"Seems like scary stuff. But mostly, we alter lines of code. There's very little actual piloting done these days. Tweaking facial recognition software, alignment with the GPS (though that's rapidly approaching perfection), improving how the intelligence handles infrared distinction..."
"Uh-huh." Scotty screwed up his eyes to express his boredom, completely lost on his talking partner.
"If I'm being honest," the twat whispered, "we don't really even code. The algorithms have been capable of making their own adjustments for years now."
"Orly?"
"Fortunately, most higher-ups can't tell the difference. Generated code looks the same as handwritten: gibberish vs. more gibberish."
Scotty blew a bubble in his $20 coffee. He'd bet he had a 20 in his jacket somewhere, but he'd planned to dash even if Twat hadn't offered to pay. "You'll be techsourced, soon enough [[ya twat]]," he said [[and thought]].
"Oh, I don't doubt it." The guy lit a $20 cigarette and smirked. "But I'm hoping I'll be dead by then. Shit takes time. Or maybe I'll hear that buzz like a dog-sized bee myself one day, huh? My own function busting my head like a watermelon?" He put it out and took out another one, in case the girls at the next table hadn't seen how smooth he looked lighting it. "That'd be some kind of poetry, right? You seem like the poetic type."
"That's right."
He lost his stare in the middle distance somewhere. "Where would I go? I don't have the scruples for marketing." A puff of smoke twatted from between his lips.
"Sure."
"And a place like this? Café work (he emphasized the diacritic on the second syllable) just feels...beneath me. Ya feel me?"
"I feel you." He felt icky. But well caffeinated, damn.
"Anyway, Transient, thanks for the chat." He put the butt out. "I get bored between shifts. And during. And sometimes while sleeping... I'm not selling it super well, but you wanna go corporate, I've got your back. You seem like a smart guy. Or good at hiding idiocy. Either way works in the biz, whatever the biz is." He handed Scotty a bizness card, decorated with gold-embossed lightning bolts.
German Special
Expert Ninja Coder
and Professional Twat
Scotty turned it in his hands and said, "Wow."
"That's right, bud. Shall we get the check? Miss?! Little Miss! Yeah, you."
She came over with a glossy smile and tried to nab the card he held out while avoiding his fingers.
Scotty tried to slip in a couple platitudes before he slipped out, but found them dying to the far off whine of a bumblebee which he imagined to be somewhere between the size of a dog and a buffalo.
German lit a final cigarette and openly ogled the women at the next table. "Sounds like a plus-sized model. Same software, though. We should probably be flattered. Something knows we exist, at least for the moment." He smiled. His teeth were the beyond-yellow of coffee and cigarettes. "Anyway, it's been sweet."
Obligated to do so, Scotty Transient tried as hard as he could to think of something poetic to add, but the only two thoughts he could have were [[I've wasted my entire life.]] or [[My brain feels like Jell-O right now.]] Neither one seemed up to his own standards, so he was still thinking as the room filled with fire and shrapnel; too fast to process, too slow to escape.
Friday, October 13, 2017
Monday, March 13, 2017
In the Woods, Venus Waited
camping out beneath stars, the smell of pine deep in stinging his nostrils till he thought a capillary or two might burst, he remembered instead the smell of the bourbon drifting back through his throat when he sat in the alley, watching the cats skulk, the rats creep, and the headlines proclaiming the end of society. when he looked up, the brick wall across from him was still real, a flawed pattern, its consistency just inconsistent enough to get forever lost in if he'd been an ant on his way home. he took another pull, and he was back in the woods, Venus bright and foggy high above. It was this moment, the first time he ever realized that he would never go there. That he was forever stuck in the corner of the room, looking out but unable to move.
A raven crowed in the trees some distance away, its weight audible in the branches. He passed out and went back to the city.
"Hey bud." A polite kick woke him. "Hey bud." "You can't stay here."
He brought his bulk slowly upwards, a strand of drool still clinging from his lip to the bottle's. His stomach was heavier than he remembered it being. He must've eaten somewhere.
"Hey bud."
"I'm goin," he tried to say. He fell over instead. The voice game him one more polite kick and faded away.
The smaller tree branches rubbed against each other like conniving fingers. A hole went right through his middle, as if he'd left part of himself in the city. An organ or two. The roots under his back were making inroads beneath his flesh, twining between his fingers, propping him up.
It was some time later that he woke. He knew because the morning light that'd been coming on was gone, replaced by full dark again. A deep orange glow filled the air and danced in the pavement. If he could stand there was a park bench across the street. Just there. Maybe 20 steps away. 20 normal steps. 20 steps through traffic. The first 5 or so out in plain sight of the people walking to somewheres, walking in shiny shoes, walking between appointments, walking through cell phone air, walking over his rootfingers. He felt tied to the spot. Everything waited beyond the alley. If he could stand. One of the cats came and nuzzled at his outstretched hand. Its ribs were clearly visible, and he thought how easily it would be crushed if he were to step on it. If he could stand. Not that he would. Step on it, that is. It was just something that occurred to him. To make him feel like he might be a bad person. But that he might not know, because he couldn't seem to get moving, anyway. Maybe that was the reason for it.
The thing was, the sky was nice and small in the alley. Only at noon could it reach all the way down to him. Also the noise, the noise was close, but contained, as if the mouth of it all was a TV set blaring in the corner. But actually, he realized that night in the woods, he was the one in the corner. But all the same, his roots could spread beneath the surface into the soles and hearts of the folks out there while he stayed secret. Invisible. A part of the scenery. Drunk.
This night, the one where his fingers lay in the woods while he stared at the city flickering in its porthole, what sky he accessed was a deep and hooded purple. Ravens lined the upper edges of the brick buildings and hopped up and down the fire escapes. If he didn't move, which he couldn't anyway, it was impossible to distinguish the bottom of the stairs from the top. So it appeared instead as if an obsidian lattice extended from the rooftop of each building, myriad rectangles intertwined and inhabited by avian giants fluttering above a primordial ocean.
The bottle was empty. Shit. The bottle was empty. But there was another one. Another one somewhere.
Somewhere. Was it here?
Would he have to stand? Could he?
No, there it was. Turned on its side beneath a torn carry-out box. He wasn't going to open it just yet, but he touched it with a finger to make sure. He wasn't going to open it just yet. A light from the back of the alley shone through the amber. He wasn't going to open it just yet. Leave the golden firefly a bit longer. Then he would drink it. Once the cat left. Once it stopped watching him.
Instead of going back to sleep, he considered that he might write a poem about roots. About roots below the city but above the sewer. He considered that it might make him famous. He considered how then how much they'd look up to him for being drunk and dirty and wanting to step on cats.
In the poem, the roots would go up into the heel of each person who lived beyond the alley, and freeze them in place. They would all miss their appointments. Their phone batteries would die. They would have to look at each other. Maybe start a conversation. The ones right here by his alley would even have to look at him. They wouldn't talk to him, they would talk to the other, real people nearby, but they would see him, see his roots. In the poem, a man who had lived in the sewer would be smothered by the growing roots. They would break down his corpse for nutrients, needed for all the people stuck in place and unable to go to restaurants or cafés anymore.
He considered that his poem was a good idea, and he thought out the first stanza in his head, a thing that he would write and show to people, and read fervently aloud in the places where people listened to things. Once he could. Get up.
In the Woods, Venus waited. She stood aloft, a single bright eye of judgement shrouded in the purple fog. She seemed to be the candle around which the hooded black shapes crowded and sharpened their beaks. She seemed to be a light across a channel which flashed him a signal in Morse code that he couldn't decipher. She seemed to be the business end of an infinite needle held in the Sun's fire, and pointed straight at the space behind his eyes. She seemed to be a hole in his dark corner through which he could see that there was light in some other place outside it. She told him there were other lights, too, but he saw only the purple dark and the black.
In the Alley, the TV set was still blaring, the people still on track to their appointments. And it was time to open the second bottle. Then he could get up. Then he could get up.
A raven crowed in the trees some distance away, its weight audible in the branches. He passed out and went back to the city.
"Hey bud." A polite kick woke him. "Hey bud." "You can't stay here."
He brought his bulk slowly upwards, a strand of drool still clinging from his lip to the bottle's. His stomach was heavier than he remembered it being. He must've eaten somewhere.
"Hey bud."
"I'm goin," he tried to say. He fell over instead. The voice game him one more polite kick and faded away.
The smaller tree branches rubbed against each other like conniving fingers. A hole went right through his middle, as if he'd left part of himself in the city. An organ or two. The roots under his back were making inroads beneath his flesh, twining between his fingers, propping him up.
It was some time later that he woke. He knew because the morning light that'd been coming on was gone, replaced by full dark again. A deep orange glow filled the air and danced in the pavement. If he could stand there was a park bench across the street. Just there. Maybe 20 steps away. 20 normal steps. 20 steps through traffic. The first 5 or so out in plain sight of the people walking to somewheres, walking in shiny shoes, walking between appointments, walking through cell phone air, walking over his rootfingers. He felt tied to the spot. Everything waited beyond the alley. If he could stand. One of the cats came and nuzzled at his outstretched hand. Its ribs were clearly visible, and he thought how easily it would be crushed if he were to step on it. If he could stand. Not that he would. Step on it, that is. It was just something that occurred to him. To make him feel like he might be a bad person. But that he might not know, because he couldn't seem to get moving, anyway. Maybe that was the reason for it.
The thing was, the sky was nice and small in the alley. Only at noon could it reach all the way down to him. Also the noise, the noise was close, but contained, as if the mouth of it all was a TV set blaring in the corner. But actually, he realized that night in the woods, he was the one in the corner. But all the same, his roots could spread beneath the surface into the soles and hearts of the folks out there while he stayed secret. Invisible. A part of the scenery. Drunk.
This night, the one where his fingers lay in the woods while he stared at the city flickering in its porthole, what sky he accessed was a deep and hooded purple. Ravens lined the upper edges of the brick buildings and hopped up and down the fire escapes. If he didn't move, which he couldn't anyway, it was impossible to distinguish the bottom of the stairs from the top. So it appeared instead as if an obsidian lattice extended from the rooftop of each building, myriad rectangles intertwined and inhabited by avian giants fluttering above a primordial ocean.
The bottle was empty. Shit. The bottle was empty. But there was another one. Another one somewhere.
Somewhere. Was it here?
Would he have to stand? Could he?
No, there it was. Turned on its side beneath a torn carry-out box. He wasn't going to open it just yet, but he touched it with a finger to make sure. He wasn't going to open it just yet. A light from the back of the alley shone through the amber. He wasn't going to open it just yet. Leave the golden firefly a bit longer. Then he would drink it. Once the cat left. Once it stopped watching him.
Instead of going back to sleep, he considered that he might write a poem about roots. About roots below the city but above the sewer. He considered that it might make him famous. He considered how then how much they'd look up to him for being drunk and dirty and wanting to step on cats.
In the poem, the roots would go up into the heel of each person who lived beyond the alley, and freeze them in place. They would all miss their appointments. Their phone batteries would die. They would have to look at each other. Maybe start a conversation. The ones right here by his alley would even have to look at him. They wouldn't talk to him, they would talk to the other, real people nearby, but they would see him, see his roots. In the poem, a man who had lived in the sewer would be smothered by the growing roots. They would break down his corpse for nutrients, needed for all the people stuck in place and unable to go to restaurants or cafés anymore.
He considered that his poem was a good idea, and he thought out the first stanza in his head, a thing that he would write and show to people, and read fervently aloud in the places where people listened to things. Once he could. Get up.
In the Woods, Venus waited. She stood aloft, a single bright eye of judgement shrouded in the purple fog. She seemed to be the candle around which the hooded black shapes crowded and sharpened their beaks. She seemed to be a light across a channel which flashed him a signal in Morse code that he couldn't decipher. She seemed to be the business end of an infinite needle held in the Sun's fire, and pointed straight at the space behind his eyes. She seemed to be a hole in his dark corner through which he could see that there was light in some other place outside it. She told him there were other lights, too, but he saw only the purple dark and the black.
In the Alley, the TV set was still blaring, the people still on track to their appointments. And it was time to open the second bottle. Then he could get up. Then he could get up.
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
the realm
who could breathe in the city with the
air tight and crowded and the
paperwork piled in the gutters
between stacks of ill-suited
face-painted monkeys
eating each other's grins
as the world turned
slowly to its end
a chestpain that never would
go away till it broke itself
out and cracked the sewers
where they put the poop
they used to fling and smear
on each other and still would
if they hadn't hidden it away
so they could peruse and try
on fancy clothes poop free
so the heiress could move through
the shop window where the masses
had no poop to fling anymore
and still i'm not breathing as
wine flights pass through the bowels
and yet wind still into the
cracked sewers laden with
processed cheese plates
and pâtés
the river of shit
with its floating sachets
like the gondola ride we rode
down canals old enough
to remember the taste of our blood
my mistress is as old as the hills
its the teeth and eyes that show it
she laughs when she cries
and says "Shit is the realm of the poet."
air tight and crowded and the
paperwork piled in the gutters
between stacks of ill-suited
face-painted monkeys
eating each other's grins
as the world turned
slowly to its end
a chestpain that never would
go away till it broke itself
out and cracked the sewers
where they put the poop
they used to fling and smear
on each other and still would
if they hadn't hidden it away
so they could peruse and try
on fancy clothes poop free
so the heiress could move through
the shop window where the masses
had no poop to fling anymore
and still i'm not breathing as
wine flights pass through the bowels
and yet wind still into the
cracked sewers laden with
processed cheese plates
and pâtés
the river of shit
with its floating sachets
like the gondola ride we rode
down canals old enough
to remember the taste of our blood
my mistress is as old as the hills
its the teeth and eyes that show it
she laughs when she cries
and says "Shit is the realm of the poet."
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