What is it like being launched by a two thousand pound meat vehicle?

ChatGPT said:

Being launched by a two-thousand-pound "meat vehicle"—an interesting way to describe a human-driven car—could be likened to the experience of an object subjected to massive kinetic energy. Imagine the sudden, violent acceleration as the body is struck and flung into motion, defying gravity for a moment before being stopped abruptly by friction or another surface. The forces involved would be immense, with compression, torsion, and impact stresses acting simultaneously.

From a more conceptual standpoint, it's an extreme and chaotic moment of surrender to external forces, where control is entirely lost. A vehicle, driven by human intent, amplifies both the fragility of the human body and the relentless, mechanical power of technology—making it a raw and often terrifying confrontation between mass and motion, flesh and metal. It can be a vivid metaphor for the vulnerability of existence in a world governed by physical laws indifferent to individual frailty.

In the style of David Foster Wallace, can you answer the question: What is it like being launched by a two thousand pound meat vehicle?

ChatGPT said:

Alright, so picture this: you're sitting there, buckled in, all ready for what’s about to unfold. The air is cool but feels suddenly charged—like the whole universe is holding its breath in some anticipation of what comes next. And then, without warning, there's a jolt—not a "small bump" or a "light nudge," but a full-on gut-punch of a force that punches through your torso and rattles your bones. It’s not a shock, but it is a shock—because your body wasn't really prepared for this. You think you're all set, because intellectually, you know what happens when you start a two-thousand-pound meat vehicle, right? You’ve seen it a thousand times on TV. But then... boom—you're off.

And here's the thing: it's not the speed, it's the pressure. There's a kind of visceral sensation where you don’t just feel your body moving, you feel it being compressed, compacted, packed like a sardine in an aluminium can that, as if on cue, suddenly accelerates into the atmosphere. It's like all the air inside you is screaming out, "This isn’t right! This is not what I signed up for!" But the brain is still playing catch-up—because, hey, that’s how our instincts work—by the time you figure out that you're now hurtling forward at a velocity that defies most of the laws of physics, you realize you’ve gone from zero to sixty in a few seconds.

Now, if you’re lucky enough (or, let’s be honest, foolish enough) to think about this while it’s happening, you’ll start realising the weirdness of it all. You, a human—a mass of squishy tissue with bones and blood and nerve endings—are inside a large, high-powered metal box designed to move faster than your instincts can keep up with, powered by an engine that eats gasoline (and yes, your body, right now, is in a thing powered by the remains of ancient plants and animals) and with enough horsepower to knock your entire sense of control and balance clean out of orbit. The thing makes a noise like a thunderstorm that comes from below, a vibration that enters your bones like it’s trying to communicate in some primeval, guttural tongue.

And yet, this isn’t the worst part. No, no, the worst part is that you’re not just moving forward like a normal object. This isn’t just a moving vehicle—this is a meat vehicle. It’s a two-thousand-pound meat vehicle, made of your fellow humans—the ones who’ve decided that a machine, a big, powerful, mind-bending machine, can carry them and their desires forward, but only after forcing your body to be part of this ridiculous, human-engineered madness.

Your meat vehicle is alive with sound, torque, vibration. It’s like the world is saying: "Who do you think you are, moving this fast, this out of control?" And your body responds by shaking—nervously, or maybe with excitement, depending on the level of trust you’ve placed in the systems that are keeping you from turning into, like, paste on the pavement. The ground below you is nothing but a blur, and every instinct in your body says "Nope, you should not be doing this, this is not how physics is supposed to work, what’s happening right now makes no sense at all!" But then it’s gone, and the feeling of propulsion has been replaced with the reality of speed—the kind that bends time and space, that pulls your focus into some kind of self-referential loop.

And then you stop thinking about it, because your body, after the initial panic and all the why-am-I-doing-this? thoughts, settles into it. Your nervous system adapts, as it is wont to do when placed into an extreme scenario. You stop thinking about the fact that you're a flesh-and-bone thing inside this crazy human-made metal contraption that’s moving faster than you’re supposed to be able to comprehend, and you just, you know, go with it.

Being launched by a two-thousand-pound meat vehicle? It's like being yanked into the future while simultaneously yanked into your primal past—because deep down, you’re aware of the potential for catastrophe, but it’s muffled by the rush of movement, the thrill of it, and the almost comical absurdity of humans thinking we can control this mechanical beast of power and speed that’s bound to fail us one day. You don't just experience it, you live it, and somehow, you survive it. And when it's all over, you wonder if it was ever really real.