The horseracing industry doesn’t like my type. For that matter, neither does almost any other industry. I’m pretty much despised. Even educators shun my ideas. And that’s particularly painful, because ideas are what I have to offer the world.

Not just ideas, memes.

Jola calls them me-mes because she thinks I’m being self-centered. Just the “me generation” spouting off and all that.

We argue about it. At times, she despises my views and says I’m selfish. But, that’s her agenda talking. I don’t think I’m selfish if I have no desire to reproduce. I really don’t think the human race needs more inventory. We’re a bit overstocked as a species.

Corporations disagree because they’ve bred us into consumers. They always want a bigger, hungrier market to exploit. Only in consumption do we matter to corporations.

Hold on.

I think I’m meming right now. Though I have no direct physical experience, I liken it to ovulating. My internal temperature is up and my vitals are kicking. Intellectual heat. Neural pathways coursing. I’m ripe with ideas. Fertile. Fecund. I’ve got the driving intention and will to give birth.

That’s my dream. My purpose. To give birth to great ideas. Ideas that will propagate, insinuate and instigate like the ancient greats: Hammurabi, Plato, Charlemagne, Mao, Vinge. I want to join the pantheon of timeless thinkers and become a pioneer of progress.

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Jola says progress for me would be to get a job that I can hold for two months. To her, all my big thinking has done is destroy a once-promising résumé. It’s made me irresponsible. A full-time daydreamer. She wonders why I even bothered to get my GED, if all I do is fritter it away blog-hopping and indiscriminately posting. She thinks having a kid would teach me what’s important in life. To her, it’s always about breeding.

Breeding is important. I’m not overlooking what that has meant to various flora and fauna. It just seems time-consuming and fraught with perils. Poisons. Plagues. Mutations. Disappointment. Genes don’t always behave. They have their own agendas. Give me the latest social platform, and with the right images and words, I’ll craft a more lasting legacy than a few dozen chromosomes that can never produce a dancing hamster, lol cat, or double rainbow guy.

Facile, Jola calls me.

Sticks and stones will hurt my bones, but memes will burrow into your brain like an earwig in a disturbing Outer Limits episode and gnaw at you until you crave Hello Kitty.

Is it clear? Am I convincing?

Not according to Jola. She talks about getting real. The necessity of thinking about the future.

That’s all I ever do!

The future is what my memes are all about. Machine driven. The iMeme. I’ll pave the way for the Tin Man at the end of gravity’s rainbow. I’ll salute our robot overlords. I’ll salivate over the singularity. Pure thought. Uploadable. Infinitely distributable.

Jola taps on my head like it’s some kind of empty nut and says she’s hungry. She wants a burger. Fast food. Consumable. Forgettable.

I hunger for eternity. The right ideas will get me out of this genetic cesspool. I want my thoughts to live forever, not my meat.

Though, a double bacon cheeseburger does sound good—and then getting into Jola’s jeans.