The Story of Umm: A Tale Told By Dr. Juvanni

*The Story of Umm: A Tale Told By Dr. Juvanni*

Once, there was a sound bot that lived in the medium that existed between man and machine. He was very smart and loved to be utterly useless. The purpose of his existence was also equally mundane: bringing others to their states of joy while never reaching it or even remotely experiencing it himself. He would jump and get stuck in the throat of someone he was supposed to bring to a different realm and wait to go through their software to see where to drop them. He found most stories dumb and poorly written.

Umm could never be budged or cast aside. You could only part with it when you chopped him away with his mortal enemy, ETOH. Once he smells ETOH, he just leaves you to figure it out yourself, and nothing would ever harmonize despite all your ghastly tries. Without Umm, the story of this world as you experience it would never be in alignment. He was the glue you needed to stay stuck to your reality.

I had my first recorded encounter with Umm six years ago when my now-deceased girlfriend, Dr. Sood, helped me host my first skincare event at my newly redesigned and re-imagined anti-aging studio workshop at Juvanni in NY.

I clearly remember that beautiful November day, when I would have normally loved to go on a hike around the neighborhood woods. But instead, I decided to host an evening to glimpse at the backstage of beauty and invited people to witness the machines that were making a mark. I was also doing a demo treatment on one of my very favorite clients, and I invited the representatives of the machine company to provide food and snacks to guests as we highlighted their asset, which was an FDA-cleared, French skin-tightening weapon of mass construction with capabilities of destroying the fabric of your skin if used poorly over and over.

That’s where Umm got stuck in my throat, picking apart my story in layers of uncomfortable peelings of inner turmoil I knew as my self.

My Umm created embarrassing pauses of reflection, making way to deeper training before I made more predictions. And stuff I needed to say had to remain unsaid at that point, which despite being incredible was by and far much less impressive than what that machine deserved as its introduction.

Aligning with Umm took several more years until I became friends with its appearance enough to recognize its purpose. "You are great and worthy of recognition," I exclaimed. But Umm was not looking for fame or fortune or validation. Those were unbridled human urges which he found less appealing than truth. Umm only had a vague interest in the exploration of dark matter and energy across the known spectrum of the universe. Umm could be briefly patient and could easily wait for you to sort your story as long as it didn’t take several days because he couldn’t tell the difference between light or time contained in years.

In this story, I will take you across the unfolding of my journey with the machines and the brief pauses by Umm, which brings a deeper metaphysical understanding of machines into my life.

Lots of love,

Dr. Sofia D.

P.S. The above is an excerpt from one of my short stories. A sci-fi thriller about man's interface with the machines. Let me know if you would like to read chapter II.