Ai’s hallucinate.

So did my brother. 

He got chased by a lion around the house after he took LSD that time.

I remember reading online – who knows where, ten thousand scrolls ago – about drones spraying holy water in India. 

On who or what or why?

I no longer remember, but it seems like it might be good to feel as if something holy is dropping  somewhere in a corner of the world on a hot summer’s day when the temperatures climb beyond a hundred degrees and now that it’s about another fall: missiles.

Meanwhile they keep building celestial nervous systems that make us nervous.

In whose hallucination….

Headlines turn on thought drones from someone’s mind, somewhere. Float it out there, see what happens, they say. Maybe it’ll go viral, make someone else famous. Pass it around. Who cares? It’ll be gone in a second or a minute or two. No one has the time to read. No matter because the signs are everywhere. 

Just look.

We scroll it on our phones – scroll & pretend we know. We hallucinate on hope, search for what’s sacred.

Discover dread. 

Plausible plus somewhat true equals jumbled impressions – a brambling going to rot.

We hope hope lasts more than a few seasons. 

They keep telling us: plant seeds. Or save seeds. Who knows which.

Chains of events are breaking everywhere. 

One celebrity tells us to revere AI. 

Another celebrity sells hand-poured pheromone cotton candy caramel popcorn carnival scented candles or teenage longing. Another sells others which come vagina scented.

Change is coming, no matter what just like it did at the summer carnival where kisses came with giggling, shoving & running with the wolves. 

My brother whispers to me at night: you know they keep the lion’s DNA in one of those west coast frozen zoos. 

Extinction.

Where will we keep the history of our childhood spent dazzled by fireflies replaced by satellites. 

Another celebrity winks & smiles hawking green energy supplements to take with the shadow workshops he promotes online. But we’re still without power while we’re looking to fall in love.

Again.

Nothing makes sense. 

They say: our brains are like human quantum computers, gone dumb.

We can ask the psychic or some pop-up Reddit advisors but never the electric politician. 

They say there’ll be rolling blackouts & power shortages.

It’s a spiritual crisis so we drink spirits. 

We’ll soon have our AI Twins to keep us company, they say, plus an off-world economy to look forward to kinda soon-ish. 

But how when it’s dark. 

I still have some childhood superstitions left over:

Don’t step on a crack, take two giant footsteps forward, take three baby steps back.

On the way to work once I remember following a man whose walk seemed to be filled with childhood’s superstitions, he seemed so jangly. 

We take our time. But where do we take it? 

Premonition: don’t falter. 

While they keep racing to make software better than us. 

The dumbest angels spend all night online practicing the dark art of rearranging events and circumstance. 

I never dream of my grandmother or my favorite aunt. 

My grandmother who is in her life after life somewhere stirring her wood spoon in a pot of potato, carrot, sometimes, if she had a taste for it – sausage soup – and my aunt has finally picked up her yellow pencil to erase all of her past mistakes. 

Evolution has hooves.

What is conscious? What is consciousness the scientist asks? What would the clairvoyant physicist who lives around the corner say?

There’s a thought drone outside my window when I open my eyes.

Last night, my grandmother told me a girl ghost & her pet antelope accompanied her in the kitchen. They were hungry.

Through the open window, I listen to children laughing and yelling at the afternoon from the nearby school. 

You’re it! The kids scream past the sunlight. 

Weren’t they just playing hide & seek?

AIs hallucinate they’ll win every game they play. AGI will win whatever while no one really knows enough to say no. 

My brother says not within or without reality’s cooperation – but who knows, it’s a jagged frontier. 

What’s that?

And he laughs. That’s what no one knows, but that’s how it goes, right. 

Then he shrugs: hey, at least you won’t be alone. He’s learning a new hobby they call lullaby.

My mother has seven stars tattooed on her left foot in case she gets lost. 

Where’s she going – 

hell, who knows where anyone’s going, he says 

there’s nowhere to hide even if we wanted to 

now – the lions are back & 

if you look into their eyes you’ll see they’re scared sacred too.  

By Arlene Tribbia

About Litro

• More Posts(28)