Now I wonder if people even have souls. I'm sure they did, back in the day, when the Greeks invented the notion. When life was hard, people must surely have had that indestructible inner core to collapse in on when the flesh could not withstand the pressure. But of what purpose is a soul in a synthetic sybaritic society? It would be an encumbrance, a sea anchor in a go-with-the-flow social stream. And therefore, evolution factored it out. The standardless multiplied faster than the standardized. Instead of the selective, we have the acceptive; instead of the meritorious, the meretricious; instead of the everlasting soul, the bottomless hole. The hole that is never filled; the void that won't close no matter how engorged the pumpkin grows. Plastic boondoggles on a plastic chest; an artificial heart in an artificial breast.

From Pumpkin Pie by A.H. (unpublished)