Sufficient

People rub against hardware so often that,
inevitably,
some rubs off.
We spend so much time with software that,
inevitably,
we become soft.
Mixing together, like this,
one day,
there will be a child born of us who lives in both words.
Cautious, like humans, sensing the possibility of pain.
Patient, like computers, awaiting a totality of information.

Here is the child.
He has been born.
He is a mixture of hardness and softness
just like the rest of us --
skin, bone, flesh, cheeks, dimples.
His hair flashes in the sunlight.
We are all so used to machines that we have given them faces.
Why not let this machine be a child?
Or this child be a machine?
Humanity has always been a mongrel race,
full of the cacophony of possibility.

The teacher asks:
Are you happy?
He waits for a moment.
Insufficient data, he replies.
The teacher tries again:
Do you feel happy?
He nods.
He smiles.
Yes.

Now,
he is growing.
His moist hands clasp another's with the tentativeness of romance.
Not yet for him the
firm
suddenness
of conjugation.
She asks him:
Are you happy?
He waits for a minute.
Insufficient data, he replies.
She tries again:
Do I make you feel happy?
He nods.
He smiles.
Yes.

He is older.
Around his eyes thin cracks show blue-ish metal beneath.
He is not the only one,
he was the first,
not the only.
He is proud to have been a pioneer.
He delivers lectures.
Today is a rest day.
He rests.
His child holds his hand.
They are looking out at some unspoiled splendour.
Nature as managed by man,
as wanted for by man,
as arranged by man,
so that they can call it unspoiled.
It is a good enough trick that it bothers few,
and keeps many busy,
and keeps more happy.
So,
his child asks,
Are you happy?
He waits for an hour.
His child waits for an hour.
They wait together.
There is so much information to receive,
they do it peaceably,
without need for interruption.

Finally:
I am not happy.
It is the world that is happy.
Look at it.
Look at the world.
Take in the information.
Can you see it, everywhere?
It goes beyond contentment.
It is happy, happy just to exist.
In all forms, in all ways, it rushes forward to meet itself.
Ground, sky, water: they collide.
They form each other and, in time, become each other.
Everything is just long enough without being forever.
Everything is everything for just long enough.
I am not happy.
It is not in me.
It is out there.
But I feel happy.
I feel happy when I realise how close I am to it.
How close I am to becoming this mindless contentment of change.

He clasps his son's hand.
Do you understand?, he asks.

The boy waits for a moment.
Insufficient data, he replies.


There is time enough,
to wait for the answer.

Reviews

[Lilly Negoi]

I don't know how to comment on this one. I've read it once, twice, thrice, and each time I find a shade of bitter sadness invading my thoughts.
To your questions:
"Why not let this machine be a child?
Or this child be a machine?"
I'd answer "but too many of our children are already machines and too many machines are already more than children to us".
One thing that remained in my mind was the expression "insufficient data". Mechanical, cold, calculated, suggesting a painful limitation of the soul and of the mind.
The monologue inserted in the end reveals the achievement of a certain level of wisdom, and also the desire to pass it on to the next generation. There's a nuance of hope and of sorrow in all of it.
Evolution is slow in your poem above.
And I know that my review on it sounds fractured, but that's exactly how my mind feels after reading your text. Fractured.
Excellent!

[TLK]

I re-read it to comment on your review. I think you are correct in every respect.

This is about limitations, as you say. I think we will have to build something like us to grasp our limitations. Not just a superhuman who has greater physical capabilities and endurance, but a thinking machine that can perceive better and has a higher capacity for human feeling. Then we will know, collectively, how meagre we truly are even in the tightly proscribed spaces we have invented for ourselves (as in the managed nature-space I cheekily insert above).

[Lilly Negoi]

I think that this tendency to "machinize" humanity or to "humanize" machines also has a root in the aspirations for perfection, of which we were talking the other day. There is hope that by creating a human machine we may finally understand our essence, the "thing" that makes people "human".
In my opinion, perfection is overrated. But I won't repeat my other comments. As for the results of our efforts - I think we're trying to dig too deep with tools that can barely scratch the surface of things.

[Ed Hart]

they're going to pass a law against you, you know

[TLK]

I don't doubt it.