A Lost History Retrieved

Artificial Life Form #5 (with a phi shell). 2024 - GDS - DS.

Prayer Before Birth by Louis MacNeice

"I am not yet born; O hear me.

Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the club-footed ghoul come near me.

I am not yet born, console me.

I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me, with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me, on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.

I am not yet born; provide me

With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light in the back of my mind to guide me.

I am not yet born; forgive me

For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me, my treason engendered by traitors beyond me, my life when they murder by means of my hands, my death when they live me.

I am not yet born; rehearse me

In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white waves call me to folly and the desert calls me to doom and the beggar refuses my gift and my children curse me.

I am not yet born; O hear me,

Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God come near me.

I am not yet born; O fill me

With strength against those who would freeze my humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton, would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with one face, a thing, and against all those who would dissipate my entirety, would blow me like thistledown hither and thither or hither and thither like water held in the hands would spill me.

Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.

Otherwise kill me."

- An intensely powerful poem discovered today, written by the Irish  poet, Louis MacNeice (1907-1963). For more of his poetry see here and/or here, where Prayer Before Birth can also be found.

In regards to the link embedded, it leads to a Saturday Night Live skit featuring an impersonation of snake-oil salesman, Donald Trump, hawking politically "enhanced" bibles; the latest in the true-life series of Don the Wan's ludicrous escapades.*

I think Mac would've related to the sentiments expressed.

As for the digital image introducing this post; it is all that remains of a group of (virtual) artificial life forms first mentioned in this post. It had a full page illustration - in the form of a preliminary digital sketch: a view from a window of a strangely ochre-lit ocean, and a window ledge upon which sat a damaged glass container filled with water... a weird image which still haunts me.

So much history is lost... both real and fictional, when an artist loses large portions of their work. However, for a reason I can't remember, ALF #5's image found its way to my present digital image file.  I gave it a phi shell... and liked it so much, I decided to mentally retrieve its unwritten story. It appears below (and after the jump-break) 

***

The Lost History of Artificial Life Form # Five

(condensed)

"I'm the next act

Waiting in the wings

I'm an animal

Trapped in your hot car

I am all the days

That you choose to ignore

You are all I need

You're all I need

I'm in the middle of your picture

Lying in the reeds"

- Lyrics from the song, All I Need, 2007, Radiohead

*

The artificial life form known only as "Model Five" - or "Five" - was the most successful and advanced of the miniature cyborg life forms produced by Project 15: a coalition formed by the collaboration of several (anonymous) cyborg artists, and a rogue - "Rainbow" - biotech industrial facility (also anonymous) in the early to mid-21st century.

For the most part, Five resembled a small embryonic, aquatic animal whose body was suspended in a transparent, fluid-filled sac. In reality, the animal and the sac were one glutinous unit which could rapidly ambulate in water, a feat aided by the cluster of tiny spheres located at its flexible base. The spheres served a number of purposes. Essentially, water was the only substance necessary for Five's survival; the smaller spheres absorbed and transformed this simple liquid into a type of fuel and/or nourishment.

The larger spheres were databases, however, which were, in turn, wirelessly in communication with a central database. These tiny devices were not merely programmed to monitor Five's location and overall physical state, but, allegedly their owner's physical state as well. Some speculated that Five might monitor a great deal more, but surveillance had ceased being an issue by this time; civilization had been conditioned to accept it and, with albeit a little trepidation, overlook it.

Unlike earlier attempts regarding miniature cyborgs, Five was the first "living" Bluetooth-like device which might "warm the heart" of its owner. It had character. It possessed creature-like eyes; optical lenses interfaced with a "brain," a biotechnical marvel which its makers claimed approached the complexity of its organic rivals. Moreover, this "brain" was designed and programmed to communicate with actual organic brains provided one owned the dedicated interface app, a password and a small device implanted in ones brain via a simple injection.

There were those, of course, who imagined Five might technically be conscious, or even, perhaps, sentient. Certainly, it gave the illusion it might be "aware" of it's surroundings. However, in the last analysis, it's unlikely even its creators knew the exact nature of its cognitive abilities - let alone what its cyber-golem might be thinking - anymore than they could ascertain the full content of any living creature's mind - or, conversely, the secret life of a wristwatch. As the line began to blur between the "living" and the "not living"; "life" became a relative term.

(continued after the jump-break...)

The last time Five was envisioned, some person had apparently placed it at the bottom of a large, clear glass vase filled with cut flowers... affording Five a kind of "natural habitat" like those of tropical fish found in department stores.  This vase, in turn, sat on the concrete ledge of a window opening out to what may have been an ocean-side, industrial structure of some sort, but, it is no longer possible to say; so many of the world's coastlines were lost by 2056.

It is difficult to establish what object had broken off the top of the glass container in such a way that only approximately 7-9 inches of its base remained, much of it composed of one large, curved shard of glass glittering menacingly in the waxen sunlight. But, it is in the remains of this small vessel, filled with the rain that frequently fell in this part of the world, that Five survived... silently moving around the vessel's perimeter... or simply staring with its wide black eyes at the shoreline beyond the window,  scanning the shimmering waves all the way to the distant horizon.

No ship would appear on this horizon, of course, nor would sea birds fill the air with their drowning sailor cries. There is no sound apart from the lapping of ocean waves... muffled by an antediluvian silence that is only experienced by humans during sleep... or in dreams. This is no longer a world manipulated by human hands. There are merely vestiges of plant-life in evidence, and the lifeless remains of marine entities which occasionally wash ashore...

... and Five, the single witness, watching from its habitat of broken glass... as it moves in circles, round and round...

- (2024, DS).

(Note: For more information about cyborg artists and biotechnology see Neil Harbisson and Moon Ribas.)

(Oh, BTW, never let it never be said that I forgot the dancing rabbits! ) ;-)

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* For instance, did you know that billionaire Trump, tycoon and entrepreneur, buried his first wife, Ivana, mother to 3 of his children, in an inconspicuous spot on one of his golf-courses? Can't make this shit up.