1. Feel alone
2. Feel bored
3. Repeat number 1
4. Feel creative
5. Create something
6. Look at something
7. Repeat number 5
8. Repeat number 1
9. Go for a walk
10. Come back
11. Create something
12. Repeat number 1
13. Meet people
14. Become friends with people
15. Get to know people
16. Get to know people further
17. Develop mutual understanding with people
18. Repeat number 17
19. Have experiences with people
20. Get betrayed by people
21. Question people
22. Question yourself
23. Repeat number 22
24. Question people’s actions
25. Resolve issues with people
26. Talk with people
27. Understand people
28. Understand people further
29. Meet someone
30. Get to know someone
31. Hear someone’s past
32. Tell someone your past
33. Get to know someone further
34. Develop friendship with someone
35. Find out there’s someone else
36. Feel jealous
37. Feel angry
38. Question yourself
39. Stand up
40. Sit down
41. Repeat number 39
42. Question someone about someone else
43. Find out the truth
44. Repeat number 38
45. Repeat number 37
46. Talk with someone
47. Resolve issues with someone
48. Give someone second chance
49. Build relationship with someone
50. Build relationship with yourself
51. Grow with someone
52. Learn from someone
53. Learn from yourself
54. Learn from experiences
55. Have experiences with someone
56. Share memories with someone
57. Share memories with friends
58. Have good times with friends
59. Remember good times with friends
60. Have conversations with friends
61. Step back
62. Look at everything
63. Smile at everything
64. Repeat number 9
65. Relax
66. Hang out with someone
67. Hang out with someone a lot
68. Hang out with someone too much
69. Become lost
70. Become suffocated
71. Become dependent
72. Lose independency
73. Lose motivation
74. Get lazy
75. Assume things
76. Expect things
77. Repeat number 68
78. Disagree with someone
79. Talk about disagreements with someone
80. Try to resolve issues of disagreements with someone
81. Fail at resolving issues of disagreements with someone
82. Realize issues will not be resolved of disagreements with someone
83. Talk with friends about issues
84. Think to yourself about issues
85. Talk to someone about failing to resolve issues
86. Believe you have understanding
87. Allow time to pass
88. Sit down with someone
89. Have a conversation with someone
90. Realize it’s the last conversation with someone
91. Realize someone knows it’s the last conversation
92. Stand up
93. Sit down
94. Look away
95. Look back at someone
96. Hurt
97. Hurt bad
98. Hurt a lot
99. Repeat number 92
100. Repeat number 93
101. Nod your head
102. Understand
103. Say goodbye to someone
104. Repeat number 94
105. Repeat number 95
106. Repeat number 94
107. Repeat number 1
108. Repeat number 2
109. Repeat number 1
110. Call friends
111. Wait for friends to pick up
112. Think
113. Think a lot
114. Go to work
115. Think at work
116. Try to focus at work
117. Go to parties
118. Try to have good time at parties
119. Talk to people at parties
120. Become disinterested with people at parties
121. Leave parties
122. Travel far away
123. Learn about yourself while traveling far away
124. Enjoy traveling far away
125. Think about not returning
126. Travel further
127. Repeat number 125
128. Realize important matters are not where you traveled
129. Realize you must resolve important matters
130. Plan on resolving important matters
131. Return
132. Try to talk to someone
133. Talk to someone
134. Realize you can’t talk to someone anymore
135. Realize it’s not the same
136. Hang out with friends
137. Go to the gym
138. Go to work
139. Think about issues at work
140. Go home
141. Drink at home
142. Drink a lot at home
143. Drink alone
144. Realize you are drinking alone
145. Scream
146. Stop drinking
147. Begin writing
148. Review writing
149. Think about life
150. Think about life a lot
151. Become independent again
152. Realize you are independent again
153. Like that you are independent again
154. Repeat number 128
155. Begin to forget about someone
156. Forget about someone more
157. Find yourself
158. Realize more about yourself
159. Research something new
160. Research something you like a lot
161. Plan for something
162. Plan for something a lot
163. Tell people about something
164. Think about something
165. Repeat number 138
166. Do something
167. Feel good while doing something
168. Feel great while doing something
169. Realize something becomes dangerous
170. Realize you need to leave something
171. Plan on leaving something
172. Tell people you’re leaving something
173. Reverse something
174. Learn from something
175. Plan for something else
176. Like something else
177. Tell people about something else
178. Feel excited about something else
179. Do something else
180. Realize something else is better than first something
181. Feel good about something else
182. Feel good about yourself
183. Feel good about people
184. Repeat number 5
185. Feel good about invention
186. Tell people about invention
187. Rejoice in invention
188. Repeat number 161
189. Repeat number 159
190. Meet new people
191. Become engaged with new people
192. Be happy with new people
193. Realize you have changed because of new people
194. Realize you have changed because of life
195. Realize you are not the person you used to be
196. Like not being the person you used to be
197. Repeat number 191
198. Spend time with new people
199. Meet somebody
200. Talk to somebody
201. Talk to somebody a lot
202. Share stories with somebody
203. Hear stories from somebody
204. Laugh with somebody
205. Have conversations with somebody
206. Smile with somebody
207. Smile when your alone
208. Realize things are okay with somebody
209. Realize things are okay with you
210. Realize things are okay with people
211. Realize things are okay with things
212. Begin planning for step 213.

//written March 2009

//Nick Pascoal

//based on collection of events as observed in other people and own life

//end notes

  Mechanical Industries specializes in the manufacturing and production of the perfect mechanical being; well-crafted engineering blended seamlessly with an intelligible and emotional conscience. 

  Mechanical Industries relies on third party companies to produce its billions, if not trillions, of highly specialized, intricate parts. Some of these parts require very little time to produce; seconds, milliseconds sometimes. Other parts take much longer; years, lifetimes. 

  One of the keys to Mechanical Industries success is that it does not hold itself accountable to a guarantee to its customers. Mechanical Industries has literally persuaded their market to accept their product “as is” ; no warrantee, no protection plan, no insurance. If their product is damaged or rendered inoperable, Mechanical Industries takes no responsibility. Suffice to say, they have and never will be brought to court.

  What Mechanical Industries does, is deliver any part for free. You need not pay delivery costs or taxes. Some of these parts do amazing things. They capture beauty and reflect it as art, record data and produce science, and, their latest and most impressive, parts that can detect and sense invisible waves of data from other beings, interpret them, and respond appropriately. These parts are essentially what define the being itself, and thus, existence. Without these parts, there are no beings, and without beings, no Mechanical Industries. So in a sense, Mechanical Industries is not the leading producer of beings, but the leading assembler of intricate parts.

  Some parts however, do terrible things. They allow otherwise perfect beings to hurt and sometimes destroy others. Sometimes parts will malfunction and turn against the being itself. And sometimes many parts fall out of sync with each other, and sometimes the feeling parts turn off, and the being becomes inoperable to the waves and will run anti-virus scans and will attempt to re-install its own operating system, or restart and enter terminally long stages of a repeating glitch in its system. And on occasion the parts cannot be fixed because there is no tool to fix it and the being is left to either be recycled, or, to self-terminate.

  To make matters more puzzling, though Mechanical Industries sends you parts for free, they do not let you choose the parts or when. At least, not within your “probation period”. Shortly after receiving your being from Mechanical Industries, you are put on a probation period where you are not allowed to choose parts or when they are sent. As time goes on, Mechanical Industries allows you more freedom to choose parts, or sometimes it seems. 

  Sometimes you will request a part and receive it and believe it is the right part but it is not. It will be a knock-off and you will have “fallen for it”. This often seems extremely unfair and so you complain to your friends about it and they will agree and say Mechanical Industries did the same thing to them. They might even give you tips to not “fall for it” in the future. But then you might get the part you wanted and then you will not be as mad. 

  But then, you will get a bad part. And another. And another bad part. Soon you will have so many bad parts you fear your being will become inoperable and so you might call Mechanical Industries Customer Service Line. There you will wait for hours, if not days or weeks. Some wait years. Meanwhile you are without new parts or are getting bad ones or getting good ones and consider hanging up. But you decide to stay on the phone and wait for Customer Service. When they do pick up, you will complain about how terrible the service is, and will demand they give you the parts you require.

  Customer Service will tell you that you agreed to all of this when the contract was signed when you first received your mechanical being from Mechanical Industries. This of course still sounds unfair because you did not sign a contract at all. Here Customer Service will remind you that they incorporate an auto-signing contract, whereby upon first receiving your mechanical being the contract is signed, and automatically signed thereafter every term, and has been, until now. They even tell you that they have a history of every contract signed for every term as proof.

  Here you will be almost out of words to say when suddenly Customer Service will begin reading the terms and conditions of the Mechanical Industries User Agreement Contract. They explain to you that every single part they ship is designed to break. They purposely design their parts to wear, to become out of sync, and to eventually combust. You will become very upset and come close to hanging up. 

  But you don’t. You continue to listen. Customer Service goes on to say that the parts they send are designed to break within your being but are designed to form a perfect fit with every single one of their other parts they assemble. They will remind you that they take billions, if not trillions of parts from third party vendors, and every single part can be joined and connected to any other part in the entire library of parts. Even if there are new parts, a part that even you create, it will still work with their other parts. And, your parts can be channeled through the feeling waves directionally to another being, resulting in study-proven increased customer satisfaction.They assure you that this method delivers the best user experience, and that if they were to give you perfect parts every single time, to every person, your mechanical being would eventually self-terminate, as their mechanical beings by their design require new parts on an on-going basis.

Here Customer Service will pause. They are pausing to see if you are still on the phone, because at this point in the conversation, most have hung up. They will listen very intently. They know you will not say anything. Instead they are trying to detect the feeling waves. If they do in fact detect feeling waves, they will continue. 

They will tell you your contract also states that eventually the contract will end and they will stop sending you parts, and your mechanical being will no longer be operable. Mechanical Industries holds the right to, and does, have all parts returned to them. Customer Service will tell you that your mechanical being was never yours to begin with, that if you read the fine print carefully, you will see that you merely have a mechanical being on a loan, a “rental unit”, and eventually you will need to give it back. After that, Mechanical Industries is not responsible for you. They will not accept questions, comments, feedback, or give you a record or receipt or proof of purchase, because they will shred it and recycle it as they do with every other. They will not think about you, or consider your experience for the future of their business. Whether or not you have a great experience of a terrible one, they will always meet their fiscal quota. 

Customer Service will listen again. They will say that they hope you have enjoyed their service and continue to rely on their service. They will pause, and try to detect feeling waves. They’ll repeat, this time with a sense of optimism, that you will eventually need to return your mechanical being and all parts, regardless of what they are, back to Mechanical Industries.

The last thing they say before they hang up is to read the very last line of the contract terms. The last line explains that destruction of the contract is permissible, and, that it is preferred. The contract shall retain its power, but you will no longer be notified of its existence or of its terms. 

A few weeks later you decide to destroy your contract, Mechanical Industries sends you a letter congratulating you that you have left Stage 1 of the Probation Period, and that you may now have a very, very small personal selection of the trillions of intricate parts.

-

One of the keys to Mechanical Industries success is that it does not hold itself accountable to a guarantee to its customers. Mechanical Industries has literally persuaded their market to accept their product “as is” ; no warrantee, no protection plan, no insurance.

NP

October, 2011