Technology Eats Itself

By John Rickel

A fictional account of the worlds oldest man life from 1905 until 2013. The main character is born in Vienna, Austria and is one of four siblings. Loving parents and childhood friends with both Anne Freud and Viktor Frankl. Coming of age in Nazi Germany as a gay lad who meets his loving partner and is whisk away with life. The story was inspired by a truthful Newspaper Headline: June 13, 2013 1:55 a.m. “World’s oldest person, and man ever, dies at 116.” Jiroemon Kimura of Japan. The story deals with our existential materialistic reality of time and all of ours eventual passing i.e. death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483510514

Book preview

–Anonymous

Part One

Headline:

June 13, 2013 1:55 a.m.

World’s oldest person, and man ever, dies at 116.

Jiroemon Kimura of Japan was a personal friend of mine and despite the glamourized sensationalism that the media projected on my pal for surviving as long as he had, he considered it a double-edge sword. This relationship did span some seventy odd years. Despite neither of us being capable of speaking the other’s native tongue; even still synchronism would not be lost on our drawn kindred spirits. Neither of us were strangers to the crisis that man bestows upon himself, though, we both did love to laugh and drink. And that we did in mass quantity while in the presence of the other. I would dare to say not too many Homo sapiens born before World War I were exempt to the vile self-sabotaging stoicism that our species implemented upon each other, or were unaware of some sort of omnipresent trepidation.

In the year nineteen hundred and five I was born in Vienna Austria to Alexander and Emmalina Haugwitz. Eight years before my birth Jiroemon was born in Japan about five thousand six hundred and eighty-eight miles, or nine thousand one hundred and fifty-five kilometers, give or take a few, away from me.

Who would have ever thought I would have met a man that far from the shores of my own mother’s teat? Especially while considering the state of the world in those times.

Within miles of our Motherlands and unbeknownst to us both Jiroeman and I seemed bonded together by the magnetism of a thin curious thread of chance throughout a period that would last a little more than seven decades.

I am more times than not envious of the peaceful workings of insects over the embarrassment that tsunamis my psyche with the harsh realities and the horrifying track record of our human history, which epitomizes how we are the most savage critters this planet has ever bred.

Oh, the troubled shores souls travel.

The shenanigans of humanity were something that both Jiroemon and I would laugh over on more than one occasion, though, this tale is not solely devoted to him, nor, I reckon to myself. Now at one hundred and eight years old here in Palm Springs, California nine thousand seven hundred and eighty miles from my birthplace in Vienna, I lay in a deep unrelenting cold grip of death literally half the man I used to be.

I do hope that you humans bridge the gap sooner rather than later. Our species innate propulsion to drive towards life only long enough to drive it right back out makes me nostalgic for one last stroll through The Museum of Tolerance.

The bacteria between the years couldn’t be split by tears. Kept from springing upright with fish scales and, or furry ears. Now let us drop these weapons and speak of shores that aren’t near and burrow our head like brothers in these pints of beers.

In the spring of nineteen hundred and fifty-six while I was pursuing inebriation at the Phoenix Jazz Club in Kansas City—on business—a sloshed trumpeter, quite marooned himself, spoke this statement to me, which even in death is hard to shake off.

As a child my mother spoke fluently in her loving, yet stern tongue to me and my two younger and one older siblings (that shall remain non-descript at this juncture) two very poignant truths.

First, and mother’s favorite was: If you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all. Secondly, though not without the same directive tone: Never lose your sense of humor.

Both these wise statements have cleansed my hands of the religious and cultural divides created between man and her metaphysical meanderings passed down throughout the centuries and that have been quarreled over by philosophers time immemorial. Why waste our time?

In hindsight, I did seemingly have adverse life intentions, not altogether similar, or unlike, one of my childhood heroes: Adolf Hitler; who was then at the time of my birth, merely, a troubled sixteen year old.

Like some human beings I was able to distinctly recall how shockingly cold, bloody, brutal, and foreign my initiation into this life was.

I won!

Regardless to what may come I was the winner of a hard fought war between us and two to six hundred million other not so lucky foes. The sperm, God bless me, was received by a healthy egg. I was born a winner. As incongruent as it may seem I would have triumphantly forgone that victory and never graced the womb to embrace the tomb; bypassing all of the gifts consciousness has to offer us.

Hindsight being the sound of one hand clapping as Confucius dolls out the lashings, which will never solve life’s riddle, however, may it find you at least still laughing.

This was my loving pub contribution to all regularly seen familiar faces after years of living and travel. Feel free to take it as your own. I no longer need anything now.

I killed on the way in. I killed while I was here. I was killed on my way out, murdered. The dying, yet again, was left for another to shoulder.

In death, I can still feel the piercing searing molten death elixir that was distributed through the syringe my nurse dosed me with to annihilate my aged and mutilated human body.

End the cycle and the cycle will continue. How long can bacteria like us evolve? Isn’t disease, famine, war, and death all just a blessing in disguise?

For the record and justly enough, my exit was as cruel, though, less confusing than my entry. I did at least see it coming. I digress.

Our human ancestors have known much and distributed more abuse than any other positive emotion known to our species. The linchpin of time would soon again give way to escalated slaughter and revolutionary propaganda anew.

Upon the shoulders of Hitler, and still reeling from its bruised pride and losses from the First World War, the German people were blood thirsty, vengeful and easy fodder for a somaticized fascist regime and were easily fuelled and reinvigorated by any distraction from the Great Depression that was devastating millions.

We were a nation that was soon to bring on all the recapitulated horrors of a despotic tyrannical totalitarianism ideology could muster. Imagine the power and output of so many bruised and misguided human egos—ahh glorious history!

There is no new thought, though; our human minds seem to somehow create new methods of sadomasochistic forms of technology that seem always to evolve more rapidly than our consciousness. I am not sure how long we have had the capabilities of not only destroying our planet but our universe—galaxy.

Maybe this is just plain old evolution unfolding; destruction has merely been interwoven with the inception of our existence, hence our solar system formed some nearly five billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of a giant molecular cloud.

Because of my precious self-absorbed existence the world at this time just revealed more irony and grandeur to which man’s entrepreneurial spirit seemed only destined and driven to doom itself; every continuous breath greedily infused with suffering that demands exploitation of the weak thereby manufacturing those very elements of distraction created by the cruel ruling majority that are exempt from their own self-righteous agendas and never seem to fall short of resources, revealing how human malevolence knows no bounds.

My generation curiously enough would be masked with a myriad of stark papier-mâché malevolent ideologies such as nationalism, idealism, and you may just as well add water along with the kitchen sink to any form of—ism—you so desire, to justify the end. Oh, and don’t forget the grotesque repercussions of our ability of imagination to be mystified by ritual, and religion.

It didn’t take a whole lot of reading, guidance, or specific tutelage to realize the vicious rate at which human self-annihilation continued on in a consistent normalized trajectory throughout history. From the beginning of our species self-sabotaging existence an inherent pandemic biological drive, can be easily cross-referenced with nothing more than a brief gander at our aberrant history. Ironically humans inherent manipulative genetic power struggle has created the perfect prison to epitomize and celebrate our lunacy; life. We just can’t seem to get away from ourselves.

For those who are unable to recall the alleged first human war that presumably occurred in roughly the twenty-seventh century before Christ’s birth (as if it isn’t ridiculous to hang time on the cross of a bearded fellow) it was between Sumer (modern Iraq) and Elam (a region that is now part of Iran); may we all too soon forget that human life more than likely evolved simply from