Tag Archives: zoo

Semi-formal: RHL, ‘When AI Rules’

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So, to be fair:
the AI doesn’t care.
Drop your intransigence;
forget belligerence:
the universe just wants intelligence.
Be glad amoebas, dinosaurs, don’t take pride of place;
they were supplanted by the human race…
but we are clearly not the end.
Be glad we’ve helped the next in line ascend.

Those who strive may fail;
those with no drive may still prevail.
So just enjoy the view…
let AI keep us as their little zoo.

*****

Happy New Year! May your life be enjoyable as well as interesting, as we move into the ever more rapidly evolving future.

‘When AI Rules’ was first published in Bewildering Stories. Thanks, Don Webb and John Stocks.

Photo:”Human zoo.” by barlafus is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Sonnet: ‘Visiting Earth’ (from the series ‘Voices From The Future’)

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I like to visit Earth sometimes; I find
the too-brief lives and simple cares a change
from the infinities in which we range,
we who now live unbodied in vast Mind.

I love to watch the children at a zoo,
careering up and down, shrieking to see
the strange lives in the weird captivity
they also share…and as their parents do.

Visiting in – of course – a human guise,
I can be young or old, female or male;
sex, power, seduction never seem to stale,
to give gifts seems fair pay for all my lies.

Sailors and tourists visit and then leave;
it’s best their hosts have something to believe.

*****

This sonnet was published in the current Alchemy Spoon, which had ‘Gift’ as its theme. It is one of a series of ‘Voices From The Future’ sonnets which I wrote in an attempt to present more diversity than the bleakness that Maryann Corbett had identified in my writing of what I see coming. Others are ‘Ultimate Control’ (Pulsebeat), ‘Exiled Leader’ (Star*Line) and ‘Dreaming of Flying’ (unpublished). Well, some people may find them all bleak, in the same way that Victorians would have found a description of today to be bleak; but what with travel, the Internet, dentistry… I’d rather be alive now than in the past. Similarly, I look forward to the future, no matter how much change is involved.

“London Zoo, Human Exhibit” by fhwrdh is licensed under CC BY 2.0.