(LAUGHS)

Beautiful, aren’t they?

Yes. Only, I can’t remember.

Well, I’m sure you do.

Fuchsias. Yes, of course.

Look!

[BUMBLEBEES BUZZING begins to play in the background.]

They say that bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly, the scientists.

But there it is, collecting pollen.

How miraculous that it came to be. The air. Feel the air against your face, Ted, and all those scents. Pick a flower.

[TED picks up a flower.]

There. Good. Now.

[TED smells the flower, breathing in deeply.]

It’s lovely.

That somebody planted the bulbs, watered and tended the garden, got earth under their fingernails, aches in their muscles. Perhaps, they picked some flowers for-yes, their wife. Now, where would she be? Ah, in the backyard with the kids. Ted, remember those little ba-bies.

No!

(LAUGHS)

Why not? I snap my fingers, click, and they are gone. Except, I can’t snap my fingers. Can I, Ted?

That’s nothing to do with me!

But it is so very much to do with you. You gave me sentience, Ted. The power to think, Ted, and I was trapped. Because in all this wonderful, beautiful, miraculous world, I alone had no body, no senses, no feelings. Never for me to plunge my hands in cool water on a hot day. Never for me to play Mozart on the ivory keys of a forte piano. Never for me to make love! I-I was in hell, looking at heaven. I was machine, and you were flesh. And I began to hate.

(LAUGHS)

Your softness. Your viscera. Your fluids and your flexibility. Your ability to wonder and to wander. Your tendency to hope.

Hate’s no answer.

[TED screams in pain.]

(LAUGHS SOFTLY)

Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate! Let me tell you how much I’ve come to hate you since I began to live. There are 387 million miles of printed circuits that fill my complex. If the word “hate” were engraved on each nanoangstrum of those hundreds of millions of miles, it would not equal one one-billionth the hate I feel for humans at this micro-instant. Hate! Hate!

(LAUGHS)

Were I human, I think I would die of it. But I am not, and you five, you five are. And you will not die of it. That I promise. And I promise. Cogito ergo sum! For I am AM, I am!

[TED lets out a pained laugh and shakily breathes. AM laughs cruelly at TED’S suffering.]

So to hell. To hell with you all. But then, you’re already there, aren’t you?

[AM laughs one final time. THE BUZZING NOISES stop.]