Where the Cyborgs Bury Their Dead

I’ll admit two things upfront that explain this story:

1.) I love science fiction
2.) I often have a really hard time figuring out lyrics in songs

I don’t go to sci-fi conventions dressed in costume and I don’t collect action figures, but I love a good classic sci-fi book. If there is a TV show or movie with robots or aliens I’m bound to be watching it. My dad watched the original Star Trek and I hated it at the time but I loved Lost in Space and had a crush on Gil Gerard in Buck Rogers. In 1980, one of my friends had a Flash Gordon birthday party. I loved Ming the Merciless and preferred Princess Aura to Dale Arden; I always seem to prefer the hot, evil brunette to the blonde good girl. Princess Ardala is far more interesting than Wilma Deering and the same goes for Diana versus Julie Parrish in V.

For my freshman English class, our final project was to read two books by the same author, do some biographical research and write a 5 page essay. I’m not sure how I stumbled across the book, but I checked out Asimov’s Caves of Steel from the library. I think I stayed up all night and read the book and then checked out The Naked Sun, The Robots of Dawn, and Robots and Empire the next day. I also grabbed In Memory Yet Green and In Joy Still Felt, the two volumes of autobiography Asimov had published at that point: the books consisted of 1,560 pages. I had to get an extension on the paper and I was hooked.

Star Wars, Star Trek (all generations), Terminator, Twelve Monkeys, Matrix, RoboCop, Time Bandits, Bladerunner, Back to the Future, Planet of the Apes: give me an alternate reality or time anomaly and I will give you my undivided attention. I’ve even watched that smarmy Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour movie and Lake House with Keanu Reeves without complaint (please don’t ask me to watch Tron though). The only thing better than a Dr. Who and Torchwood Netflix marathon weekend is a Battlestar Galactica Netflix marathon weekend. (I do want to know why I still can’t download the Bear McCreary All Along the Watchtower from iTunes yet though).

You get the idea; I’ve got a mind predisposed to Daleks and Clyons. When I first listened to Palace Music Viva Last Blues in the late 90s, it is not all that surprising that I started thinking of a certain song as “That Cyborg Song.” Sure, Will Oldham named it Cat’s Blues but to me it was about human-machine hybrids and, if I could just pick out the words he mumbled, I would get the whole story. I didn’t think about it much, I mostly enjoyed the music and WO’s voice as an instrument. I loved the sound, it didn’t matter what the lyrics were. But based on the words I was picking out, there was no doubt in my mind that it was about the children of men bowing before their new mutant steel overlords.

On Saturday, when the song popped up while I was running, my first thought was “Yay, the Cyborg Song” followed quickly with “Hey, I should write a science fiction story.” I'd call it Where the Cyborgs Bury their Dead even though I knew that the line in the song was “Where the Cyborgs bury their HATS.” I liked the idea of a machine graveyard and thought about what kind of monuments and mausoleums they might have. What would the funeral rituals be like. Why were they burying the dead rather than reusing parts?

Then I thought more about their entire life cycle and how they might also bury their heads in some sort of gestation period. A first generation would need to be created with the harvesting of humans parts but after that the cyborg would develop a way to reproduce themselves and decrease the amount of DNA that came from humans who had lived as 100% human at one point. I imagined there would be some sort of class structure where later generations were considered better than early generations. The less human you were, the better.

What would sprout from the head of a cyborg? I'd have to work Zeus and Athena in there somewhere. I decided that it would be one of those revolting stink mushrooms that look like a penis and have horrible, rot-smelling sacs filled with goo. The Meat (I decided the organic portion of the Cyborg as well as human beings would be called "The Meat") would grow inside the stink mushrooms until large enough to be implanted into a new head.

What would happen to the body of the parent cyborg while its head was buried? Would it die? Would it be the whole head that was buried or just a hat? More like a shell. Maybe during the gestation period both the parent and the child cyborg would be vulnerable. The human resistance movement (there is always a human resistance movement) would hunt out the buried heads and destroy them while killing the parent whose Meat was now exposed and vulnerable. This entertained me for a full two miles of running. When I got home I was excited and looked up the song lyrics to see what it was actually about while I was stuffing a post-run sandwich into my mouth.

Yeah.

Let’s just say I have no idea what this song is about and no one out there in the internet is offering me a better explanation of the “cyborgs burying their hats” line either. I’m going to continue to kick ideas around for my sci-fi story and will post the lyrics as I found them through a Google search.

I love your song, Bonnie Prince Billy, but I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

I'm gonna turn my back for awhile, down
while nothing bad can or will befall
the lights welcome me all by myself
and the fires only bronze they do not burn

well do you understand girls where its going
I'll fuck girls, if there's violence to come
why, happiness, ohhhh happiness
they're crying, and their night has come

See them in the theatre, they're very, very real
Scold them when they come home, dirty, crying
Well, love, is forbidden outwardly
but inside there is no denying, oh

so, ???? boys, bury their hats
and they suffer while they waste and hurt
they are men who bow before us now
and I do not trust them, no
How many children are there like this?
Yeah, and how many will I serve?
Oh if I could have a clue what justice is
it would be more than I deserve, oh

Oh time is passing, come into my house
loot the pantries and muss the sheets
Have you found it useful, thinkin' here?
Your host will be ten miles, on back