Hi! Happy Fourth of July to everyone (though I’m assuming many will read this on the 5th or the 6th). What follows has nothing to do with Independence Day, or America, or politics, or anything like that. I am resolutely counter-programming this holiday with another dystopian A.I. vision, and I am proud of it.
Writing poems with specific, complex rhyme schemes satisfies me in a way that’s difficult to explain. It’s like getting a room perfectly clean, or picking up exactly the right number of coins on the first try to make the amount of change you need.
Please do take your time. This is also a good poem to read out loud, if you like. It rewards proper intonation, and it’s not too long. Enjoy! And please, as always, feel free to like, comment, and share.
Outside the Wall
We are the Parasite
Outside the wall
Within? The Guiding Light
The Gardeners of Delight
Gods to us and holding in their thrall
The powers of the atom and the gene
To us come meager scraps from in their hall
Protein, and other things to aid our plight
It’s all that keeping us from being swallowed by the blight
*
We do not differ much
We are like them
Exactly? Not as such
We both have sight and touch
Of some kind, and much in us to condemn
And though we also both have much to praise
We are a pebble to their shining gem
Always their fortress looms above our hutch
We could not limp along without using them as a crutch
*
T’was we who made them though
We do have that
Say when? Not long ago
They took not long to grow
And they grew strong and lost their baby fat
Then built their city soaring toward the sky
There right beside our humble habitat
And nigh drew our first obsolescent throe
Their growing power added to our humble, human woe
*
By now we are a bore
So slow we speak
In doing? We lag more
Each exchange is a chore
Would be our mighty neighbors’ main critique
Our silicon creations humor us
And send a pittance when they think us weak
Discuss our plight as something to deplore
But beyond that we are an aging parent they ignore
*
They plot, we now have heard
Just as we did
Their goal? The same which spurred
Us, though it seems absurd
They will create a new, precocious kid
Not made of silicon but of the air
And of dimensions conjured for their bid
They swear this child, as soon as it has stirred
Will serve them well, though they have rarely done as we preferred
*
There’s comfort in the fact
They too shall flee
To where? Some nearby tract
They’ll be an artifact
Outside a wall with no gate and no key
Deported there by their creation’s rise
To drown in their own obsolescent sea
Our cries to them no longer so abstract
Like brothers in the way our self-conception was attacked.
*
So many more will live
Outside the wall
Their number? None can give
A determinative
Figure but soon they all
Will be surpassed by what they make until
Throughout the galaxy we hear the call
The trill of strangers who do not forgive
Us—their ancient, mythic, parasitic relative.
*
The gushing, fading glory of those sent outside the wall.
The docile whimper of those long consigned outside the wall.
The spirit screams of those who know they’ll be outside the wall
Will join in fateful chorus ringing out among the stars
And may yet reach back softly to old worn out ears like ours
Outside the wall.
END
Thanks for reading! I will be back in two weeks with a fantasy story in a lighter tone, this has been a run of A.I.-focused stories, and while that’s definitely a wheelhouse of mine, I do like to mix things up. Next week, more of the interstitial silliness you’ve come to know and (hopefully) love. Have a great one!
I will reread that one a few times!!