There has never been a time when to be geek has not meant to be powerful. Geeks built the atom bomb. Geeks built the internet. Real geeks knew that 640K would never be enough for just about anyone. Archimedes was a geek. Socrates and Leonardo da Vinci were geeks. Geeks are the creeping secret gods of the Age of Rationality. The spine of our world was built by geeks- geek arts are its bones, its cartilage, its silver fluid. Mechanical engineers, information architects, special-effects wizards, gene-splicers, and Linux programmers shape our world and shift our perceptions.

The mainstream fears the geek. The mainstream also envies the geek. Thus, the caricatures, the jokes, the snide attitudes. When's the last time you taped your broken glasses, honestly? They scorn us and our tastes in television programs, yet the house is heated, the cappuccino is frothy, and the porn downloads at the speed of light thanks to the garden-variety geek. To be geek is good. To be geek is to feel the world tremble when you say, "No, I won't fix it," or "Proofread your own damn term paper."

Chances are that most of you reading this are geek. Homo sapiens geekosaurus, Homo pretentious literati,and Homo scifi trivialis. You are the pinnacle of six thousand years of the rule of the Mangeek. Noah was a geek. He had to be to build a boat that big. Alexander the Great was a geek- in the age before wargames, he simply had no choice but to go out and actually conquer most of the known world. Mangeek upon Mangeek has handed his legacy down to you. There was a time when to be Mangeek was to be a King among other men.

However, it is plainly apparent that that time is past. Gentlemen of the jury, I humbly submit that we have met our match. Nay, we have met our replacements. Someone let women into the geek club.

Let us never forget that to be Mangeek can now and forever be only the Second Best Thing in Life.

I present to you for a new and justly-deserved contemplation that most rare and precious commodity, that happy accident of receptive genetics and fortunate upbringing, the steward of our hearts, the inheritor of our affections, that bright-eyed and sublimely radiant angel of network, gaming table, and sci-fi convention, the geek chick. I remind you, gentlemen, that we are far from worthy.

The mainstream believes it knows what sexy is. In this, the mainstream is wrong. It has compounded wrongness upon wrongness. It is overdrawn at the Bank of Wrong.

Mangeeks know what sexy is.

Sexy is a statue of a dragon prominently displayed on a shelf or mantle.

Sexy is a woman who reads Sandman.

Sexy is a woman who knows what a "gib" is, and what a Zergling does.

Mangeeks know this. We fear our obsolescence, but was any obsolescence ever sweeter?

We have stalked the geek chick in her natural habitat, hoping against hope that it would be ourcollection of bootleg Blake's Sevenvideos that would prove us worthy, ourmasterful knowledge of Tolkien Elvish that would mark us as the sensitive, vulnerable type. This, my friends, is how Alpha Geek Males rip out each other's throats for the attention of the too, too thin geek chick herds. Disappointments are many, successes are few, but oh, those ringing successes! Oh, those signature geek chicks with their lowly tusk-mouthed troglodyte Mangeek companions! How we envy those Mangeeks! How we plot their lingering deaths, only so that we may dwell for one hour in that sweet rapture of actually being near a geek female, and possibly exchanging views on Robert Jordan or David Eddings.

The gentle gleam of the cathode ray tube on the soft midnight skin of the geek chick sysadmin. The swift motion of fine, gentle fingers across the keyboard, bringing sizzling Quake 3death. The soft reflection of a Star Trek film in the prescription lenses of the fair geek maiden curled upon the couch, cooly unheedful of the awestruck stares of the Mangeeks who would willingly chew out their own spines to see her video collection. There is nothing more beautiful than a geek female, nothing in all the world. Nothing more precious, nothing more worthy of witless adoration. They are certain where we are arrogant, confident where we are witless, soft and inviting where we are worm-pale and Gollum-fleshed. The least specimen of the geek chick makes the most handsome Mangeek seem like a stuttering cave troll in comparison. They smell nicer than we do, they look nicer than we do, and they know everything that we do. In fact, fellow Mangeeks, we're looking pretty superfluous now that Homo sapiens geekchickushas shown us how it's done. I humbly submit that subservient adoration is our only recourse. We are obsolete. We are merely the Second Best Thing in Life.

All hail the first, gentlemen. All hail the first.

Scott Lynch, February 2000
Originally Presented at Fight Club 2