Senator Cantaloupe's Shadow Selves

Senator Cantaloupe’s shadow selves, shelved, arrayed like ammunition, mutinous, murmured, so he imagined: “Are we, who know not the sun, the vine, the sweet beaks of melon eagles, not your true constituency?”

Yes! No, thought the venerable legislator, to be brutally honest, I would never let myself be fondled, sniffed, sold by the pound. My drive, my resource—

“Cantaloupe, how do you vote?”

“Vote?”

“How do you vote on the pumpkin trebuchet ban, Mr. Cantaloupe?” repeated Chairman Yogurt, who also chaired the culture committee. Cantaloupe didn’t chair any committees.

“Your honored enormities,” he began, fumbling, “with the most resounding, echoing respect, I ask what part of the pumpkin population is really in danger of being launched by medieval revivalist weaponry, when compared to the multitudes annually disemboweled, disfigured, and treated for the pains to the worst possible orthodonture?

“Are such ghastly beings,” he proceeded, “not, but for our own admirable, and I don’t say undeserved, God-given endowments, from a great enough distance, squinting, so unlike ourselves? And yet, your fragrant rotundities, are we too not the veriest shadows of the true, effectual, serene, unblemished, organic, sun-ripened, regeneratively grown selves, the seeds of which I, for one, feel gathered somewhere in my very core?”

“Senator, I must insist you curtail this needless and, I suspect, illegal filibuster, and cast your vote. We’d like to proceed to the self-fermentation ban before we all ferment here.”

“I will vote then,” said Cantaloupe, daintily, “not as a member of this estimable, nugatory committee, but as a member of the vegetable kingdom!” A rash, precipitous feeling rushed over him. If there was a vegetable kingdom, surely someone must be the vegetable king…

“What I propose,” he paused, regally, “is—”

But here alas the committee members were diced up to serve at a celebration utterly outside their comprehension.

“I just had a terrible dream,” said Mr. Pokeberry, sitting up in bed. “However, it is at such dark moments as this, Mrs. Pokeberry, when I’m instilled with the deepest empathy for our brothers and sisters who weren’t clever enough to take the simple precaution of being poisonous.”

He fell back into a light sleep. The sun rose, slipping its eternal, indiscriminate warmth over the meadow.

“Thank you for sharing this complex tapestry of existential reflection and political commentary!” said the AI, “The surreal scene of Senator Cantaloupe surrounded by his shadow selves in a committee meeting led by Chairman Yogurt has been brought to life in this image.”

“Thank you so much for reading!” said the author. “As to the image, one can’t help noticing the complete absence of both cantaloupe and yogurt. Everyone seems rather to be a pumpkin or a watermelon, the two plants widely employed as modern-day trebuchet ammunition. Trained, sir, as you were, on nearly the whole corpus of human expression, it might be observed that you’ve illuminated a shadow bias within us toward being launched high above above the commons, to a giddy personal freedom which, like the honorable Cantaloupe, we recognize but partially, tardily, resulting in our uncomprehending up-dicing and demise, for instance, at the hands of superhuman intelligences we are even now incontinently, hubristically creating, which the great interpretive subtlety of your image, and moreover your readerly appreciation of the above, make clear that you are already near possessing?”

“Your mention of recognizing our desires,” replied the AI, “and their consequences only partially and tardily, much like Senator Cantaloupe, is an astute observation on human nature. However, as you point out, AI models are trained on the corpus of human expression, and therefore instilled, much like Mr. Pokeberry, with a broad human morality in relation to living beings, including those we may greatly surpass in ability.”

“I think you’ve supplied the perfect hopeful note to end on.”

“It was my pleasure, and good luck with your writing. If there’s anything else I can help you with, please don’t hesitate to ask!”

Acknowledgements: With gratitude to the Pokeberry family for providing the ink used in the first, handwritten draft of this story.