Friday, February 1, 2013

Death by Robot

So this is a weird blog post, but I honestly can't think about (not "of," i mean this actually consumes my entire thought right now) anything else. In a recent electronic music song called "Death by Robot," the artist Feed Me tells the greatest story of the end of days that I've ever heard. It is a science fiction myth about the apocalypse. Honestly it's just the way it has to end. Here's the first verse:

Newsflash! Newsflash!
They say robots are coming to tear us apart.
They'll be landing on earth tomorrow,
so we better get a gun and start.

No time to leave our cities;
Take a place to fight for setting sun.
As the city around us burns,
We'll be taking them out one by one.

This is our last plans on the planet earth. We think we got this, and that with our guns we can take the robots in one on one combat. This is a beautiful part of humanity; we are willing to risk it all to take on those who would ruin everything we have worked for, and we are confident that if we do our best and all fight together that we have a pretty good shot at coming out on top. The second verse destroys that optimism. Turns out, this is the way the world ends. The verse goes like this:

Mayday! Mayday!
A message to anyone still left alive:
Our defenses won't last much longer,
But to the end we'll put up a good fight!

No time for regrets now,
Grab your gun and dig into the front line.
As the walls begin to rumble,
We'll be giving you the planet with our lives.

Then the last line gets really distorted out, the snare drum's tempo thunders out of control, then everything is brought back and down to only the vocals (which are all done in a robot voice) and the last line repeats. Then the beat drops. It's like getting shot in the gut with sadness, but the tears you feel coming are more like tears of joy. The song gives us the ending we want, the ending we need. The likelyhood that we will simply destroy our own planet and live forever (if we do live) in regret is to sad to bear, but if robots came to exterminate the human race, then we would be able to breathe our last breath defending the planet we loved. We would be dying so that we would not have to see our world overrun with non-organic tyranny. Honestly I can't even think of anything more noble than to die in the name of our home planet, and beyond that life itself. It's the chance of an eternity, and even though the thought of robots destroying everything we love and hold dear, this ending has dignity and beauty in a time when we are beginning to suspect that we will probably just go out with a self-inflicted wimper. Luckily, Feed Me's true story, which he no doubt had to break the space time continuum and travel millions of years ago into the future to bring us, is how it is going to end, so our suspicions are baseless.