There were tears in Tahir
But I fear in coming years
Young soldiers won't be there
Just massed robotic ranks
Then
Who's going to hack the
tanks?
I.
Let me introduce you to her
She lives after you
Not long after
She has a name
But it is not important
She has many numbers
Pick a number
Any number
It is not important which
It will relate to her
Pick a hex code
And a double helix
It will relate to her
It is not important
That you understand
Only, the important thing
Is love.
If she needs a name for you to love her
Give her a name.
If she needs a voice for you to love
her
Give her a voice.
If she needs to be beautiful
For you to love her
Read here that she is.
II.
The voice on the phone
Said to her
“I'm doing everything I can to help”
The voice had a name
And a number, which she had recorded
The days extended, went and came,
She held for hours on the exension
“I'm calling from a friend's phone,
it's just
I have no power, it's not just
I have no power”
“I know”
“I can't catch a car, or get a drink
In a bar, is there someone
Can you find out”
“I have no doubt, no passwords, no
cards
Your account has been listed, in error
I think”
“Is no one accountable”
“Do you have any known terrorist
links”
“What do you think
I have no molecule mixer, nothing to
eat
Just a whole lot of ink
Please help”
“I am doing everything humanly
possible to help”
She remembered when she cried at school
The robots would pleasantly ask if she
wanted more
"None of my numbers work" she
said
“None of my numbers identify me no
more”
III.
Before folk started to come up the hill
She would spend her time not in class,
with him
On the steep bluff overlooking the pass
And they would rest, laugh and pass the
glasses
Between each other tucked low in the
grass
And play if they could see the same
window
In needles that rose from the concrete
reef
And the lights that frayed the far away
bay.
They cheated and never needed to say.
He looked like his cousin, like they
were twins
And one young day in one windy summer
She thought that she had seen his
silhouette
And scrambled the bluff with fist fulls
of grass
She flopped down
flushed and found the other one
Setting an Exocet and fled as fast
As Goats. Yet since that day the cousin
said
She lusted and was just too shy to say
And would always call, visit her mother
It might have been that
Or just that they looked like each
other.
IV.
It was after the funeral
The tears and the drone
After she'd gone back up the hill
Near her home
A young man came across the field
Covered in sulphur from head to toe
Gave her physical memory
And said, you are not alone
These are their addresses and history
In the files, see, there is your
destiny
He had names, important names
He had her name, his own
She didn't have long, she knew
She would kiss a one line obituary
Before it had all gone wrong.
V.
A smart suit
Came through the door
Representing power
To the top of the steps
Made an excellent speech
Saying they could talk
Agreement in reach
And they started talking
The flock in the square
Grew thick and packed
Some hawking, some gawking
Some part of what's growing
She shared her knowing
Showing others, others came
There were many others.
Predictive vendors and sweepers
Big and small, a steel ecology
Around a watering hole.
And while they were talking
It was like carnival.
And she felt like bursting.
VI.
It made a difference to him
Back then.
No one expected them
But they came
With spreadsheets and servers
And the whole blockchain
In physical
“You misallocated, we have proof
This is carbon clear financial abuse”
But they needed, he said
Without it he pleaded
It made a difference he said
“Indeed, no doubt your subjective
assessment
Has more clout and prescience
Than what the redoubtable algorithm
spits out
Heed the budget”
And with that they put him on a boat
It was all shut up
They left for the shore
People still came long after the door
closed
He was one of the only places to go
One of those faces you know.
It wasn't the difference
For her, he spent more time at home
The difference came later
They should've known.
They always knew
What made a difference.
VII.
It was all meant to be public
But it was like Latin Mass to most
Talking heads discussing logic
Spectacled experts who boast
The values in the object
The value of the project.
To change a parameter
Was the stuff of treaties and summits
A lifetime endeavour
But she watched the casts about edits
And the nightly slots on bug fixes
Before the weather and a blizzard
Of financial data with the line number
And the code which she once uploaded
To a file, as a child thinking she
would learn new tricks
Before she realised
She was only being shown washers and
bolts
And they always said it was a fix.
PART II
Her tear hits the wreath, then earth
They said it wouldn't happen
They will sweep it underneath
The rug
Slugs from pattern recognition
Gone awry.
When drones first stole over skies
Well a human had control
But deep learning and ai
Crushed their worth
Their first choice like most, the
dole
And drugs.
Then facial recognition
Went pixel perfect, that's when
Surgery got in fashion
Plastic.
Elastic faces as often
Changed as phones.
Just last week they gave a tweak
To the code, the net, to keep pace
And then the rain spread, and wreathes
Drop by drop
Airbrushed facist states with clean
face
And drones.
Tear hits wreath, the earth.
II.
It was her roots that saved her
The Challottes she kept
In a plain windowbox and laid
In brown cloth or old sacks.
More than once
When her numbers stopped
And they barred her
But she believed
For a few weeks
Onions were her umbilical food
With almost any ink
In any mixer you could make
Something quite like noodles.
A friend from an old post
Would bring her battery sticks
Take her clothes to decompose them
And bring new dresses freshly mixed
And always managed to make them fit
Even as the weeks wore in.
III.
In the low ceiling crypt
Where they chose to gather
The rounded brick
Threw a mesh of shadows
With the candlelit plot thick
She waxed again, in sips
Of warm coffee, the water.
Energy coursed as tips
Forced through dark earth
Bulb to light, reconfiguring
Kite born over the sea
She felt full for sprouting
Throughout the estuary, the bay
She carried physical memory
Would not be waylayed
On their road. She had found
A way and there were others
Dozens of others
Uncovered voices
Who would be heard
In waves and light
United in fights that gave purpose
afresh
They were not just the usual
Superfluous flesh.
IV.
Her mother was a traditionalist
Permitted no passive entertainment
Insisted the terrace cultivated.
Her father would not allow them seated
Without concentration. And had no mixer
Just an ancient printer undefeated.
With a sequencer, her sister, for fun
Would breed bees that made cheese and
big Golden Orbs
That spun silk as thick as a steelman's
thumb.
She printed parts to fix the parts that
broke
Of mortal robots that she built and
wrote
Some farmed onions and one just told
old jokes.
She took brush and pan and gave to them
life
And if she wasn't so nice, she'd set
them
Sweeping up spiders and sisters pet
mice.
And her mum would shout go fix your
device
Get them back farming the onions and
rice
And she would plead it's not me it's a
bug
It must need a patch, the mice mixed it
up
One day, six of her sister's mice got
crushed
After that day she would kneel and hand
brush.
V.
It had become perpetual
There had been no war
And no peace,
Lethal force ubiquitous
With leaders confused in oversized
shoes
And the leaders of others
No longer suffered visits
From men bearing flasks and stark
choices
No caskets with cacophonous voices
They were kept in their chairs
Confused without numbers
Made pall bearers and everything
They cared for left charred
Till they sat scarred and bereft
Jesters to power
Fountainheads dripping water at their
feet
Millions of others left looking on
For leaders
VI.
There was no point keeping it a secret
They already knew
Dozens of them must've known
She had sown deeds in places
That would be searched
Said things in places
That could be found
More or less anywhere
The concrete reefs even
Even up the hill
In places deep underground
They were watching and listening
Millions of them for dozens.
So they went public and posted
And hosted events
And went to the square
Sang in front of their tents
And they watched and listened
Millions of them.
VII.
When she moved
To one of those homes that was hacked
So that it accepted
People with no numbers
They called her the French Lady
As she always had onions
And she used the excuse
That she was cutting onions
When someone came in
Some had gone on never seeing a root
Let alone onions and she would reply
Do what I'm doing and see what happens
And they would cry too.
VIII.
She missed living above the sea
In the old towers
Watching the waves collapse
Breaking into bubbles
And the music it made
Each tower with a tutu.
After she lost her signature
And gave up on extensions
She sailed from the home
In a dumb boat to an old block
The type certified unsafe
That were squatted.
A pebbledash of guano
Barnacles and gulls
A block with no tutu
That water argued through.
She ate oysters and salmon
And when the waves were high
An old industrial mixer could be
animated
In her hands
There was nothing it could not produce.
She met a scrap diver there,
Old for a scrap diver
Who claimed never to have had a number
Since birth eating oysters and kelp
And something like noodles on the reef.
Surfing the long breaks, salted in the
knowledge
Of each block underneath.
And the scrap diver would come back
with gifts
Wrested from Atlantis
And she would throw them in the mixer
When the waves were high
And make robots to feed fish
And seed oysters.
She was happy
And as it happened
Would meet many of them again
But one day in spring,
The scrap diver didn't come back
The gifts stopped
None of the divers came back that day
And when the waves rose
It just felt damp
So she went back up the hill
Leaving them onions, the windowbox
And her favourite robot made from
compasses.
PART III
I.
The young man who came across the field
Was caught with roses
A gross of bouquets
Having managed to evade and survive
For moons.
The kindness of strangers.
The hills and bamboo
Were not home, to live
A satellite detected
Numbered Entity No Data
Like bugs and flies
Was not life
To the young man in the field
Who sought to organise
Who sought society
Who could not enter conventions
Without signature
Who was sick with visions
And sought to compose
A different type of change.
Who was sought after
And caught with roses.
The days a rose could cloak a man
Had long since lapsed
Every base was mapped
Every volatile organic captured
All strains reduced to abstract
A gross of roses insufficient noise
A post smelt through the poor disguise
What's left is guesswork
Biometric from some contact
With the network at school
Silent as a barn owl
Into anaesthetic gel
And spirited away.
Stray petals all that waved goodbye
And laid to rest
Guesswork.
They love to talk about positives.
II.
In the square there was a lady who
worried about the elephants
Who wanted to do something for the
elephants
One of the first signs were the
elephants.
They say it would take a lifetime
To read the discoveries the algorithm
made
The day they fired it up
Across the world's servers
Fed it all the data, journals
And it pumped out interdisciplinary
papers
At a rate at which the Academy could
not
Stay the pace.
In a few years concrete bunkers
appeared
In the Sahara. Cavernous bunkers with
battery pens
And robots began shepherding elephants
down motorways
From Kenya.
It had started with values
The values had been contested
Of course
They arranged the best
Array that could be compromised
And set it off doing diverse goods.
The annual cull became a migration
A careful recycling into humanely
farmed
Factory sheds of bellowing sows
Thundering against stone pens
There were things
You just couldn't make
Without gestating an elephant
The efficiency of living tissue
Lab grown pumps and motors
Had heart attacks
And got tumours early
But Saharan parts
From elephants born and died without
seeing sun
Those hearts would run and run
For terrible deformed white elephants
in sheds
The lady wanted to do something
Something for the elephants the
algorithm bred.
They said they could remake the whale
But what they made was not whales
Tethered to feeding tubes in the bay
With monstrous births that flapped and
failed
If you freed them, they'd be dead in a
day
When they remade things
They remade it all that way.
The lady wanted it remade
But remade like older days.
III.
It was the familiarity
Back up the hill
To the home of the family
Over the bamboo forests
The craters and gashes
The rhythm of life
In coffins and ashes
The familiar impression
Of high explosives
And at familiar places
Some still stood
In the village
Buried memories back with floods
And she heard
Her cousin had gone from man to woman
And back to man again before they struck
Lit up by signatures in the whole band's ink
No one had a name
It was always hard to know
A self-destructing drone
Leaving pointing fingers
And blame.
Dozens had the inclination
Still more the capability
She had the capability.
As she crested the bluff
Looked out from its height
She saw the peach orchards and terraces
The copse turned ghost
By her sister's escaped spiders
Saw where her father's house stood
She saw a familiar sight.
IV.
The square by then
Circled in steel, a wall
That would wheel and yaw
Heel to call
Track to track, fifteen foot tall
In front of the stone, the servers
The throne
It had been a long time
A slow, cementing drip of time
The vendors mostly moved on
With the day trippers, pretenders, the
songs
Were quiet and fire lit
Not riotous choirs
Only the serious, the tired, the coders
Those with nowhere to go
No one to go to remained
Only the list and sweepers were left
And the suit came to the steps
Above the massed ranks of metal
Above the messy rabble of flesh
And said I think we can come to a deal
We will make changes to the code
None of them thought that it was real
The suit watched the square explode.
V.
When they were born
They knew everything
Everything we still knew
Everything it had discovered
What grew from script and speech and
song
What they had done and all they had
created
They did with satellites and data
Every one
Knew everything when it was born.
VI.
A friend from another village
She met by the well
When they were two girls
Had returned to hills
The first time since children
Her friend had left
For dry land to the West
To find skills
It was lucky
The type of connection you miss.
Her friend helped
They pitched a lab in pod
While jerry rigged robots
Rebuilt the house
From odd snaps and aerials shots.
The young man came across the field
Consumed them
They submerged in the list
It's meta data and logic
Logging variables
Contacting those still connected
To wearables
Finding the wherewithal
Hacking satellites in hope
Tracking and hunting as
Conservationists raced poachers
And they began to understand
They had understood long ago
Perishable innocence, once you know
Dies, she could not look away
She needed to tell these people
These people needed to tell
She could tell people needed them
She would go back to the bay
Tell people their knell tolls
Hold the bell, hold gates of hell.
VII.
Fixed point attractors, like power
Pack actors in recurrent patterns
Fired by predictably sick desires
A's will over B happens, rounds and
batons
Struggle, collusion, betrayal
Seeking the imperial delusion
Of infancy, of omnipotent will
The great self-infantilising
Fantasy of the great.
VIII.
It came in waves
Ever faster waves
The progress
And due process and the institutions
Were soon next to useless
As were the populace
But the bastards are a restless menace.
We had built habitat for empires
Empires of numbers
Built scaffolds and canals
Down which empires sluiced and
flourished
We irrigated empires
With all our laws.
Empires of numbers to the nth power.
And their emperors by necessities of
scale
Lost no sleep in treating people
Like numbers in columns on spreadsheets
Push button mutton,
Can't see the sheep for the meat
Always better prepared
Uncaring as to who's spared
Who scarred, who discarded
They didn't lose sleep leading numbers
Saw no loss in reducing the universe to
maths
We made our lofty peaks with feathered
nests
A habitat for psychopaths.
And these Peter Pans
Soon sought digital oracles
That modelled decision trees
From all recorded human history
Controlled production from touch
screens
Found they preferred silicon sycophants
to flesh
For yes, it was so much more like god,
Like magic
With native fabrication
They didn't need consumers
Only power
So they found new adjectives
For us,
You and me
We mostly sat there
Because it was easy, by and large
To stop us going cold and hungry
And keep us entertained
Though many drowned
And some still died young
But she
She did not sit down
At least one
Reason why.
IX.
In the square, some of her best friends
were NENDs
They had come from the hills
From the forests
You could tell the ones
Who had never been to hospital
They came with the list
And others.
Early on it was impossible
The spectrum of variables
Cascading inaccuracies
Garbage in, garbage out, unscaleable
Rows and rows of befuddled muddle
Then the Human Object Model
Helped identify anomalies
Irrationalities and trash
They became better at data cleansing
And it proved its worth.
The first results were equivocal
But they refined the metrics
And the datasets
Took less garbage in,
Moved more garbage out
And started to chart
Statistics that showed beyond doubt
It was getting better
Getting so much better all the time
For everybody, throughout
Increases in wealth and pleasure
Though there was the odd variable
Or other unmeasured.
She would officially opt out
Of various datasets
But there were so many, officially
They had the right to collect it
And the power to do so
That was the truth
Most only collected data of use.
Now she was an entry
That said she had existed
Officially listed as
Other
Not died, archived
To access apply
Data for experiment only.
X.
In the square there were many
From the squat
And they shared stories
Of faces she had all but forgot
Whoever made the list
Had made a great list
They all had ideas
They all had a way
They all had love
For those who are not here
Their voices were clear
Their voices a choir
But this was not like Tahir
Or Tiannamen
No soldiers took favours to cheers from
the crowd
None of the tanks wavered or danced
They simply advanced
Track to track
In the most mathematically efficient
pattern
To flatten every single one of them.
It only took seconds
And the sweepers moved in
Onion seed in their tracks.
