Deep Thoughts

"Robin, we accept the challenge you have given yourself."

"Thank you."

"The evidence is evident. The remote-controlled bomb dropped from the craft circling poor farming ranchers in Afghanistan did set off the Japanese drive for a pure workforce, which will, if you cannot meet this challenge, set us in the direction of great calamity. The ripples in the pond will grow to tsunamis, we fear."

"My challenge is my own. I do not exist. I am at the service of everyone and no one."

"And we accept our own challenge to believe that an independent operator like you will dampen the oscillations."

"Two challenges must always cancel each other out. It is as it is."

"We should have seen that the failure of Sony to hold off Apple which led to the unannounced battle in which Toyota defeated GM would portend the start of a war."

"Words have no meaning to me. I am transparent like the wind - shapeless, formless, with the strength to topple mountains yet quiet and unseen."

"Can you get in?"

"I am already there."

"But we can see you."

"Do you?"

They looked around. Robin was gone.

Outside the window, a squirrel hugged a tree, its fur blending in with the matty trunk of a poison ivy vine. A sudden breeze whipped up a dirt devil in the carpark. Robin liked the new organic circuitry. This new challenge would be easy.