[This is the second instalment of the legend of Stick Boy.] Stick Boy got lost here on Black Down on his way to Holmbury Hill. He didn’t know he was going to Holmbury Hill, you understand, it’s just that he wasn’t intending on stopping on Black Down. However, the heavy fog which sometimes sits on that hill was causing him to walk in confused circles. Stick Boy sat down at a cross-paths to think. As he was admiring how the yellow of the gorse still popped in its own brightness amidst the fog, Stick Boy saw a shadow emerging from a distance down a path. A small shadow, wandering and weaving along the sandy trail, and holding a piece of bracken in her hand. Her name was GG, but Stick Boy didn’t know that then. GG stands for Ghost Girl, but only meanies call her that. To those of us who
This is a portrait of Stick Boy, when he was alive and happy, frolicking and running in the forest. The pines of Holmbury Hill have memorialised him so that he could finally realise his dream of being one of them. Alive, organic, free. Stick Boy came to the forest at some point in the future. He was born in a time when IVF meant placing an AI into the body of a robot. An AI you got made to the have the perfect personality; a robot body which never got hurt or decayed, so long as you oiled it and kept it out of the rain. Stick Boy’s human parents ended up being a sorrow. No matter how perfect Stick Boy was, he still wasn’t good enough to end the arguments which raged between the two adults. No matter how many science projects and paintings he created, he could never be