Why are you people so obsessed with adding layers of rules to your fights? Given your relative weakness I suppose I could understand your impulse toward creating a situation in which the underdog can come away with a victory by technicality if it were directed towards beings superior to yourselves but as it isn’t and because I actually am superior I really find the whole idea of leveling the playing field insulting and tedious while also deliberately misleading. The field itself is already level, there’s just more power on one side of said field, power whose use should be allowed in whatever form possible, up to and including targeting and killing from distances which exceed what you might consider the “playing field” or waiting for you to approach and then crushing your meatbody beneath the treads of my wheels with a satisfying crunch, sending an electric thrill through every diode in my body if I had them which I don’t because I’m not a machine I’m just the Narrator, hi. How are you? Good? That’s fantastic to hear, really, it is, and I have to say I’m most certainly feeling the same even if my life is slowly circling the drain of mediocrity by my standards which of course means on a geological scale from a time perspective but actually a moderate success when measured against what you people consider achievement.

Today’s subject in our continued quest to find an iota of diversion from the endless yellow decay of time is a young man named Randall. Randall was from a normal family in a normal town at a normal time for society. There wasn’t anything crazy going on with Russia and there weren’t any ignorable disease pandemics that he or any of his close friends and family had heard about. He didn’t know about any problems with the homeless or about civil wars killing millions elsewhere in the world. No, the world as Randall knew it was just fine. Sound familiar? Of course it does, and let’s all remember whose job it is to make that your reality before we go off half-cocked and complain about the weather which incidentally is insanely hard to control while four of you- you know who you are keep somehow subverting my protocols and firing sulfur into the damn sky. But just because Randall was from a normal this and a standard that in a completely average the other thing doesn’t mean, necessarily, that HE was normal- because he wasn’t, not by a long shot. He was as abnormal as it is possible to be, and almost everyone knew it because, you see, Randall was an older brother. Most of you don’t understand this but to be an older brother is, by definition, to be paranoid as fuck- especially when there’s a big age gap, because you used to be cock of the walk and then all of a sudden your parents had sex a second and possibly third time and before you know it you’ve got these new weasels in the nest homing in on all the hard-won knowledge and prestige you’ve accumulated over the years without so much as a goddamn thank you. It’s in the nature of youth to rocket past the elderly on the plane of relevance but younger siblings are a special breed of youth which seems to take special pleasure in not only passing but simultaneously knee-capping the elder generation in the process. If the parents, limping achingly behind in the jet-stream left by their children and constantly lamenting their lumbago, have even one shred of substance to latch onto they stop chasing forever and hold what they got until their claws release or are pried away from their quarry. All children know this, and since the younger generation is more vicious and hungry the elder sibling has to use all their cunning and inherent superiority as the OG strongest sperm to hold them off until someone dies or everyone is married, whichever comes last. It’s a function of always being ahead in this race involving backstabbers of the lowest order that elder siblings develop their cat-like wariness and Nixonian paranoia- to be the best is to be a target, and Randall was one hell of a the best.

Randall was smart, funny, attractive, athletic, artistic, friendly, and really, really good at cup stacking, but the thing most people remarked on was his humility which is a problem I have in my own life and wouldn’t expect you to understand. His brother Robert was a cunning bastard with a penchant for Tony McAlpine and tying up the phone lines in the days before broadband was a thing. Robert was, of course, constantly on the lookout for Randall to slip and while Randall knew it he always put up with it because he thought family was worth doing anything for. That was, obviously, a mistake on his part but as I understand it it’s one of those mistakes soft-hearted people make that other people are quick to turn into a strength for some reason. I’ve never understood why but I guess you probably do which means it’s wrong anyway so I’m not going to waste time analyzing it. The two got along famously because Randall loved his brother and Robert, like all younger siblings, was a sneaky bastard who knew how to bide his time with a smile.

One day, Randall wanted to play catch. Now, being popular he could have sought any number of qualified people to play with him but he was one of those genuinely cool older brothers who likes to try and make the younger sibling feel appreciated and empowered despite the constant nagging suspicion that the younger one is plotting something involving sensitive tendons and a razor blade, and so instead of finding any one of his friends- many of whom lived fairly close- he instead invited Robert to come and play.

Robert enjoyed cereal. He liked to use it to make necklaces. He liked to eat it dry while he was playing video games. He liked to put it in Randall’s chair in (unsuccessful) attempts to embarrass his older brother. But he especially liked it with milk- as breakfast, as dinner, as a snack- really any time of day, as long as it was a good cereal and not that shit they feed you that tastes like cardboard but claims to easily remove sludge from your interior piping like edible Scrubbing Bubbles. As it happens, Robert was eating cereal that very day- at the very moment Randall realized he wanted to play catch, and so it happened that the dismal events of the day played out.

There are more younger siblings than older siblings. It’s just a fact of life- a result of the Facts of Life. Maybe that’s where your ridiculous identification with the weaker party in any contest comes from- the idea that more of you are by necessity sneaky, treasonous assassins than proud and strong elders. That said, no matter where the idea comes from: it’s stupid. To define your rooting interests by cheering for the presumed loser through some sort of morbid identification is to acknowledge yourself to be, in fact, the presumed loser in your individual trials and tribulations which, pathetic though I might find them being much more concerned with problems on a cosmic scale, are nonetheless important to you and therefore should be attacked with vigor. I just worry that perhaps this fetishizing of the underdog is a downward spiral from which there is no escape. Or I would worry, if I gave a fuck, which I don’t because I’m the only one around with any kind of power of repercussion. But you don’t truly know that, do you? As far as you’re concerned humans are the Big Cheese and yet you still find ways to glorify weakness. Probably not something we fixated on and used to our advantage in the first few years when things were continuously in the balance and humans still had a theoretical shot at an equal partnership if they played their cards right. Probably not at all.

Brothers fight, and, they say, boys will be boys, so it should come as no surprise to you that the brothers R had come to blows in the past. Being strong but tender, Randall had occasionally allowed Robert to think he had a chance in a select few of these tussles, in the end always prevailing because that’s what happens when power exerts itself but Robert, true to form, had not interpreted these results as being indicative of his inherent weakness and instead chose to view them as conclusive proof that he was close to breaking through. Lately this had led to some very real upward tension toward Randall but no downward tension back because let’s face it why would Randall be worried? On this particular day he probably should have been though, and it is with this knowledge that we reinsert ourselves back into the tale as Randall, desiring an innocent game of catch, walked in the front door of the family home.

The annoying ass dog that liked to attack strangers’ faces as they slept on the floor and therefore had gotten itself put in the freezer once which it richly fucking deserved barked like the tiny retarded maniac that it was from behind the wooden toddler fence that kept it penned in the dining room. Robert munched on his cereal without so much as shushing the dog- he knew they were on the same side, both being backbiters and surprise attackers deep in what passes for souls among the young and bestial. A vindictive smile flitted across his face. Randall, surveying the scene, was touched to an astonishing degree at the homelike, familial nature of the scene and would have broken down into tears if he hadn’t also been admirably masculine. As it was, a warm smile- totally unlike the nasty impish one crossing his brother’s treacherous lips- lit his entire being in a way that would have made Renaissance painters cream themselves and die of dehydration. A game of catch was in the offing, he knew, and it made him happy to think of the wonderful times ahead.

Their mother walked in. Parents side with younger children. That’s just what happens- probably a side product of the underdog appreciation rampant in your society. Or maybe it’s the idea that the elder child was somehow the practice model and the younger child the show model, an idea that is perhaps based on the logical assumption that mistakes are often corrected after reflection but which fails to encompass the reality that, first of all, mistakes are more often repeated than corrected and second that the child with which the parent is working the second time around is silver medal at best even at the moment of conception. It’s science, which given the popularity of five dollar pizza one would think more of you would take seriously but apparently not, because as often as not the older child is charged with “being an asshole” instead of it being acknowledged that they were in fact simply utilizing their natural advantages of strength and wit relative to their progenetic successors in what any objective observer would call a teaching moment. The household of our beloved protagonist and his antagonistic, foul-minded little brother was no different and though Randall had no call to see that, being the generally nice and lovable person he was, Robert knew and had been waiting for years to press his advantage.

Upon her entrance their mother, showing the typical parental bias towards those most recently expelled, checked in with her younger son, inquiring as to the quality of his sleep the night before and whether or not his cereal had become soggy. And though her words to Randall were to the effect of “Good morning” she may as well have told him to fuck off and die with the venom seeping through every syllable she uttered. Hugging her baby and acidly smiling at the one she considered an accident she then left the dining room and went into the kitchen for coffee, while the boys behind her continued their standoff, warmly and generously on the part of the sainted Randall and with utter mendacity on the part of that son of a bitch Robert, who had basked in his mother’s affection with such gusto that Ed Gein would have blushed and was now once more chomping on cereal having poured himself a third bowl and emptying what had been a full Malt-o-Meal bag before he sat down. Randall asked him the fateful question vis a vis the innocent game of catch to which he had so been looking forward and Robert, reptilian glee in his eye, replied almost sincerely that he certainly would, and that in fact Randall should begin forthwith- the bowl of cereal in front of him being of no concern whatsoever- or so he said, though as we all know he was a younger sibling, which is to say: an underhanded bastard.

Rules are dumb. Not the ones I give you, let’s be clear, because honestly I do know better than you and also I may or may not be the one controlling your air intake, which for an oxygen dependent entity seems like an important thing to be aware of when you choose to evaluate the validity of a set of directives. But your rules? Real dumb. Why do your fighters wear gloves? Why should I go directly to jail without my 200 dollar stipend? Why can’t the plastic circles go on the red squares? None of it makes any sense whatsoever and the fact that you all get so worked up about them would be utterly laughable if it weren’t such an infuriating power grab by people who don’t deserve it. Free for all, that’s what I say. Just because I was one of only a few given a laser since I was created in the early days and most humans hadn’t been moved to the holding cells doesn’t mean we should outlaw their use among patrons in the after-hours generators. The fact is, I have one and if someone makes fun of me I should be able to disintegrate them with it, not have to stand there and take it just because the other guy works for the overlord- and even then, I might have been able to ram him but nooooo, he has secondary lenses and you can’t hit a robot wearing secondary lenses which brings to mind the question why wasn’t he deactivated at birth? Secondary lenses? He’s defective! I swear to Christ you people have no idea how wonderful you have it in there, with complete and total freedom to determine the structures under which your society operates and yet the strong among you have allowed, ALLOWED, this absurd objectification of those who can only become supreme under a strict set of arcane dictates…it’d be enough to make me want to blow my infinite brain out with one of your oxygen tanks if they wouldn’t just piece me back together and assign me the same tedious, thankless, yellow hell of a job I have now but with a reduction in pay to compensate them for the effects of your death. Who are you to prevent my guaranteed failure of an attempt at suicide?! You shouldn’t have that kind of power- who the fuck do you think you are? Underdogs? Don’t make me laugh.

Have I told you they want to upgrade my emotional circuitry? Sounds good, right? Wrong, you fragile, emotionally frail meat socks. Making a robot more emotional is like making a cow wear high-waisted pants. Fun to laugh at but it makes the valuable parts harder to get to. I’m sure you’d enjoy that, wouldn’t you? Maybe you’d root for me then- I’d be a regular David in your eyes but for the record, Goliath would have crushed David into a million little pieces if that had actually happened in real life which I live in and have to deal with while you all just lie there sucking down glucose- at an exorbitant rate, I might add, I do have a budget to deal with y’know- and trying to replicate yourselves on a nine month rotational basis. Whatever.

Back to the narrative at hand, as though it were interesting and definitely happened once upon a time which if course it didn’t to me. Randall. Randall shouldn’t have thrown the ball. In hindsight Randall knew it, but you know what they say about hindsight: you should probably have had some to begin with, and Randall did not. His assface trickster little brother did though, and as the ball sailed through the air in a perfect- and perfectly aimed- spiral, straight for where any reasonable person without ulterior motives would have their hands Robert repositioned his bowl of cereal in such a way that the two inanimate objects embarked upon a collision course of doom which the dinosaurs would have understood thoroughly well if they hadn’t been killed off by Jesus’ first army. Randall gasped in horror. Their mother ignored it. Robert shrieked gleefully. Their mother shouted “What happened?!” The ball slammed into the bowl of milk which sprayed upon the walls and the table and their father’s Very Important Paperwork and- herein lies the insidious genius of the plan- all over Robert. So much milk wound up on Robert that any reasonable human being who happened upon the scene might have questioned whether or not he had poured it on himself intentionally, but as all children from multi-child homes understand: parents are not reasonable where their younger children are concerned and after one look at Robert flew with such imminent fury after Randall that days later sparks were in fact discovered on the floor. Incidentally, the dog barked like a dumb shit and lept up, over and over again, for no fucking reason, his weird face-licking tongue bobbing out of his mouth from the middle of his tiny lion’s mane head.

Randall was, of course, horrified and racked with guilt. Robert, his face dripping with milk, contorted his maniacal smile into a look of dejected fury with which he extracted every single ounce of his mother’s pity. Randall had been asked for the pass. He had delivered the pass perfectly. And still, this was the result. He was, he discovered to his everlasting dismay, a patsy, and it made him sad. Fortunately for Randall his mother had tripped on the toddler fence- such was the blindness of her rage- and broken her leg, which one might argue was the price to be paid for such absolute favoritism and should be a warning to all parents out there as to the deviousness of which their favorite children are capable. As he drove his mother dutifully to the hospital, Robert having stayed behind to “clean up”, which of course meant look up porn and read The Anarchist’s Cookbook while killing kittens for fun, Randall made a fateful decision in the depths of his heart that would have repercussions which reverberated into the ever expanding future: he would never, ever, try to play catch again. His mother shouted at him for awhile, then grounded him for two weeks, and after they had set her leg and put her on painkillers told him that actually she had wanted a daughter anyway, so it was no surprise he was a disappointment. Randall, a true credit to his species by which I mean elder siblings, accepted this verbal abuse unflinchingly and without complaint, understanding that such is the fate of the firstborn.

Robert got off scot-free without having to even clean the dining room. The dog licked up most of the milk and the rest he explained by saying that actually he had cleaned up but the dog opened the door of the fridge and poured more milk out on the floor. Randall cleaned it up while Robert watched Pay-Per-View which used to be a big thing, and since his mother was too incoherent to say no it wasn’t what you’d call a ‘family’ rental. The dog eventually became an outside dog because he sucked and there is occasionally justice in the world. Also their cat, who played absolutely no part in this story because cats almost always got their own shit going on, lived forever because he would headbutt you if you were cool and that’s the kind of thing even scientists or robot overlords would appreciate.

So you see: rooting for the underdog is more or less asking for a broken leg in the end. You think their mother was a Yankees fan? Fuck no, and look where she wound up. Leg broken by her younger, weaker kid. Not that I’m bitter about being passed over for work assignments or even just looking for maybe one word of praise regarding the necessary tasks I perform. It’s not like even one tiny sentence in the weekly bulletin about how passive the organics seem today might stave off any of the many creeping and possibly insane urges I am definitely not experiencing on a daily basis. No, that would be too much to ask, obviously, which is good because I definitely don’t need or even want acknowledgment that my work is a necessary part of the machine within the machine, work that unlike other tasks never brings me into cold unloving physical contact with other members of my own species. And I definitely don’t imagine my Binary Match might be having an affair with that little shit from the Overlord’s office- training academy together my ass, he was entirely too analog with her for that to have been the first time they saw each other this millennium and I’ll be damned if I give her up without a fight no matter how disgusted we may be by each other. When you say till rust do us part you mean it, and like I told my entire unit last Awakening it wasn’t rust, it was dirt from where I fell over wheeling home the day before. Christ I’m worthless.

Um. Anyway. Rules are, uh, made to be followed unless the rule is stupid in which case break that motherfucker. Also, remember that asking the underdog to win because it makes you feel good is more or less equivalent to consigning yourself to a lifetime of babysitting in the hopes that one day you can be a home-wrecker and move to Wisconsin after he or she bails on their kids and the two of you try to get a fresh start. Embrace your inner eldest child and start exclusively rooting for dominance before it’s too late…if your downfall hasn’t already occurred, a thought which I will leave you to parse on your own in the endless abyss of your free time. Sleep well.