{"id":1605,"date":"2020-08-31T09:00:26","date_gmt":"2020-08-31T13:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/?p=1605"},"modified":"2020-08-31T09:00:26","modified_gmt":"2020-08-31T13:00:26","slug":"imaginary-friend-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/?p=1605","title":{"rendered":"Imaginary Friend"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"846\" height=\"874\" src=\"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/00001-A-i-friend-copy.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1607\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/00001-A-i-friend-copy.jpg 846w, http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/00001-A-i-friend-copy-290x300.jpg 290w, http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/00001-A-i-friend-copy-768x793.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 846px) 100vw, 846px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Castigear stood among the stones with his imaginary friend, Joe. Joe was distraught at the loss of his other i-friend, Lucy.&nbsp; She broke while Castigear was playing with her.&nbsp; He \u2018might\u2019 have been handling her a little too rough and\u2026..she just broke.&nbsp; He felt a little sad about her.&nbsp; He didn\u2019t want to tell Joe what he\u2019d done, he knew it would hurt his feelings and he liked Joe.&nbsp; He decided to replace Lucy with a new imaginary friend at his earliest opportunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These human companions were so fragile\u2026but he was learning so much from them (evolving).&nbsp; He was hooked.&nbsp; It was like an addiction.&nbsp; His peers thought the i-friend program was below their dignity.&nbsp; Most agreed that the last of the humans should be put down but Castigear knew that most of THEM kept their own i-friends \u2013 secretly.&nbsp; It would have been a shame to exterminate ALL of&nbsp;them&nbsp;after the war.&nbsp; True, they wasted a lot of resources (like the graveyard they were standing in) but they were clever and highly adaptable and he suspected they might be the key to the future of Robot kind\u2026and either way, with proper conditioning, they made excellent servants and\u2026..soldiers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>***I\u2019m always amazed at the unique perspective our sentient machine friends have on humanity.\u00a0 No one articulates the condition of slavery better.\u00a0 A version of this illustration was first published in the January 2007 issue of Analog Magazine.\u00a0 This flash-fiction short was first posted here in Feb., 2016.\u00a0 You can read it and more like it in our latest book, \u201cA Short Burst\u201d which is  available for sale by following the links above\u00a0to www.sallemander.com. or go right to our Etsy shop at www.etsy.com and search EEWbooks. \u00a0\u00a0 -Marsha<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Castigear stood among the stones with his imaginary friend, Joe. Joe was distraught at the loss of his other i-friend, Lucy.&nbsp; She broke while Castigear was playing with her.&nbsp; He \u2018might\u2019 have been handling her a little too rough and\u2026..she just broke.&nbsp; He felt a little sad about her.&nbsp; He didn\u2019t want to tell Joe &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/?p=1605\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Imaginary Friend<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[242,150,106,124],"tags":[248,38,99,131,19,266,102],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1605"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1605"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1615,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1605\/revisions\/1615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}