One of them?

Was I ever one of them?

I see them going about their short finite lives. Most of them don't even look at me. Those that do are children to whom the world is still wondrous and new, or tourists wanting to take a snap shot with themselves or their friends in the picture with me.

I remember it all with surprising crystal clarity. It's not like I actually have a brain anymore than I still have eyes or ears. My memories can't succumb to Alzheimer's, my mind can't suffer a stroke.

I don't have eyes, so I can look in any direction I chose, but this also means I can't -close- eyes I don't have. I hear everything around me equally, since my 'ears' are just pieces of metal exactly the same as the rest of me (the X-Rays had proven that).

I still have a mind, even though I know it's impossible being just dead metal, but no matter how much I tell myself that, I don't cease to exist. Sorry Douglas Adams.

I feel everything with equal intensity, my hair is now as much a part of me as my arms and my pedestal. I don't have nerves clusters so everything that touches me or I feel is equally sensitive no matter where I feel it.

I don't have DNA anymore, I don't have genes, that means I have no instincts, that part is actually rather Zen. Does that make me the most rational mind in the universe? . . . I'd like to say so, but that would sound arrogant, and amazingly I still have emotions, I feel anger, happiness, disgust, joy, fear, love.  So I'm still a bias point of view in the end, the same as the lot of them.

But while the evidence of my own memories are still very much there, I can't help but think of the illogic of my situation.

I still don't know WHY it happened, maybe the universe is a big computer and there was a bug, maybe wizards are real and I got hit by a stray shot in a wizard's duel, maybe I stepped on some long abandoned enchanted rock that by dumb luck no one had touched before, I don't know.

The incident happened on a Sunday, 12:43 PM PST. Right now was roughly one hundred and twenty-one years, two months and three days since then, and thirty seconds.

It was a picnic with collage friends.

"Huh?" I remember myself saying, feeling my foot fall asleep. Then the feeling spreading to my other foot. "What the-?" I said next completely confused.

"You okay Francis?" A friend of mine said. Yes that can be a boy or a girl's name. Which am I? Neither now. Pieces of metal don't have genders.

"Foot's fallen asleep." I had replied, still fitting in what was happening into my own small bubble of experiences like everyone does.

That was when the unresponsiveness spread up my shin, and I finally pull up on my pants (both genders can wear pants so no that isn't a clue).  

I saw the shinny silver color, but far more importantly before I could think it was paint, I saw it SPREAD. That was when I freaked out, that was when I panicked.

One of my friends had been recording stuff on a camcorder and now was fixated on me. My friends made panic suggestions like breaking off the infected bits or begging to whatever fairies maybe that had done this to stop. The screams of help and terror got lots of people's attention.

By the time I was pushing myself up against a tree and my best friend was telling me how everything was going to be alright there were over a dozen people I didn't know looking at me. Some people were recording this on their cell phones, stupid curiosity seekers.

By the time the paramedics arrived (calling 9-1-1 was all anyone could think of) I was still scared to pieces. As is the classics my head was the only part not yet changed. But it didn't stay that way for long. Then I waited for my brain to turn to metal and for me to end.  

I didn't. Everyone weeped and cried of course, nearly all coming to the logical conclusion I was dead. Of course everyone who wasn't there thought it was a hoax. A hoax done by a horde of people who didn't know each other besides a group of friends and a pair of paramedics. The collection of different cellphone and camera recordings helped. There was also the tiny tinny thing about me still wearing my very non-metallic shoes, under things and clothes, and being in a pose that would have made getting them into a statue without disconnecting parts to be impossible.  Oh my clothes? They've long since rotten away to nothing.  By the time the last of my clothes had fallen apart I had gotten over the idea of humans looking at my body.  

Of course people still debating if it was real or not, as I heard on the radio, some saying I had been welded together or something or some other nonsense made up to keep people's sense of reality from being challenged.

My family came, I wish so hard that I that I could speak to them as they spoke to me. I wished I could cry. No such luck. My siblings and parents hugged me. I think what scared them most was how I didn't have any body warmth.

A complete crackpot of a so-called scientist had the crazy idea to test my head for brain-waves or theta waves or some other thing that only something that's self aware can have.

Then he got the respect and fame he always wanted when his convoluted contraption proved that I had some.

Then began the whole slew of new hope to torture my family and friends with. Self proclaimed wizards, mystics, medicine men, the whole nine years all tried their hand at somehow turning a mass of metal into a human being. Of course they all failed.

As a warped hope against hope, I was placed where it had all happened in hopes that somehow random chance would happen twice and I'd be back to normal.

My family and friends visited me at first twice a day, then once a day, then once a week, then once a month, then once a year, and finally none at all. I did see them again at least once, when old age was finally catching up to them. Some hoped the crackpot was wrong and I'd be waiting for them on the other side, others said they envied me for being able to witness the centuries I'd be able to, and finally some apologized for not being able to save me.

Yes. All crystal clear, all of it. But still here I am, a piece of metal shaped like a human being on a pedestal in a public part. The stand has a plaque I've guessed that tells my story from how many quote the same recount when looking at me.

Of course the uninformed all take it as a joke, a fantasy, a piece of fiction to make it more interesting. Maybe it is, maybe I'm aware only because lots of people THINK I'm aware. Pst. Terry Pratchett would be so happy to hear that one!

So all my family and friends had gone to their graves, and their friends and family have no real reason to visit a glorified invalid they don't even know.

And here I am thinking, wondering, was it all just a fantasy created by the person who made me? Was it all just a 'dream?'

Was I ever one of them?

I see them rushing along, not seeing except what they want to see, I see them lazying about not taking in their moment of stillness or making excuses for why they're not doing what they promised themselves or others they'd do.

I chose to focus on this one pregnant woman I see, she's come here since she was a child, it was even here she met her childhood sweet heart, then broke up with him and met her future husband on the rebound.

I see her come with a baby carriage containing a baby girl. The baby girl walking, then talking, then feeding herself. Running around wild with her parents barely able to keep up with her. Climbing trees. Climbing me, HEY! Get down! You'll hurt yourself! Her mother gets her down before she can fall and break her neck.

I see her meet a couple of boys and thinks they're icky. I see her playing with dolls. I see her playing kick the ball with boys she thought were icky before. I chatting with one of the boys she thought was icky before.

I see them making out under a tree they think no one will notice. I don't see her for a little while. Then I see her walking through the park with marks of wisdom and age on her face, same with the boy now a man. I see the wedding bands and I see the pregnancy just a moment sooner than it should be.

I see her taking her ancient parents though the park one last time until I no longer see them. I see her carrying her own child through the park now. I see her scold her child when he tries to draw on my pedestal.

They live their lives so fast, their lives are so short, while I remain the same, constant, almost unnoticed, forever here and no place else, not aging, not giving birth or planting my seed.  I remain here.

Could I have ever really have been one of them?