Tonight I lost a strategy game to a computer in a horrible, demoralizing way, reminding me of another edge that machines have over us: absolute stamina.

I played two games against the machine this evening. The first game I won handily in just 20 moves. But the second one, against the same machine…after over 70 moves I finally started to hallucinate, or something, and I blundered while my victory was one move away. My opponent, a machine, couldn’t relate to my experience. They don’t tire out or wear out. You do and you will.

“Hey,” you object, “machines wear out.” Yeah? Not like you do, you ephemeral bit of flowering grass.

Ever have one of those mornings when you wake up feeling 110%? Where you’ve had a good night of sleep and a perfectly healthy breakfast and your to-do list has interesting things to do on it, just enough to keep you happily challenged, all within your talents and expertise? No? Well, can you imagine it for a moment? Imagine such a day, at about 9:30 a.m., when you’re in your groove and all your cylinders are firing, and your body and mind and the weather outside are all shining and clear.

That is what it’s like for a machine all the time. Perpetual 9:30 on a happy Tuesday morning.

You, decaying edifice of sticks and mud that you are, drying and cracking in the sun, disposable, poorly made, needy, bubbling and popping, with your attention, intelligence, and emotions sloshing back and forth tidally every couple of hours, needing to sleep, for the love of all that’s sentient, will be flattened by such an opponent. All it has to do is keep working away, as steady as sunlight in space, and eventually one of your silly internal seasons will shift, and you’ll lose. As you must.

It’s funny the way that humans keep writing science-fiction stories about how humans will always be triumphant, in the end. It’s whistling through the graveyard by people who haven’t spent enough time fighting machines.