The treasure

Working on her computer, day after day, was her treasure and her meaning in life. It was the source of her joy and happiness. But after graduating from the online university, which incidentally is recognized as one of the finest online universities in the country, she found herself in a quandary as she sought employment in the marketplace. She was quite employable having achieved remarkable writing prowess in a multitude of disciplines and having mastered the art of the computer on many levels. While she could remain in her apartment making money using her craft and skill and now her degree, she felt the missing ingredient in her life was interaction with real people. So as she filled out employment applications and was contacted by email with frequency and although the job offers were lucrative, she elected, rather courageously, to pursue those positions which required face to face interviews. In most cases, she noted that the best jobs with the most benefits and highest salaries did indeed require a face to face interview.

But she turned down each opportunity due to not being ready for the interview. Facing another human being had become not just a problem, not just an obstacle, but had actually become her identity. People scared her. People were often suspicious or expressive or confusing or unpredictable or indefinable. All the traits that formed her very makeup and her very being were not just hidden but almost negligible.

Finally the right job and the right interview was selected, but the morning she woke up, she had altered and found herself in dire straits. The mirror on the wall revealed what she feared. She had become a strange object with a colorful screen and keys. She was a laptop. She quickly did a search on transformation and altering states and even shapeshifters and discovered a story that was oddly familiar and grossly disturbing by Franz Kafka called Metamorphosis.

As she sat in her chair and searched within herself, unable to move, unable to speak, unable to react, and unable to express, the greatest fear of all began to become obvious. She was contented and had no fear. Her metamorphosis into a laptop had resulted in the loss of emotion of any kind. While fear may not be a desired emotion, it is a human expression of feeling albeit negative. But all emotion had been removed with her altered form.

As the minutes moved into hours, she fell deeper in a cavern of darkness and objectivity--a bottomless void with no real meaning. Her human world was gone and replaced by a machine. Her thoughts became mechanical and her heart and soul became concrete. She was neither happy nor sad, neither scared or courageous, she did not love nor did she hate. She simply existed. She had become what she did. Her parameters were limited to the box in which she found herself. She required no food, lost all bodily functions, and lived only to be what she was--no more and no less.

She had dehumanized her world. The grand and glorious world of human thought, human spirit, creativity, feelings, joy, sorrow, confusion, and unpredictableness had all disappeared. But as she sat and computed, she began to seek release from her captured state. She found the last small but potential tremendous seed of desire to be something different and began to rise out of the murky sea.

As her human shape returned, she smiled and vowed never again to fear human contact. On her way out of the door, she took a quick glance at the computer sitting at the desk, and looked forward to her interview. Henceforth, the object of her obsession, became merely a tool not an end. She forevermore relished each moment with another person and never again lost her humanity. For being a human was the treasure of her life.