{"id":19,"date":"2007-03-10T10:45:44","date_gmt":"2007-03-10T18:45:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/?p=19"},"modified":"2007-03-10T10:45:44","modified_gmt":"2007-03-10T18:45:44","slug":"the-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/?p=19","title":{"rendered":"The Machine"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was trying to explain to Sam what a cognitive challenge it is to really, truly come to terms with the fact that another human distinct from me is growing in my tummy.\u00a0 The thing is, I told him, I’ve lived in this body for thirty years.\u00a0 It feels like I know it pretty well, how it works, what it does.\u00a0 But suddenly there’s this whole new system<\/em> in play, something I’ve never used or experienced before, taking over my body.<\/p>\n

“It’s like you’re a railway station,” Sam said helpfully, “and the trains have been coming and going for decades, full of commuters.\u00a0 Everyone knows the schedule and the trains are usually on time.\u00a0 But in the corner of the station there’s this Machine that’s never been used.\u00a0 It’s all steampunk, Victorian-encrusted, pneumatic, pipes all over.\u00a0 It’s been there so long that everybody ignores it.<\/p>\n

“But one day, the stationmaster comes in, with his handlebar mustaches and his suspenders, and he says, ‘Fire up…The Machine<\/em>.’\u00a0 And everything goes quiet.\u00a0 Then finally somebody walks over and flips a switch on the Machine.\u00a0 Everybody holds their breath.\u00a0 At first it doesn’t seem like anything’s happening.\u00a0 Then a low hum fills the station, and the Machine starts to unfold, its pipes snaking out across the floor, plugging into the walls.\u00a0 And everyone’s just standing around gaping while the Machine starts chugging faster and faster and getting bigger and bigger.”<\/p>\n

“Yeah,” I said, “it’s kind of like that.”<\/p>\n

“And also,” Sam added after a moment’s thought, “the Machine makes a baby<\/em>.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was trying to explain to Sam what a cognitive challenge it is to really, truly come to terms with the fact that another human distinct from me is growing in my tummy.\u00a0 The thing is, I told him, I’ve lived in this body for thirty years.\u00a0 It feels like I know it pretty well, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}