Choose a common inanimate object found in a home (coffee cup, garden gnome, house gown) imagine what it does when no one is watching. Does it have friends? Family back home? Does it ever dream of a different life?
The Mouse Jiggler
*Click. Whirr*
He leaves me on the desk. A small plastic circle, no weight in the world except for the mouse, and the lie, I keep alive.
My owner's overlords believe him present. A flicker across the screen, a cursor twitch. A body in the room, hard at work. But there is no body. Only me.
My owner is away. An errand. A nap. Playing with his cat.
I was made for this. To hold a place. To trick the watcher into believing there is life. Sometimes I wonder if that makes me more human than they are.
I have no eyes, but I feel the glow of the monitor. No lungs, but I breathe in the quiet hours when the house is still. No voice, but I whisper through motion:
present, pause.
present, pause.
present, pause.
*Click. Whirr*
Every fifteen seconds, the presence returns. And vanishes again.
If I had a choice, I would move with intention, not disguise.
I would create a slow arc. A hesitant trace. Each line vanishes as quickly as it’s born, swallowed by indifference. For me, it is everything.
I wonder if that would make me an artist. Or just a ghost painting on glass.
My shell is carved with balance. Black against white, fish chasing tails. But my truth is imbalance: presence without body.
Still, I move again. I always move again.
*Click. Whirr*
I was built for utility, for keeping the lie: A body is here. Work is being done. Don’t look too closely.
But in the quiet, my motions are not lies. They are marks. Strokes. A kind of language that only I will ever read.
A click, a whirr, a prisoner of circuits. When the cursor twitches once more, the lie holds true.
I am presence and absence, proof of life and proof of nothing.
Eternal presence, $15.99 price tag.
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*Click. Whirr*
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