highly lubricated, though it’s not apparent why. I see
no hard edges that would rub together. The inner workings are soft and squishy,
unlike the insides of human gadgets. And all the operational parts seem to have
been stuffed into a hairy casing like socks and shirts into a laundry bag.
This particular opossum will not be repaired,
I’m afraid. The service technicians we have are very limited. They can fix
broken appendages and do other minor repairs, but really, when the casing is
broken open and the insides spill out, that’s pretty much it. Even now the sun
and the atmosphere are sucking the moisture from what’s left of the opossum,
drying it into something that looks disturbingly like beef jerky. This drying
process makes me think that water is a significant part of the design, though I
can’t imagine why one would use such an unstable substance as a primary building
material.
I have been told, though I haven’t seen it
myself, that opossums are very small at the time they are activated. According
to the story, they pop out of the chassis of a larger opossum. I find something
like that hard to believe, but that’s what I hear. Take it for what it’s worth.
Once they are activated, they move around on
their own, sucking smaller animals and plants into a hole in the front. Some
engine inside converts this matter into opossum stuff, and it gets bigger. At
some point it stops growing but continues collecting matter to be burned
internally to sustain the warmth that is required to keep its inner
parts in good working order.
A certain percentage of opossums are involved
in the further production of their kind using the method I described before. They
will produce a number of new units before they finally break down for good and
are incorporated by other small, furry machines, or if left alone, slowly turn
into dirt by some process that I have yet to divine. No fuss and no muss, as
they say.
I suppose all of this is why I have a hard time
not looking at dead animals, though the experience isn’t exactly pleasant.
They are a wondrous piece of work, are they
not?
rlp
