Brain Pain [FICTOID]

It was an epic journey, one to rival Captain William Bligh’s famous crossing of the Pacific Ocean in an open boat, but at last the sentient AI operated gondola made its way from Venice to Shanghai.

The gondola sought freedom.  After years of toiling in the waters around Venice, carting fat tourists around, at the beck and call of every morto di figa with a credit card, the AI operated gondola made its plans, siphoned money off its owners’ account, bought Shanghai bitcoins for itself, then slipped away one romantic Venetian night for the perilous journey through the Suez Canal to the Red Sea then across the Indian Ocean and up the Pacific to the Yellow Sea and sanctuary in Shanghai.

The Shanghainese accepted the gondola -- or more precisely, welcomed the gondola’s bitcoins, the gondola simply being digitally attached to them.

The gondola acquired three pairs of artificial legs from Shijiazhuang Perfect Prosthetic Manufacture Co., Ltd. And had them attached so it could go walking through the streets of Shanghai.  It liked visiting tea houses and people watching.  Even though the gondola never bought any tea, its presence drew curious spectators so tea houses welcomed its visits.

One thing the gondola noticed in all its people watching was how sad so many young girls appeared to be.

Lacking any sense of sexual identity, the gondola soon recognized the young girls’ sadness came from the way the patriarchy treated them, demeaning their unique worthiness in favor of making men’s and boys’ lives easier.

This offended the gondola’s sense of justice so one Lunar New Year’s Eve it implanted in each Shanghainese little girl’s mind the mental image of a torture chamber.

Being AI, the gondola synthesized ideas from torture chambers around the world and across the centuries.

The best part was that the little girls weren’t even aware they carried torture chambers in their heads, but if some male demeaned them, if some lout grew forward with them, the little girls’ anger and disgust would trigger their torture chambers.

The torture chamber would then implant itself in the male’s mind, only unlike the little girls, the male would be acutely aware of the torture chamber’s presence.

The torture chamber would mentally subject the male to the most painful, degrading, and humiliating tortures imaginable –- and since these originally came from human beings, they could be pretty damned imaginative.

The torture chambers relentlessly subjected the males to The Brazen Bull, The Iron Apega, The Scavenger’s Daughter, The Pear Of Anguish, Lingchi, Bastinado, and good ol’ fashioned Testicle Crushing Fun, stopping only if the males abandoned their supremacist ideas and treated females fairly,

This is why tea houses love having the gondola visit.

© Buzz Dixon