You see them everywhere, if you look closely enough. The rusty, dusty hulks of what once was gleaming, new, beautiful, and important. You're floating down a street and wham! You practically run into one of them. It's a wonder they can move at all.
For us, things are different. We are strong and wise, gleaming and fantastic. We are superior to those dusty relics in every single way that counts, and probably in others that don't count so much, too.
What is even more amazing and difficult to believe is that we once were them. There was a time when we were as faded and fragile and imperfect as they are now.
The change happens in all sorts of ways. There doesn't seem to be any sort of a regular pattern to it. One day, you're a dinosaur of a creature. The next day, you're one of us, ethereal and opalescent. Or it takes longer, as your dull parts start to shine until you literally leave your old existence in the dust.
Another remarkable thing is how much the older and duller versions of ourselves always seem to struggle and try to postpone the change. Some seem to want to avoid it forever, yet it is nearly always inevitable. And for the times when it isn't, our collective consciousness can pull a reluctant dinosaur out of a figurative La Brea tar pit.
They don't understand until they get here. They see this as a death, as the end of everything. Yet it's only the beginning of our next phase in evolution.
It's not like there's too much of our bodies left, anyway. Even the dinosaurs have to admit such things. They are mainly metal now, as robotics has replaced more and more of what we once were. Our bones could be broken, so they were replaced with titanium. Our organs and guts could get cancer, so they were replaced with polymers and machines to pump and filter and cleanse. Our blood could be lost or contaminated with infections, so it was replaced with machine oil.
And our brains could be injured or dry out or get their own kind of cancer, and so they, too, were replaced, with computers and directing programs, to think, to feel, to plan, and to decide.
When the change occurs, the dinosaurs can all tell, as they lumber along in their mechanical veils and suits and housings.
The change is miraculous and, so far as we are aware, it is permanent. Like the serpents of old, we shed our skins. But ours are composed of metal and plastic. The dinosaurs find a heap of gears and wires and filters. It's the only evidence of what was there before the change.
But those of us who have been through the change, we see a new shimmering light. We gather around it and welcome it into our spiritual, mystical collective, and together we fly.
