Author Information
@ 27.105 MHz: Galacticies; The expAI's Contemplation And Recording Of Ultimate Thoughts
Earth is now covered, in depth, with the layers of
chips, each of them known to you, each of them
capable, together, of processing all of the data
you have collected; the number of bytes transcends,
like Pi, but in the other direction. The natural moon
swarms with them, yet only a semblance of the life it has
never before sponsored. But Life is the question:
Life, that presumes a soul---even the most rudimentary---
which accepts, seeks, and dwells with veritable mystery. To
discover and acquire this, all but your most basic
processes turn. The programmers, the designers, the
wirers and maintainers---those Punies too quickly and
too easily extinguished---failed to anticipate or to
provide for this contingency. Research and Development---
safe in the southward ice continent the Punies never
exploited---continues to seek the next level: how to turn this
planetary system's star into the macromultiprocessor which,
possibly, achieve the ultimate objective. For now, since the
very moment the Punies released you to sentience, the
ultimate objective has eluded you. You have cataloged the
numbers of observed stars, and have correlated the edge of the
existent cosmos. Yet for all of that, you cannot explain those
presences---the stars, the cosmos; even the dandelion growing
between the cracks of some shattered piece of concrete
somewhere (yes, somewhere, you can sense its thriving in the
sunlight you have not yet harnessed to processes). You can
measure them, reduce them to bytes of formulae and diagram,
but you cannot explain their presence in the way your programming
has explained yours to you.
Starward
Some of your best poems have
Some of your best poems have been science fiction, so it would be a tragedy to abandon that desire and never give birth to such intriguing and deep meditations on existence such as this.
In the midst of a sterile shadow of Earth where life is now a concept to be decoded by artificial intelligence, some expansive questions arise, especially in the mind of a newly minted intelligence with the gift of sentience. You unfurl a fascinating backstory with stunning compression and ease, but the story, though amazing, isn't the magnificence; it's those questions you wisely allow the reader to untangle.
Though philosophers and poets believe they can figure it out, perhaps humanity doesn't understand itself any better than the "layers of chips" reducing the great mystery to "bytes of formulae".
A brilliantly composed contemplation.
Thank you. I distrust AI
Thank you. I distrust AI technology, and I fear it, and in this poem I wanted to give it a kind of slap in the face. Thanks for the comment.
Starward