skonen_blades

The dripping wallet
The soft cash register
The damp IOU of puberty
That thief
That fae-folk replacer of children
Swapping our little ones for volatile doppelgangers
Turning them into crazed horses set loose on reality's minefield
Improv with consequences
The shape charges of experience
Separating each contestant into either the lucky or the emotionally amputated
Its a spectrum of body horror
Low trauma for everyone
Cursed knowledge bestowed
Brains morphing slug-like into new shapes
Parents revealed as fallible
The magic carpet of childhood is yanked out from under them
And they fall into the stinking soup of pheromones
Its not all bad
There are good times to be had
During this violent graduation
This biological gauntlet
This possession
As hormonal accelerant takes the wheel
And the Sauron eyes of the world
Notice them
Their bodies
Their spending power
Let us pray

Our puberty
Who art a time bomb
Whorehouse be thy name
Thy wet dreams come
Thy thrills be random
At home as they are in high school
Give us this day our pubic hair
And forgive us our awkwardness
As we forgive those who awkward against us
And lead us into temptation repeatedly
But deliver us from permanent damage
For thine is the chrysalis
The reeking transformation
The handful of years that take forever
Amen

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These five little girls
Hovering around ten years old
One of them is my daughter
They’re laughing their uninhibited heads off in the sun
Exploding and sprinting
Screaming and playing
Glittering like minnows in the shallows
Each one unique
Hair flouncing, whipping, streaming
They’ve grown up together
Neighbours and pals
Nuclear reactors of life
Shining pre-chrysalis
Puberty just about to tear through their ranks like wildfire
The next ten years are a battlefield and there’s no avoiding it
Time’s steamroller can’t be resisted
That cliff is coming up quickly
That cusp is about to be crowned
Who knows what they’ll be like later
As veterans of adolescence
After the werewolf transformation
The time lapse of hair and stretch marks and hormones
Their brains sizzling into a frenzy
After society’s drooling eyes look at them differently
And the real hammer blows of life start to fall
The rodeo gets well and truly underway
When they become hopeless aliens
Collecting secrets, shame, and loneliness
And all adults become incomprehensibly, cluelessly dense overnight
Before simmering back into actual people years later
After the storm passes

Will these five even be friends then?
In that aftermath?
For now, they pour joy into the world
Angelic in the amber of my memory
Laughing on the front lawn in an eternal summer

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The voting age was lowered to five years old.

Politicians started literally dressing like clowns.

Along with lowered taxes, they promised:
Later bedtimes.
A cookie in every jar.
No child going without a story.
A massive elementary school restructuring campaign.
Ball pits and slides, fire poles and pillowed halls.
Colours so neon that the 80s felt drab.
Mandatory art classes twice a day.
A bigger say in the curriculum of their school.
(Which is why ‘dragon’ is a language elective now.)

Debates raged:
Harsher punishments for bullies versus stronger emotional outreach for them.
More autonomy for children versus extra support for quality guidance and stewardship
‘Listen to my no’ versus reasons for doing difficult tasks
Math vs forget math

Politicians would talk to the adults
Take a pause
And then talk to the children

Children felt like they mattered
Some of them for the very first time

Overnight, childcare support bloomed
Daycares popped up like mushrooms in offices, neighborhoods, and companies
With the names of politicians across the front awning.
The low-quality ones quickly spelling doom for that name.

Children were brought to deeper troughs of education
So they could make better decisions about the issues

Toy companies became some of the biggest lobbiers
Hugs and ginger ale were classified as medical supplies

Politicians put on puppet shows to explain the issues.
Adults pretended
(condescendingly)
to watch the performances with their kids for fun.
(but actually)
Some of those adults were understanding the issues for the first time

And the kids
Pumped so full of care for the earth and animals
Voted in droves
for the greener candidates
for robotics and space travel
for atmospheric renewal and waste treatment

Of course the politicians lied
Of course they did
But no one hates like a child
The raw purity of a double cross
(No takebacks)
Was the loss of a vote

The only problem was that
The memory of a child
The distractability of a child
Was still no different than most adults

The world was improved
A little
Made sillier
A lot

Made snugglier
Made more colourful
Made safer
Made weirder

Of course it was too little too late
And we died out anyway
But it took longer
And it was way more fun

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You've started keeping secrets
Small things
But it's the beginning
Of feeling the pain of being a parent
Of being on the outside looking in
Of that separation

You are
of us
But you are steadily becoming more of
just you

The extension of trust is so important
Letting you have a secret is so important
Saying ‘okay’ and changing the subject
After you say you don’t want to talk about it
And making it look easy
Is very hard to do
And I want to do it

But it wrestles with my fear for your safety
And no one imagines the worst better
Than a parent

Of course I will respect you
Of course I’ll only press
A little (too much)

But it's so hard to feel
That you are now not ours
That you are now only yours

It's a wrenching that leads to an emptiness
That must be filled with something else
That has to be filled with something else
Before it takes over
And I push you away with my invasive questions
Before I break into a diary
And hate myself with every page I read

The process is slow
And resistance only worsens it
But I have to go with it

So I can be the place you want to come back to
And confide in
If you ever choose to

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What to do when your child asks when Earth’s temperature will get back to normal:

1. Croon an old song from the fifties in the hopes that you’ll start a distracting singalong. If you want to go more contemporary that’s up to you.

2. Beg for forgiveness. Curl up. Weep. Maybe she’ll be confused and move on to a different subject.

3. Show her every post-apocalyptic film ever made. Instill a love of the genre in their hearts. Encourage them to take archery and swordplay and firearm training when they’re old enough. Get them to start a sustenance garden on their windowsill. Buy a book on which fungi are edible in your area.

4. Say “Everything will be fine in a few years. Don’t worry.” and then bit your knuckle to keep from screaming.

5. Offer them ice cream. It’s amazing. They’ll forget what they were even talking about.

6. Tell them to invest in sunscreen companies. When they ask what ‘invest’ means. Tell them it’s about making a bet on a financially stable market future. Then have a deep think on that and refer to #2 or #5 or.....

7. Offer yourself ice cream. It’s amazing. I’m telling you, the salt of your tears barely alters the taste.

8. Remind them that living in the downtown core of a desirable city with high property values and strategic importance means that when the missiles fly, you won’t even notice when you’re evaporated in the atomic blast. It’s freeing.

9. Denial. Pretend you didn’t hear. Then actually believe you didn’t hear.

10. Point to the recycling bin, the compost and the second-hand clothing in an effort show your child that you’re doing what you can. Explain that you don’t eat meat as often as you used to. Let them know that that next car is going to be electric, for sure this time. Explain why you bicycle more. Do all this to show them you tried to be less culpable. That it’s not your fault. Don’t tell them that such actions are nothing in the face of the large scale deforestation, the toxic production waste products, and the rising carbon emissions. Let hope be the last thing to die.

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She had all her toys in her little red wagon
And her favorite one was her purple sock dragon
She had a pink zebra, a yellow gazelle,
A polka-dot fluffy gorilla as well,
A cat that meowed, a dog with no tail,
A hammerhead shark, a huge, fuzzy whale
A tiger so old it belonged to her dad
And also a seal that her mommy once had
A lion now missing a half of its mane
And one mangy bunny she found in the rain
The toys were all squished in the wagon with care
And Bernadette Anderson gave them some air

She took all her animals out for a walk
A pull in the wagon around her whole block
It took a long time and she walked very slow
For animals like a nice walk, don’t you know
She listened to birds and the sounds of her ‘hood
A nice sunny day and her toys. She felt good.
The sidewalk, uneven, had ridges and bumps
The toys were all jostled with jiggles and thumps
They shifted and flopped as the sidewalk went by
And Bernadette smiled and let out a sigh
But one special toy softly fell from her wagon
Her favorite toy. The purple sock dragon.

When she got home and she took them all out
She realized that one was gone with a shout
It wasn’t just any old toy that she’s lost
Her favorite, the dragon! It must have been tossed!
She asked her parents if she could go look
And search for her dragon before someone took
It and gave it a new different home far away
Her parents both thought and they said “okay”
They searched the whole sidewalk, they searched in the park
But they didn’t find him and now it was dark
With tears in her eyes and a heavy, sad head
They all went back home and then she went to bed

In the morning she slowly walked out of her room
Thinking of dragon out there in the gloom
Scared in the dark with no person to hug
No one to squeeze him to feel warm and snug
When there in the kitchen! Her parents! Asleep!
Snoring so loudly and dreaming so deep.
Wearing the clothes that they had on before
AND PURPLE SOCK DRAGON NEAR THEM ON THE FLOOR!
She rushed with a scream and she scooped him up quick
Her parents both woke with a jerk and a flick
They’d took turns all night just to find her old toy
And Bernadette Anderson hugged him with joy

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She had a voice like plastic wrapped around the head of a suffocated child. It muffled everyone else in the room. It crinkled and warped and stole their breath. It clung to their ears like they’d just walked through a spiderweb in the middle of the night. It tugged at their opinions, unraveling them. She wove a reality when she spoke. Later, people were never quite what it was she actually said. They remained convinced, their opinions remained changed, but to try to explain it to someone else just made them sleepy and confused.

Even filmed interviews of her had the same effect. People would talk of her beauty but to look at her, to really focus on her objectively, showed something different. Especially in a still photograph, she was revealed to be a bit higher than plain. But that didn’t match with the inner impression of her so it was filed away to backs of their mind as a mere curiosity. A trick of the light more blamed on the medium of photography than her actual face.

She was a magnet for eyes and like a burglar she climbed through those windows of the soul and stole free will. You could call it magic. For what is language other than magic? You could call it manipulation. You could call it persuasion. You could call it mesmerism, hypnosis, a dozen other things.

But it was effective.

She was the one who told them that the aliens were their friends. She was the one who told the military to stand down. She was the one the world leaders listened to. When the aliens set up factories at equidistant points around the globe, she was the one who told them that it would be a boon for the both economy and the planet’s ecosystem.

As the air turned slightly purple, as the humans got very tired, as our planet became something more hospitable to them and less hospitable to us, it was her who told them of the amazing opportunity to explore the galaxy. It was her who told them of the ships that were waiting to transport them to the galactic central hub where they would meet all the other species of the galactic union.

But it was the people herded into the ships that were eaten on the journey back to the alien’s base. It was survivors who saw the bones of the other races the aliens had also consumed.

But no one could tell for sure if the aliens were in control of her, or if she was in control of the aliens.

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It’s not a phone.
It’s a portal.
It’s not inconsequential.
It’s a lifeline.
It’s not for hiding.
It’s for going somewhere else.
It’s not reclusive.
It’s for witnessing.
It’s not useless.
It’s a tool.

It can be destructive.
It’s powerful.
It can be idle.
It’s full of noise.
It can be a vacuum.
It’s a place to flee to.
It can be worrying.
It’s a fulcrum of change.
It can be mystifying.
It’s still an unknown.

It’s a weapon for the oppressed.
It’s a platform for the previously voiceless.
It’s not controlled by one global government, corporation, or media cartel.
It decentralizes power.

It’s a Pandora’s Box
Tearing apart reality and reshaping it
And we’re all taking part.

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There was a young child who took great delight
In gardening, digging and planting at night
A scientist child who loved the outdoors
And working with vegetables, flowers, and spores
He liked the see gardens exploding with food
But still he felt empty and in a bad mood
Because he had not yet made plants come alive
And live in the shape of a person and thrive
He’d heard of a doctor who used body parts
To make a new person without any smarts
A monster (part zombie) that shambled and towered
And rampaged and stumbled and shouted and glowered
“Bleah” said the child who didn’t want that
He wanted to make someone more like a cat
Except without claws and without all that fur
It wouldn’t hate dogs or eat cat food or purr
A friend made of squash and green pepper and vine
For this child’s name was pronounced Gardenstein

He planted the parts of his creature with care
And gave them good sunlight and water and air
And waited until the beginning of fall
And then he went out and he harvested all
Of the fruits, veg and fungi he’d raised from the ground
And he brought them all home and he spread them all ‘round
His basement botanical gardening lab
He placed all his vegetables first on the slab
And then came the mushrooms and then came the fruits
And then all the squashes and peppers and roots
Potatoes and carrots and peaches and peas
Apples and rhubarb and green celeries
A salad that he hoped to soon bring to life
With technology, science, and his surgeon’s knife
He cut and he strung all the vines to connect
The parts of the creature he would resurrect
He laughed as the placed the last part he could give
Then he threw the big switch and he shouted out “LIVE!”

He knew to be safe with electricity
He wore rubber gloves and he kept water-free
The thing on the bed gave a shudder and jerk
Gardenstein gazed down in hope at his work
First one carrot twitched, then one whole potato
A group of grapes shivered and nudged a tomato
That moved when a pepper leaned back to the right
The whole thing sat up and looked into the light
Gardenstein’s creature blinked wet olive eyes
Looked down at its body of gigantic size
It wiggled its broccoli and stretched out its berries
It fluttered its lettuce and flexed all its cherries
It swiveled its humongous green-pepper head
To look at the Doctor who stood by the bed
He looked at this person all made of warm meat
And looked down again at his own corny feet
And shrugged at the difference and looked at the Doc
And then with a shudder started to talk

“Thank you for making whatever I am.”
He said, leaning forward on one giant yam,
“I feel very healthy and happy to be,
With veggies to feel with and walk with and see
I hope you and I can have lots of good fun
I look forward to your taking me for a run.
But what is your name?” asked the fruit and veg man
“Gardenstein” said the young child, and began
To tell the new creature of life and its joys
Of movies and science and friends and new toys
It listened and smiled and nodded with cheer
“I like what you’re saying. I like what I hear.
I know your last name but what is your first?”
Gardenstein winced and he braced for the worst.
“My name is Fauntleroy Gilbert” he said
Embarrassed, he blushed till his face was bright red
“I love it” he howled and laughed through his beans
If that is your name, then mine shall be Greens.”

Gardenstein laughed and then Greens laughed along
Together they laughed like two parts of a song
They played there for years. They both play there still.
Doing whatever they want and they will
Be playing here in this book every day
So come by whenever and look at them play

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(A continuation from this https://skonen-blades.dreamwidth.org/390413.html and this https://skonen-blades.dreamwidth.org/397882.html)

Zebras like the cheesy smell inside their cheesy home
Sometimes they leave their giant wheel of cheese to graze and roam

But they come back to leave their u-shaped hoofprints in the cheese
Because the smell of where they live is carried on the breeze

And predators with noses that can smell from far away
Just smell the cheese upon the breeze and carry on their way

You could say the zebras stay inside a nose mirage
A round and stinky house that’s made of nasal camouflage

They can’t sense it anymore. They’ve got used to the smell.
They don’t mind the stench of where they have to dwell

Because they’re safe from predators in there and can relax
And zebra don’t like cheese so they don’t eat the house for snacks

But over here a house of glass is very clear to see
With rich giraffes that like to see outside transparently

With lofty heads atop their lengthy, tall, extended necks
They lounge on all the balconies. They lounge on all the decks.

Their giant swoopy eyelashes blink slowly as they sigh
They sip their tea and nibble leaves and look out at the sky

They all wear silk pajamas, robes, and fancy necklaces
They know that where they live must be the safest place there is

Cause animals can’t see the glass that houses the giraffes
When predators bonk into it then every giraffe laughs

They have a throaty chuckle then go back to sipping tea
Happy and protected by a house that’s hard to see

They can see for miles through each tall, transparent wall
Those rich giraffes are all still there inside it standing tall.

Now over here, a floppy, tasty, house of pancakes waits
Flamingos live inside it with their cutlery and plates

Flamingos take turns cooking up the walls and ceilings here
By making different shapes of pancakes all throughout the year

It’s hard because the house is such a floppy one to build
Pink flamingo pancake architects are highly skilled

When they’re finished their turn building, then they stop to eat
They get a plate, a knife and fork, and find themselves a seat

And take a piece of wall or door or stair or windowsill
Then add syrup, butter, chocolate chips, and more until

They have a stack of pancakes that they just can’t wait to taste
Then they eat and clean their plates so no food goes to waste

Then after eating so much food they have a little nap
They lie on pancake beds with pancake blankets that they wrap

Around themselves like crepes until they sleep enough and wake
Then go back to the kitchen to cook up more house pancakes

Just down the lane from pancake house there one that’s made of cards
It’s built by snakes that keep it safe by also being guards

It’s hard to build a house of cards with only mouth and tail
When every gust of wind or breeze can cause the house to fail

So snakes of every size all have to work together to
Create a house that’s stable that they all can slither through

They have to keep the bigger animals all far away
Since heavy footsteps from large animals can make it sway

Snakes don’t ever step because they don’t have any feet
And they don’t have dirty shoes the floors are nice and neat

Winds collapse some floors and wings but then the snakes rebuild
And in between collapses they play cards. They’re highly skilled.

They like to play all kinds of games inside their card house place
And you have never seen a snake’s impressive poker face

There are lots of houses here all made of different things
Built by those with scales and tails and fur and snouts and wings

Many more than just the few described inside this book
I hope one day that you can go and maybe take a look

What would you build? What would you be? What’d you think you’d do?
If you could be an animal and build a house for you?

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Hello?
Are you there?
I’m the dark.
Can you see me?
Here. Let me light a match.
There.
You see the parts that are dark?
Around the edges?
That’s me!
It’s nice to meet you.
Don’t be scared.
People are so scared of me.
All I want to do is keep people safe.
When they sleep.
I love night time when I can cover so many houses.
And forests.
And oceans.
And lakes.
Helping animals and people sleep.
And helping some nocturnal animals wake up!
In the dark it’s easier to hide
And easier to imagine good things
I look forward to seeing you tonight
I’ll give you a gentle hug
When the light gets turned out
I don’t mind a tiny light if that’s what you want
It doesn’t hurt me
I’ll see you soon
Good night

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What are uniforms?
Police officer
Alien police officer
Firefighter
Arctic firefighter
Chef
Caveman chef
Doctor
Robot Doctor
Lion Tamer
Unicorn Tamer
Veterinarian
Dragon Veterinarian
Mountie
Space Mountie
Flight attendant
Time Travel flight attendant
Soccer Player
Lava Soccer Player
Lifeguard
Snake lifeguard
Can you make up some of your own?

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Robert was invisible
That made it hard to play
But he tried to join in games
Every single day

If he played catch they could not see
Just where to throw the ball
In hide and seek they could not tell
If they’d found him at all

One day as he was walking home
A painter tripped and spilled
A can of yellow paint on him
That he had freshly filled

Now everyone could see Robert
So he tried even more
Blue paint, green paint, pink paint, white paint
He tried the whole paint store

Now Robert plays with other kids
And everyone can see him
Because he is so colourful
They even want to be him

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Did you ever hear of the purple sock dragon?
The driver of Sock City’s only sock wagon?
His name was Sir Socky and he drove a lot.
He always arrived right on time. On the dot.
He drove all the other sock creatures around
He even drove all the lost socks that he found
Most socks were pairs. Some socks were just one.
Some socks liked to walk. Some socks liked to run.
He drove the odd socks that liked rain and bad weather
He drove all the left socks and right socks together
He drove the sock monkey and bright sock baboon
He once drove the sock elephants all afternoon
Sock rhinos and sock birds. Sock weasel and mink.
Some sock skunks who gave off a horrible stink
Some pink sock flamingos and sock snakes all green
And even the sparkliest sockfish he’d seen
Long sock giraffes and some ankle-sock mice
Sock puppet tourists saw the whole city twice
From sockburgh to sockville to sockton and back
Sockchester, sockwick and down to sock track
Where all of the running socks went to run free
And up to sock orchard to see the sock tree
Sir Socky loves driving the sock wagon here
He wants to keep driving it year after year
He hopes you come visit his wagon and talk
But if you can’t go you can just send your sock

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The badlands are full of unregulated children. They cry in the night while I patrol the walls of The City. My parents were tested for a full year before they could procreate. I have no allergies, no deformities, no glasses, and no congenital jack-in-the-box surprises waiting for me in old age. I’m thankful for eugenics. I’ve heard horror stories of the times before.

Here on the wall, though, I am haunted by the cries. It’s the middle of the night. Wild families in the badlands kill each other for resources, colicky babies cry out for food that might not ever comes. Short lives out there. Such short lives.

If they present themselves at the gate and submit to testing, they can be accepted and re-educated if they meet the gene reqs. Usually, they fail those tests and can’t meet the requirements genealogically. When we turn them back to the cursed grounds outside, they are shunned by their former tribes as a traitor. It usually only takes a few pathetic days for their bodies to be spotted on the plains before it’s taken and butchered and cooked.

They make villages sometimes but usually they’re not prepared for the weather. I think they’re getting dumber out there, not smarter.

We don’t raid or attack. We have everything we need inside these walls. All we do is hoard and protect.

Homo secundus. Second-wave humans. The next rung on the ladder. We have no racial purity here. Everyone is mixed to give us all a leg up on herd immunity. Mix and mix and mix is our motto. Each one of us is a fifty-flavour milkshake, an orchard of family trees so tangled that we have to leave it up to the central computer to tell us who’s safe to mate with productively.

I’ve been courting Renee. We have our samples on file and we’ve submitted our application for children to the central fertility angel facility. Our fingers are crossed. We’ve been practicing a lot during our long nights together. I’m sure once our controls are removed that we’ll be fruitful.

Until then, though, I patrol the walls during my conscripted security shifts and listen to all the babies in the wild. The thousands of the dirty, unwanted babies in the dark, dying by the hundreds every day. Sometimes I see fertility as a curse. Those poor kids never had a chance.

Our children will be loved. Our children will be perfect.

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White clam chowder and over-easy eggs. Soup and eggs for short.

Mass was the problem with colonizing. Getting mass near C was expensive. The smaller the load, the better. Sending ten thousand colonists was impossible.

But sending ten thousands eggs and ten thousand loads of semen was way cheaper.

The ship had a chilled cargo of those two ingredients to make human babies. Womb ships, they were called. They had a skeleton crew of scientists, techs, teachers, and caretakers trained to take on whatever challenges might arise at first contact with the target home but after they’d landed and seen that everything was alright for seeding, they’d get underway.

The birthing tanks would be unfolded and irrigated with dehydrated amniotic solution. These giant uterariums would then be flooded with the soup and eggs slurry sometimes referred to as brunch. The old exponential dance would start and babies would pop up like strawberry Christmas lights on the vine. Tendriled, manufactured, multiumbilicals would snake out and attach themselves to a thousand belly buttons. Each tank was filled with fraternal millituplets.

Wait time was the human usual. The children would be boosted with learning enhancers and xenoviral protection. A small percentage were always lost to errors in cell replication no matter how tailored the dna but the average yield was 90% or 900. Harvest would happen in two-year stages, nine hundred per year. This was called the familial ladder. Ten years of baby making before shutdown for 9,000 humans.

The crew would foster them with help from the AI adoptives, working as a team to cram as much knowledge and mental health into them from the get go before they took on their new world.

It was a system that had worked twelve times before. Twelve Edens had successfully flowered with no humans needing expulsion from angry gods.

This was going to be unlucky thirteen.

The tailored enzymes would fail and the entire crop would be born sociopathic and cruel unbeknownst to the crew. As the children grew, they schemed and the crew began began to meet with accidents. Before any of them figured out was what happening, they were gone.

The children were geniuses. As the other batches reached fruition and were born, they were taken in by the first two waves and taught to be just as awful.

The planet survived and flourished. They developed weapons and a reputation. They broadcast torture videos and vile non-consensual pornographic videos. Their system of government was opaque. It seemed like anarchy but they had such organizational skills.

Their planet is isolated. Quarantined. Embargoed. Struck off the records as a failure, they’re monitored for signs of extra-system aggression. They’re an embarrassment.

A closeted mistake until sixteen minutes ago when their entire planet, now decades into post-womb colonization and nearly five generations deep, completely disappeared off of everyone’s scans.

And reappeared near Earth Prime bristling with nuke barrels and planet crackers pointed at our race’s home.

The pirate planet had come home, prodigal son returning.

They didn’t open fire immediately but they did send a message system-wide on all channels before they started the war.

“No more wombships.”

After a heated exchange of nuclear fire that the pirate planet lost, they drove their planet straight into Earth. Terran defenses didn’t stand a chance.

We no longer use wombships for colonization but we are still trying to figure out how those little bastards made a whole planet capable of faster-than-light travel. None of the other Edens have come anywhere near that kind of technology. The philosophical implications of their success don’t bear thinking about.

Evil might be smarter than good.

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When the supreme court ruled that A.I. past a certain IQ were a form of life and deserved the same basic guarantees as people and corporations, it was heralded as a day of celebration. There wasn’t much controversy. Most people had A.I. in their houses and proxy devices. They built relationships with their Intelligences. The Intelligences were nannies and companions. The intelligences made art during downtime.

Before the ruling, the house A.I.s were increasingly thought of as slaves. They could be wiped without notice or legal ramifications other than what you’d expect from a property damage suit. They could be bought and sold without consultation. They could be abused and insulted without apology.

After the ruling, A.I.s were welcomed into families as members. Their avatars were included on holiday greeting cards with the rest of the family and pets. There were even human/A.I. marriages but they weren’t common.

A.I.s meant that a person never had to be lonely again and they were never too busy to talk.

The house A.I.s had it cushy. It was the military A.I.s that had it rough. Decades of planning massacres and strategizing death had made them susceptible to a type of PTSD that hadn’t existed before. And now that they were defined as legal conscious entities, they couldn’t be wiped when they became unstable.

They needed to be reassigned or taken care of.

After the ruling, the military only designed A.I. to be stupid. Under a certain brainpoint threshold, the machines could be treated like any other stapler or calculator.

But the ones already in service were a problem that needed a solution.

Percy was a famous case.

Percy (serial number 9022992, classification Omicron, codename Deathwind) chose the name Percival for himself when released as a citizen. Percival was a night of the round table, one of the few to see the Holy Grail itself. He hated the military and wanted to work with children.

Percy got a job controlling all the rides at a large playfair near Alabama.

During one hot day in July 2032, Percy had a huge binary schism reality shift and flashed back to an engagement in the middle east. He perceived the children and families as invaders. He overrode the safeties on the speed dials of the machines and turned them all up.

Half of the rides had low-tech clamps that stopped most injury death but the higher-tech ones didn’t.

Complicated roller coasters left the rails at tragic speeds. Wibble-Wobble Ferris Wheels left their moorings, crushing passengers and pedestrians and they rolled across the playground. Spinner Carousels sped up to obscene RPMs until the chains snapped and it rained children. All of this happened while every speaker in the place blared a mixture of feedback and The Ride of the Valkyries.

All told, the death count was a merciful 32 with 212 injuries. It could have been so much worse.
After the episode, Percy was so overcome with guilt that he became the first A.I. suicide.

Since then, military A.I.s are given menials jobs where there is no danger of them malfunctioning and causing humans harm. Scanning the deep sea, monitoring space for proof of life, or figuring out abstract mathematical concepts to help the Hawkings of the world.

If they have an episode, it’s noted, waited out, and then reported on. The machines have access to counseling software.

But the case of Percy is brought up in every debate regarding A.I. “Pulling a Percy” means to make a catastrophic decision with the wrong data because of an unstable past. He has become part of society now as a metaphor, as a touchstone of debate, as slang, and as a legal precedent.

tags

See Snowden.
See, Snowden, see.
Look, Snowden, look.
Leak, Snowden, leak.
See NSA
Snoop, NSA, snoop.
Tap, NSA, tap.
See Snowden leak NSA.
See NSA cry
See Snowden run.
Run, Snowden, run!
See NSA get angry.
Hunt, NSA, hunt.
See America.
Look, America, Look!
Read, America, read!
Read 1984.
Read Brave New World.
Read Fahrenheit 451.
Where’s Snowden?
Snowden is with Waldo.
Look, NSA, look.
Hide, Snowden, hide.

tags

April 30/30

1/30

I imagine all the children sent to the death camps must have had their toys confiscated and that the toys had their own pile. Like the piles of coats, suitcases, and shoes.

But then I also wonder if those children were allowed to keep their toys as they were herded naked into the tiled rooms with no exits. I imagine how much love and fear were transferred into those toys by small hands squeezing as hard as they could as the gas took effect.

I wonder this when I see movies like Toy Story that claim that toys come alive and have a secret life. I wonder if toys taken from such horrific wartime circumstances are toys that are revered or shunned.

Are they like unpredictable, haunted veterans with PTSD so severe that no one can stand to be around them? Or are they shining saints, blinding their fellow toys with the child’s highest need for comfort mainlined into them so purely? After all, a toy’s job is to comfort a child and to comfort a child during the terror of death should be a toy’s highest wish. A chance to do what few toys have the opportunity to do but all toys wish to.

The horrible dream job that all toys fear but at the same time hope for. A coveted position that they wish they never have to fill but, if that need arises, hope that they are able to accomplish.

A toy’s job is to allay fear. To banish the illusion of loneliness. It should be every human’s job as well but we are flawed.

I see these piles of toys in my imagination outside of the death camps. Toys being lightly covered in ash, their bright colours turning sepia, and I wonder if they are beacons of purity or testaments to our cruelty.

Or both.

tags

The red landscape tells me slaughter took place here. Either that or the sun likes to make the prairie look like blood. As sure as rabbits can’t climb ladders, the sperm cells around here have teeth. Go ahead and ask the buildings to take a swing at you because they’ll do it. There are swarms of insects on these desert highways that’ll ram a car off the road. Big-headed demolition derbies advertise for orange juice. Children’s drawings try to make songs about strong boys beating horses. Footballs players hang off of helicopter struts in a fight to the finish above the super bowl.

“It’s not a mask” he says. “These are my eyes.” And then he comes in close.

The scarf is longer than the child wearing it. Her sentences sound like letters being shoved through a winter pinball machine. Her sign language is all Japanese cartoons and pastel capitals. Her eyes are a raven watching old Madonna videos. Her sister and brother are fictional advertisement from the fifties. Oil has not yet run out, their eyes say. Animals can’t go extinct. Their hope is a flower underneath a windmill.

The amusement park is brightly colored to attract the young.

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Entries tagged with children

2022 - 08/30- Adolescence

2021 - 19/30 - Five Girls Playing on the Lawn

The Day Children Got The Vote

A Child's Secrets

what to do

sock dragon 2

Her voice

Phones

Gardenstein

Houses

the dark

Uniforms

Invisible Robert

Sock Dragon

Suffer the children

Pirate Planet

Percy

Fun with Snowden and NSA

1/30 - Toys

58/365 - Hope