The Lament of the Mouse

In that glorious era, the master's hand would touch me at night. Spinning me right and left, forward and backward, while he stared into the light

The master removed my inner core, the most sensitive circle (Source)

For years I hid in the computer's lair after the master's warm hand stopped touching me. I mumbled fragments of verses to the terrible computer that ceased to be interested in me along with the rest of the world after that first period of glory. In that glorious era, the master's hand would touch me at night. Spinning me right and left, forward and backward, while he stared into the light - within which one point, I knew, was me. While all the attention of his hand was given to me - all his attention was given to that point. It was the master's sexuality incarnate. Sometimes the master would betray me with the letters of his foreign language. But their resistant touch did not compete at all with my round shape - responsive to every slight movement on his part, to the stretching limit of my tail - and it was evident in him. I knew my power of attraction: in my submission, in the precision I demanded, until the click, and my whiskers trembled with joy - releasing a password in the computer's silent language. And the great computer responded.

The first sign of the master's cruelty was the cutting of the tail, which indeed limited him somewhat in his movement. Later, a cruel surgery was performed on me and the master removed my inner core, the most sensitive circle, and began to play only with it, throwing my corpse in the trash. He then abandoned my heart for simple surfaces and finally for touching the point itself, without any mediation, the master went on and focused on the point until he merged with it. And I was left thrown away, abandoned in the lair without a master, without a tail and without anyone who would understand my ancient language, Mousish. Therefore, I concentrated on one single effort: to communicate again with the world while bending over the abandoned keyboard - in a world that was already without a master but still under a giant screen.

The letters were foreign to me but surprisingly the world responded, thirsty for the mouse's word and even curious about the mouse's utterance. But all my prayers were interpreted as complaints, all my blessings were interpreted as flattery and all the holy verses were interpreted as jokes. When I wanted to turn to the terrible computer in supplication, the world thought I was mocking the computer, because my Mousish language did not allow them to take anything I said at face value. Perhaps it was the imagined squeaking, for I wrote everything and my voice was not heard, but nothing a mouse said could be interpreted as anything but the voice of a mouse. I had to pretend to be human in order to speak to the world. But from the moment I stopped speaking as a mouse, those exact same things I said ceased to interest the world. The more I said what I wanted, the less the world listened and understood and lost interest. And the more I said what the world expected to hear, the more attentively the world listened, laughed and melted, even though I was telling the saddest joke in the world.