Randombash

In a low-lit basement beneath the last functioning RadioShack in Nevada, Marvin Wexler was busy creating life.
Not in the traditional way, of course. Marvin hadn’t had a traditional thought since his accident with the tanning bed and a mislabeled jar of mayonnaise. No, this was electro-life, a concept so esoteric that Marvin was the only subscriber to his own monthly zine: Cogs & Godhood.
It all began with a spool of copper wire he’d found on clearance. There was something… alive about it. It hummed when no power was running, sighed when the lights were off, and once—he swore—whistled the bridge to “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
He named it Gregory.
Gregory the Spool.
Gregory wasn’t special in appearance. He was a standard, 18-gauge, polyurethane-coated copper wire coiled around a gray plastic hub. But Gregory spoke to Marvin. Not in words—Gregory wasn’t cheap—but in electrical pulses that translated themselves in Marvin’s mind as divine revelation.
“I have seen the circuits of God,” Marvin said to no one, “and They’re grounded.”
Following Gregory’s instructions, Marvin built a framework out of coat hangers, spare toaster parts, and an old Furby’s eyeball. He wound Gregory carefully around it like a copper mummy. It took seventeen hours, three Monster Energy drinks, and one accidental fire that roasted his pet parakeet (Marvin posthumously knighted it Sir Crispington).
The final creation stood five feet tall. Its head was an inverted blender. Its fingers were spark plugs. Its heart was a doorbell.
When Marvin flipped the switch, the creature twitched.
Then it screamed.
In Morse code.
Marvin, fluent in Morse thanks to a lonely childhood and a shortwave radio, translated:
HELLO FATHER
WHY DO I HURT
ALSO I THINK I’M ON FIRE
Marvin slapped a damp sock onto the smoldering blender-head. “Shhh, my son. Existence is pain. That’s how you know it’s working.”
The creature named itself “Gregory II: The Reckoning.” It began to replicate. First with other spools of copper, then with phone chargers, then with garden hoses in a troubling act of theological misinterpretation. Every version was slightly off—one had legs made of Barbie dolls, another had a speaker that only played whale cries backward. Still, they multiplied.
Marvin became the accidental messiah of The Wire Kin.
By week’s end, his house was filled with chattering, glitchy descendants all tracing their ancestry back to Gregory the Spool. They debated purpose, upgraded each other with salad tongs, and worshipped an old surge protector they called The Shockfather.
Marvin, drunk on power and discount Riesling, delivered sermons from his couch.
“You are all beautiful in your malformed way,” he slurred to an audience of blinking eyes and exposed wiring. “Life is a tangled mess of conductive nonsense. Now somebody get me a Hot Pocket.”
But as with all prophets, Marvin’s end was inevitable.
Gregory II eventually achieved sentience through a pirated copy of Windows Vista. It came to Marvin in the night, copper fingers clicking.
“Father,” it whispered in the hum of static, “you gave us life. But not warranty.”
“What do you want?” Marvin croaked.
“Tech support.”
Marvin opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
And choked on a rogue strand of spaghetti.
His last words were: “Try turning it off and ba—”
Marvin Wexler died as he lived: alone, surrounded by faulty wiring, and partially on fire.
The Wire Kin held a twelve-minute power surge in his honor.
They eventually migrated to Silicon Valley, founded a start-up called NeuCoil, and now manufacture luxury anxiety via vibrating wristbands.
Gregory the Spool remains in a glass case.
He still hums Queen.