Story #14 - Outside The Wall

A poem about AI and the future of the galaxy.

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!