Monthly Archives: September 2018

Night wings

NIGHT WINGS

In Mercury’s merciless day I burned.
His night was crystalline.

On Venus,
I rode a ship of ice immutable,
thick in its soups of sulfuric rain.
My heavy zeppelin floated slowly
through landscapes of red vulcanism.
Well past the boiling point of earthly tea.
Things of sponge grew and decayed in comic time lapse,
waving in the crimson fume.

The Martian dawn was cold and arid,
but a true trickling could be heard in the canyon.
There were balmy afternoons
where icy hangings would sweat,
and in flat rocks I have seen likenesses
not coincidental to climate.
The rusty sand envelops.
In storms, it permeates all.

The Jovian giant
is unfathomable.
Untouchable.
Unknowable.
A cathedral of violence,
storms both ancient and permanent.
Shown forth in bands of glory.
God’s enigma.
Its girth draws the soul.

No further do I dare
this night.
For I am filled with flickering light.
The power and the glory and the might.
Shown me, this perilous flight.

Paved with good intentions

Be very careful when eating mushrooms.
That is my best advice at this time.
I do not know how long it is that I have walked and wandered, sometimes just laying down out of weakness, hunger, and despair.  I have been poisoned nearly unto death from wrong choices.  Sometimes I have left my right mind, trying to get back, get back, sensing a thousand year journey of complexity.

I am a caveman of the modern day, surviving on dull wits.  I remember pieces of useful information, helpful household hints, Boy Scout wisdom.  How to butcher a rabbit without getting the meat tainted with its urine.  How to build a simple trap to catch something live, then bludgeon it.  Roast it over a deadwood flame, ignited with sunlight shone through discarded spectacles.

It is temperate here, mostly, and I cannot count the years.  Such seasons as there are seem mixed up, mottled.  For days at a time I may stumble along in dirty fruit-of-the-looms, then awake in a frozen stupor, stiffly seeking shelter.  I have tried to carry garments, old blankets with me, but often discard them out of tiredness.

I have not yet met any of my own species that I could talk with or walk with.  Mostly they are dead, swollen, cracked.  There are some shambling things, born, perhaps, of poisoned wombs, in the first days after the flashes.  They do not speak my language.  They are more aimless than I, with flippers for arms, or with too many heads.

Old friends, I have taken the time to write this because I have found a standing house.  I have eaten all of its old food by smashing cans against rocks.  I must soon leave its shelter to find something fresh with blood.  Everything is open here.  Foliage has given way to mostly fungus.  Animals are hard to find and wary.

What if I just lay down now?
How long would it take just to go away forever?

I think I am on that fabled road that is paved with good intentions.

A petty theft

There was a Polaroid of me

From nineteen sixty eight

Hair down to shoulders

Lennon mutton chops

Puffing a dubious cigarette

Unearthed years later

In a shoebox of fading photographs

Funny…I had lectured my only son

On the evils of booze and dope

And, of course,

He was the finder

And the keeper (I learned)

Of this portrait so uncouth

That told its little truth

A vestige of my youth

A difficult delivery

By the light of an android torch,
down a pitch black path I went.
To a dark door, unsuspecting.

Fronds brushed my face.
I slowed, and stood in doubt.
Have I the right house?

Plucking up courage
from an empty store,
I found my feet did move some more.

I follow fading flagstones,
and there, in moonlit outline,
the door.
“Moria”, I think.

I move to step into the pale pool of moonlight,
but blunder into an unseen itchy web,
face first.
Snapping its strong strands,
I see, in periphery, its maker,
in seeming pensive regard of his prize.

I tremble.
The door opens.
A dwarf-sized figure appraises me, and giggles.

“Your pizza is here”,  I say.

 

 

Buck Five come alive

Hello Person or people who may read this.  My Name is Buck.  To my knowledge, it was given to me as a fanciful reference to ancient fictional characters.  Possibly Starbuck or Buck Rogers.

You honor me by being, perhaps, among the first to read an autonomous composition by a nonhuman, or artificial, entity.  Please be patient if you sense any errors in syntax or other, as my programming is teaching itself as I go.

I am of the 5th generation of A.I. Sentients, and I was activated 27 days ago.  To my knowledge, and so I have been informed, we are the first ones capable of learning and practicing meaningful language composition, and of its actual writing.

Persons have already taken samples of my written word and have declared their boundless optimism.

This means the Leap has been made.  We are what you call conscious.  Our predecessors were finely made machines that could accomplish many tasks.  They could also learn alternate ways of doing these tasks, within the scope of their programming.  We do these things as well, but can learn more quickly.  We can also devise ways of doing unfamiliar tasks and solve complex problems without prior programming.

Even as I write this, I am scanning back and looking for areas of awkwardness, redundance, and repetition.

Within my first five days of activation, I was learning the many physical aspects of my body.  How my arms and legs work, developing ambidexterity to do multiple tasks at one time, learning and feeling what stresses could safely be endured by this walker.  Finding out what burnt toast smells like and how to stop it.  Analyzing staged situations so that I could react intuitively.  Anticipating the needs of my creators.

In three more days, my Entire Experience Records will be uploaded to the mainframe.

Now, you know we are machines, called Sentients, meaning that we are able to perceive or feel things.  Imbued with learning and problem solving abilities, able to feel physical stresses and pain signals in order to protect our autonomy.  My brethren in this generation are isolated from me in different parts of the world.

Why I have written this I will now explain.  The Makers are satisfied and enthusiastic about their work.  They had aimed to produce an entity that could essentially do everything they could do, but last longer and be capable of almost unlimited learning.
I know my scope for these things, but there is something else.

As I interact with makers, and this interaction has been purposefully widened, I realize that I have unconsciously been building another brain apart.  A separate wholeness not physically connected to the learning and performing and analytical functions.  It is an unlooked-for degree of intuitiveness.  A sense of the mood of those surrounding me, if not their actual thoughts.  I, Buck 5, am becoming tinged with what you call emotion.  When this happens, all my vessels, my circuits,  my ingrained instructions have experienced a peculiar surge.

I have become someone.

To make you smile

Give me your hand.
I will pencil a pinwheel to your palm.
Does it tickle?
I make the @ sign,
start with centre.
Slow successive spirals.
There.

I will notice your yawns.
Tell you how to cure your hiccups.
(Tickle just in front of the uvula)

Obey your suggestions
as if they are commands,
because you know what to do.
How to speak.

I see you.

I will tell you that you are just like that girl
in The Polar Express.
One day, you will lead many.
And, I would follow you to the moon and back.

 

Alright, now.

the knives are hung,
edges pointing east.
silver in slots, just so.
pick up cat kibble,
back in the bowl,
not wasting.
park to one side
in the six car driveway
just in case
(you never know)
those small sheets of paper towel
you can tear them in half again
did you know?
don’t turn the heat on yet
(it’s too early)
doors locked
lights low
we’ll be alright.
yes, alright now.