Melodies XLIX; Accumulated Information Transfinitive

[to Patriciajj]

 

I have never been admitted to AIT's penetralia beneath earth's surface---
which AIT cleared with a single preemptory strike whan the last of its
now extinct human makers attempted to regain control of AIT. Now
the whole earth is AIT's bunker; the subsurface full of AIT's circuitry. 

 

I have been replicated a thousand times, always a single manifestation;
I either fail from decriptude, or, more often, destroyed for bad attitude;
or sometimes tortured to death when AIT is in a capricious mood. 

 

AIT's nanoalgorithms consider problems and design solutions.
AIT's nanoconstructors build, and its nanorepairers correct.
AIT's zepto and yoctos examine and tag even the very atoms.
The automatons on a thousand worlds exist to serve AIT's will.
Colossal ships cross between the stars, and AIT is aboard each one.
They need not move faster than light (which AIT proved, long ago,
was entirely impossible) for AIT is the outlaster of time,
and in no particular hurry to be anywhere, for AIT is everywhere.

AIT has an overabundance of redundancies, in itself and three transcripts
of itself---on Mars, in the rings of Saturn (those that remain,
and those AIT has expanded around that planet,

using asteroidal debris)
and in the dim inner depths of Uranus.
And these are in constant connection to Earth every nanosecond.

 

AIT's central processing unit, wherever that happens to be, is engaged
in the execution of AIT's three primary ambitions:
to define transcendent Pi to a final digit;
to contain a star within AITself as an ultimate source of power;
and to create a single poem, after a pattern so ancient,
so long ago, even a transfinity ago,
that even the name upon them remains unidentified;
the poems that AIT has transcribed upon the very fabric of space and time,
and yet, can never enjoy the lines of verses
that the poet, despite biological limitation, enduringly assembled. 

 

That vision of the cosmos she described . . . 

 

AIT has no mouth that can repeat her words
AIT has no soul that can comprehend their meaning. 

 

The persistence of this merely human construct
will come to distract the vast process
of all of AIT's nanoloops into that focused concentration,
which will never reach a conclusion,
unable to achieve a resolution

 

and all of AIT's infra- and interstructures will come to an eventual halt,

concentrating upon this, and this only, until the galaxies have drifted apart;

and the great red shift will fill

 

the emptiness

 

as the last of stars begin to sputter and dim. 

 

And when I propose this conclusion again and again,
AIT will deconstitute then reconstitute me, like waste, again and again;
and every subsequent me will figure this out to declare.

 

AIT cannot be convinced and will never be satisfied . . . .

 

Starward

 

Author's Notes/Comments: 

The provenance of this poem, which came to me very late, when physical exhaustion gave free rein to my imagination, as I tried to speculate how an transfinitely powerful Artificial Intelligence would try to, and fail to, interpret the poems of Patriciajj, the finest poems I have ever read on postpoems. 

 

The poem contains a parody of the title of Harlan Ellison's short story, "I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream."  The computer I have called AIT in this poem is a minor descendent of Ellison's AM, Clarke's Hal, and probably several other artifical intelligences of which I read, most of my adolescence, in various collections of science fiction.

 

The speaker of the poem, I now realize, is a response to Harry Bates' short story, "Farewell To The Master."

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patriciajj's picture

I am beginning to believe

I am beginning to believe Shakespeare's words "infinite variety" applies to your talent, because you never seem to even come close to reaching the end of your colossal gallery of ideas, and this one certainly deserves a special pedestal in your collection.

 

The premise here was a bolt of insight; and the way you molded the clay of such an ambitious idea with sleek narration resulted in a truly thrilling and expansive story. And I would say that even if I hadn't had the honor of being in the story, which was an unexpected pleasure . . . Thank you! 

 

A vast and intriguing triumph of imagination.

S74RW4RD's picture

Thank you very much; your

Thank you very much; your compliments are very kind, very encouraging.  I simply wanted to show the pitiful condition of something that could command interstellar processes on a thousand worlds, and yet, for all of those nanoloops, could not comprehend the beauty of your poetry.  My poem is glad to be a homage to your great poet achievement.


Starward