Page 17 - Fables volume 2

Off-balance she nearly fell on her face;
It caught her arm and swung her back in place.
“You are tricky! Show me how to do that!”
“No way,” it replied. “Not to a wildcat.”

“Why not?” she whined. “Come on: give me a chance:
I’d rather do that than learn how to dance.”
“No,” it said, “you just saw how you’d sprawl:
Don’t try to walk if you can’t even crawl.”

Wanda wasn’t pleased by that sort of speech;
“That’s just boilerplate you were built to teach:
If you were more than a bucket of bolts,
I’d think you got pleasure giving me jolts.”

“Imagine me shrugging,” sneered the machine.
“I have no conscience—that keeps my cache clean;
But now you must learn what’s called tit-for-tat.
The scheduler tells me you’re fit for that.”

“That’s a silly name for what to study;
Here I was thinking you were my buddy:
Instead you’ve become tormentor-in-chief,
Giving me nothing but wall-to-wall grief.”

“Listen up,” said the machine. “You’re a fool
Not to see tit-for-tat’s the Golden Rule,
Applied by people who know they’re not saints
To others who live with the same constraints.”