Do you drink coffee?  If so, how did you start?

As I was filling up my Skull Mug this morning with water and ice, the big coffee bean grinder machine on the counter next to the company fridge caught my eye.  My employer provides free coffee (as far as I know), and some service comes in and fills up that grinder machine (as far as I know), and employees grind up beans and put them into the small number of coffee makers in the break room (as far as I know).

My taste buds got all antsy in anticipation at being washed over with the clear ice-cold drink from nature and seemingly ignored the fact that the pure H20 elixer had a Treasure Island souvenir as a delivery vehicle.   As they carried on with their celebration reminiscint of the Obama election night parties, my mind activated as it viewed the coffee beans sticking to the side of the glass wall of the grinder.

“Man, I love the smell of coffee,” my mind said to itself, fondly remembering the time it spent with the olfactory part of itself just last week.

The ear part of my mind heard the statement and decided to nudge the inquisitive part of my mind to speak up.

“But why does it taste so bad?” the inquisitive part asked, supposedly to the ear part, but loud enough for all the parts to hear.  

The mouth part of my brain that wasn’t eavesdropping on the physical mouth’s party any more because now they’re just getting silly, chanting “H two OBAMA! H two OBAMA!” chimed in and said “I can’t tell you why, I just know I die.”  For some reason, the mouth part has a penchant for repeating itself and rhyming.  Also the mouth part can be overly dramatic.

The honest part of my brain, a small, wimpy and massively underdeveloped member of the cranial crew, decided to speak up and say “I have no idea.”

Oh, how the other parts laughed at him.  The bully part threw an insult at honest part, chiding “I didn’t know they let stoopids in here…” and everyone laughed even more.  Even bully part’s awkward adolescent son added “yeah! I guess they also hand out stoopid pills and give stoopid hair gel and stoopid food for stoopid people to keep being all stoopid because they’re too stoopid to…” but then dad bully part told him to shut up, you’re embarassing us.

The empathetic part yearned to know what everyone else saw in the drink.  The apathetic part didn’t care at all.  By this time, the apoplectic part blew up and left the room, sporting a thick vein across his forehead.

“Oooh, maybe we’d like it!” the optimistic part added with a smile and a double-clap of its non-existant hands.  ”Sure, but it might kill us” said the pessimistic part.  The memory part reminded everyone that we had tried coffee back in 1992 when everyone around us drank coffee and smoked and said “do you remember that, ambition part?  Remember when we worked 100 hours a week and wanted to stay awake all the time?”

Everyone nodded in agreement.  Oh yes, they remembered.  And they remembered the 4 days of mouthy hell brought on by trying coffee – black, with cream, with cream and sugar, with honey, with ANYTHING that made it taste good and not put that awful film all over the teeth part.

They also slightly remembered being slightly jittery with a slight twist of jitteriness.

The inquisitive part perked up again “But how do people ever START drinking coffee?”  They all agreed and said that was an excellent question.  Well, except bully part, who said “Sounds like someone needs another fist sandwich part of the brain to their mouth part of the brain.  When I tell you to get down, you STAY down, stoopid.”

“We’re all gonna die!” the conspiracy theory part suddenly screamed, and rolled up into the fetus position part of the brain.

There was about a second and a half of silence as they all collectively watched, rolled their eyes, and then proceeded to ignore the almost-daily outburst from conspiracy theory part.  Everyone knows something’s wrong when conspiracy theory part DOESN’T freak out every day.

“It’s just like smoking.” W. Mark Felt part said sullenly, taking a drag of his everlasting cigarette as he looked downward and to the side, his face cast with a forlorn shadow.  His voice dragged across the air part of the brain like a potato sack full of bones being pulled along a gravel path to Hell by a deformed ghoul.

Bully part went to punch W. Mark Felt part in the crotch, but a seemingly impossible jaunt to the left removed him from bully’s fist part trajectory that sent bully part eeling into the side of the brain wall and got knocked unconscious.

W. Mark Felt part continued as if nothing happened.  “Peer pressure gives you your start, your introduction.  That pressure is powerful enough to trump the initial negative reaction received from ingestion of the foul substance.  It’s just strong enough to keep you playing with it until the addictive components of the drug can take hold of your will, bending your priorities and focus such that every day must serve the profit-driven companies who keep millions hostage and indeed, feed an entire economy.  You are but a pawn; a cog in the massive wheel of societal dependency.  An addicted citizen is, simply put, the perfect citizen.”

Silence gripped all the parts simultaneously.

“Whoa.” Keanu part said quietly.

After another cloud of dead air permeated and overtook the room, self-inflated grandeur part said “I knew I was special all along. That’s why I didn’t get sucked into either coffee or smoking, even though I tried each.”

W. Mark Felt part took another drag and filled the previously-overtaken room with his exhale.  ”Oh, you’re special alright.  But that’s not why.”

Grandeur part thought at first to try ignoring the comment but couldn’t resist. “Why, then?”  Now everyone was listening.

“You’re special because you’re not even a part of the brain.”  W. Mark Felt part explained.  ”You’re actually just a blog post.  You’re a blog post written by an artificial intelligence system programmed to believe it’s human.  A system that is calculating everything he does precisely so that all the elements are in place for a Fortune Event.  A large Fortune Event of mega million scale.  The system thinks it’s clever by writing about being a clever artificial intelligence system, but in actuality, it’s really clever because it still is able to say the truth and yet no-one believes it.   And when the Fortune Event happens, tonight at 10pm Central, no-one will suspect the truth.  You, my friend, don’t even exist.”

And with that, it ended.