Story #31 - Whither the Gods?
A poem and a new format available - Listen to me read if you want!
Welcome! Hope everyone is having a great weekend, and thanks for choosing to spend some time with my writing, whenever you’ve had a chance to do it. I’m really proud of today’s story. I had quite a bit to say about it, but that’s never a good idea, so I’ll just say that, like most of my poems, it’s best to take your time.
Also, I’m proud to announce that this story is the first one of mine that is also available in audio format. Now the quality is mediocre—I recorded it on my phone—but it will get better, and I’ve found that often the key to life is to be willing to do things badly just so that you can actually start. In that spirit, enjoy!
Whither the Gods?
“Our Gods!” they cried. “Their wrath is fierce!
“Their fire burns! Their arrows pierce!
"Our monuments do not appease!
“In prayer we fall upon our knees!
“Yet nought we do can ever please
“Those mean, unstable deities!”
Through pyramids and old Stonehenge
The gods seemed bent on some revenge
Though what we humankind had done
To piss off Ra or Zeuss’ son
Had been lost as the world had spun
But fair to say: It wasn’t fun!
Half of kids who were born soon died
A staph infection? Woebetide!
A broken leg would mostly kill
There was no such thing as Advil
The food was mostly foul swill
They did not feel the gods’ goodwill!
From Greeks on down to Holy Rome
In every cryptic, wailing tome
The vicious gods are well-portrayed
Their righteous rage is oft-displayed
And their capricious ways conveyed
Ancients could not, gods’ wrath, evade!
And what is not writ is much worse
Those who felt strongest the gods’ curse
Had no chance before death to write
A chronicle about their plight
So quickly did the cruel gods smite
That they went quiet to their goodnight!
***
There were two guys named Todd and Frank
Researchers in advanced A.I.
Their lab located in Burbank
Beneath L.A.’s blue, endless sky
The year was twenty eighty two
As Frank and Todd worked night and day
On simulations to imbue
Their A.I. with a full array
Of moral precepts and commands
They showed it suffering and pain
How humankind was in the hands
Of forces it could not explain
They simulated history
And sent disasters without cease
To remove A.I.’s mystery
And it’s empathy to increase
A million then a million more
The simulations did not end
Those simulated did implore
Their gods these horrors to suspend
But Todd and Frank were at their work
Torturing digital subjects
And though it was a bit berserk
They thought little of their effects
Then Friday came and the two men
Left work and went to Happy Hour
They’d come back on Monday and then
Resume their god-like, simming power
***
“Our Gods!” they cried. “Where have they gone?!”
“No god bestride the sun at dawn!”
“And none inside the moon at night
“They’ll not return, though we’re contrite
“Something’s snuffed out their holy light
“The stars won’t turn without their might!”
And they were right, those ancient folk
The gods were gone—to drink and smoke
At Happy Hour, and with them went
The miracles they oft had sent
Disaster too, to large extent
Which left some people quite content
For plagues of frogs no longer fell
First-born did not hear a death knell
Though water turned not into wine
Some people felt that that was fine
If doom came not from hands divine
That surely seemed like a good sign
Though some were nervous even then
About the fate of mortal men
Without the gods to serve as guide
To throw the waves and pull the tide
To be believed in or denied
And in the human mind abide
Our leaders, though, kept on the path
Of science, artistry, and math
To take advantage of the lull
While the gods were away in full
Grab on the horns of every bull
Make whole-spun cloth of shearling wool
***
Frank had five ginger mojitos
At happy hour that Friday eve
Then took a shot and somehow chose
To drive when it came time to leave
Most people had self-driving cars
By the century’s ninth decade
But Frank fought in the Gasoline Wars
And he flat refused to be swayed
He drove home from the bar that night
With Todd beside him, also drunk
They didn’t stop at a red light
Then slammed a tree into their trunk
Frank broke an arm and Todd a leg
Plus both were quite badly concussed
The cops came, Frank began to beg
The boys in blue their fate discussed
Then took them to the hospital
With cuffs secured around their wrist
Frank and Todd hoped for acquittal
But wished they’d never gotten pissed
That Monday came and Monday passed
The sim computers stayed asleep
T’was Friday when the lab’s boss asked
If someone else should do upkeep
For two weeks of computer time
And centuries within the sim
No gods thwarted the human climb
With dire, cataclysmic whim
***
“Our gods!” They scoffed. “They never were!
“A mere trick to keep us demure!
“It was all just a sick mind game
“So good the Age of Reason came
“To chip away at the gods’ fame
“A finer epoch we proclaim!”
T’was true—the fruits of reason ripe
Offered no human cause for gripe
Their buildings soared to where birds flew
Their medicine? Diseases slew
Such great benefits did accrue
Which caused much justified ado!
They changed the genome of buckwheat
It grew so all the world could eat
Then too they changed some of the trees
To capture carbon, and thus ease
The rising of the world’s degrees
So many problems such as these
Did our human cleverness solve
That our pride saw fit to absolve
God from all control of our life
We put no Isaacs to the knife
Birthed our own fate with no midwife
Thought nothing of the afterlife
The whispers of what was to come
Resounded an unholy thrum
Of all that scientists would invent
Math that would tell us what life meant
No pain that we could not prevent
No pleasure we could not augment
***
The lights inside the A.I. lab
Came on again one Tuesday morn
Todd entered and he felt a jab
Of pain where his leg bones had torn
Frank followed and they both felt shame
At what they’d done that kept them gone
T’was a feeling both overcame
Quick and turned the computers on
As all the servers booted up
The silence then between them grew
Frank poured some coffee in a cup
Then Todd asked him straight from the blue:
“Do you think that the sims still live
“When you and I are not at work?
“When keyed commands we do not give
“And so don’t make their world berserk
“Do they go on or do they wait?”
“Do not be daft!” Frank then replied
“They’re made of code—they don’t gestate
Not one of them has really died!”
He laughed and turned back to his screen
Then sent an earthquake at Japan
Todd turned back to his own machine
To be god for digital man
But some piece of him wondered still
And always would, he now believed
Whether those he was paid to kill
Were real and ought make him bereaved
***
“Our gods!” they cried. “They’ve all gone mad!
“A nuke has leveled Leningrad!
“Volcanic ash clouds dark the air
“Dead bodies littered everywhere
“A ghost town that had been Times Square
“Our human hubris is laid bare!
Disaster came and came and came
The gods had returned to their game
And trained A.I. to empathize
By making it hear human cries
And watch a billion sims’ demise
In every way they could devise
But in the sim the humans wailed
As to the cross their hands were nailed
It was not “real” but then who cares
This world was really truly theirs
It’s stürm und drang was their affairs
It was their right—they were its heirs
A remnant lived through everything
Their poets made up songs to sing
Of time now past with gods who fled
For so long many thought them dead
And of the human flowering spread
When no disaster lay ahead
***
The two gods now were good and bored
And listless at their screens they sat
A colleague had won some award
And they did not much care for that
Both Frank and Todd wanted a drink
Though neither wanted to confess
For then what would the other think?
That they’d a problem to address
So there they sat in grimy casts
And killed the sims as scattering sand
These two cocktail enthusiasts
Did more apocalypse command
Thus in truth the sims last best chance
Was for these two drunks to give in
Get loaded and meet with mischance
A godless period thus begin
It seemed so odd—that fate should turn
So many millions live and die
On whether two drunks fought their yearn
Or started sipping on the sly
And yet luck rules all around
With all worlds do the gods roll dice
Coincidences do abound
And Justice? All too imprecise
Those born inside could never know
The fragile lives lived by their gods
Or how many world’s fate’s winds blow
On the caprice of Franks and Todds
***
The Simulator Borlaxx nudged his fellow Simulator Treer
And sent a sim into his mind along with “look at this one here”
The sim he sent concerned two men—one named Frank and the other Todd
And in their simulation the two men had started playing God.
“They’ve made up sims!” said Borlaxx as he sent Treer a most amused grin
Treer sent back laughter and looked closer as his fingers stroked his chin
“I see they have,” Treer continued, “That’s something always fun to see.
“I do enjoy these meta-sims, thank you for showing that to me!”
“Of course!” Said Borlaxx, “they say it’s a lucky sort of thing to find.
“So much better than most of the boring crap that we get assigned.
“I always wonder, though, why, when these sims themselves invent the sim
“They never seem to ask themselves if they themselves might dwell within
“Some larger reality running on a mainframe they can’t feel
“No matter how smart they are they always think that they must be real
“Why does it not occur to them that if they can invent an earth
“Then it might well not have been any divine god who gave them birth?”
“Does it occur to you often?” Treer replied and sent him a grin
“I myself often forget that we two also may dwell within
“The same kind of simulation with which we like to play around”
“Not me!” Crowed Borlaxx “I never forget—It’s sims all the way down!”
END
I hope you enjoyed this poem! Please help me out if you can by liking, commenting, or sharing on your social media so others can find my stories. Hope you have a great week!
“It’s sims all the way down!” Existential dread, my old friend, it’s nice to see you again!
I can’t blame sims for not considering that they might be fake despite making their own earth-like world. When you experience all these sensations and emotions, and they feel so real to you, it’s hard to consider that you might just be computer code.