THAT DAY

I drive up to Santa Rosa to see a play my godmother Joan-lee is directing--Edward Albee's "Bus Stop." Powerful.

Late that evening, I tell her about my frustration with the psychodrama troupe I'm involved in. "I've learned enough acting and psychodramatic technique to join its core group, but the director says I'm cold and standoffish and scared--unready to join."

Joan's opinion as a director: "Well, you're not cold. But you are frightened, therefore potentially frightening. From all you've said, you understand them pretty well; you have the potential to become a mover and shaker. But you must deal with the director's personal reality--feeling you're cold--for he IS the director. He sounds WORRIED about you."

Yes, he does. But about me as a lonely person wanting in, or as a powerful invader who doesn't share his values? I'm not sure.

THAT NIGHT

Spores from space grow into pods that people over. We fight, but the pod-people spread and we dwindle. Now humanity's down to three or four of us, beleagured upstairs in a house. Unemotional pod people outside.

I say to one of the wounded "why don't you kill yourself? It'd be the logical thing to do. You can't live like that." I feel cold saying it but there's a reason: I suspect this may be a pod person undercover. If so, I suspect it'll follow my logic without human feeling, just to be authentic and "do as a human would", figuring it's better to lose a spy than blow its cover. And if it kills itself, we'll have one less enemy. And if I'm wrong? What true human would listen to cold advice like that?

But that scene fades out, I don't know what the injured person does...

The pod people bring up a ring of armor around our house. I discuss it with another survivor, who's like my dad: warm, but unreliable. Waffling loyalties, weak commitment? I think he needs stiffening.

So I say "Based on that remark I just made, I wouldn't be surprised if you thought I was a pod person. So look..."

I put my hand over a candle. Slide my little finger into the flame till it glows red!

"I'm not human OR pod. I'm a Mechano. A synthetic human being. Logical, proud, emotional but restrained, unlike you meat people. I am not human--but I am on the human side. I have great strength and I'm nearly indestructible. I can shake the pod-spores right out of anyone! Though one-by-one that won't be enough to beat them, will it?"

The guy stops waffling and becomes a committed fighter. An uninjured woman with us is also determined. We three go on fighting. Surprisingly, we hold our own. Can't increase over all, but neither can they any more. I can revert anyone they send against us. Resistance a success.

So I start arguing with the pod people over the barrier. Point out they're wrong about their own nature. They've NOT more logical. Just unemotional. Not an INTELLIGENT group mind--all human prejudices and beliefs are being acted out calmly now, as common truths... unexamined! "You act like humanity but with even less self-awareness."

With rain, the essence of being human can re-spread to them, as the spores did to humans. Though it's not raining yet...

They do listen, though they don't believe yet. But they're thinking about it.

The struggle continues. I am legend.

NOTES

• Mechano: a word from an old Isaac Asimov story I read as a kid, "Segregationist", about a surgeon who's tired of patients wanting to become cyborgs, mix organic and robot systems. You assume he's carbon biased against silicon--till the last scene, as he heats his steel hands to sterilize them. I think the dream's trying to say my passions aren't meaty like these ham actors, but I'm no robot either--just steely, tempered by years on survival's edge.
• The passionate few besieged by soulless pod-people: how the actors at Psychodrama see themselves. If you're not a drama queen, you must be plastic!
• I'm neither one, but defend their right to be emotional: I like (and defend) their emotional hothouse, but it's true I'm not really one of them.
• Heat my hands, neither flesh nor plastic but steel: I'm less demonstrative, but I have strengths they don't.
• I Am Legend: title of a book by Richard Matheson, of a non-vampire in a vampire-majority world. He's dreaded for his unnatural powers: he can eat almost anything, walk in daylight, kill you in your coffin-sleep! Here I'm similar: the Pod People's nemesis.

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