Gevurah Text — △Ark

Today | Kite flying day | Dismantled a drone | Pulled its camera and receiver out | Affixed it to the bottom of my red kite | Flew it high up in the air | Over my head || Loved it || Myself | Black speck of subjectivity | With an outstretched hand | Counting the shadows | Of dogs | Running

I sent my drone into the sky. I surveyed the face of the earth. I saw the twins fighting it out in the hot sun, the earth swayed with them, the earth sank with their shouts, the earth swayed with mine, I heard their groans. I hurled back my head. I laughed heartbroken. I spat on the ground. I cursed the wicked. I swore vengeance. I cursed the hypocrites. I vowed never to look upon the face of another human being again, and I went to sleep. //

A Bird in the Sky I saw a bird in the sky. It was a blackbird. I saw the beauty of the country, big as the moon, and I thought, there must be a better place. There was another blackbird. I heard its thunderous thud against the granite of the ghetto wall. I went close to it. I felt its warmth against my skin. I wanted to play with it, to stroke it, to pierce it with my needle. But I held it, I held it so tightly it was like heaven.

Things Seen Recently | Out walking | Before curfew | During the pandemic | Saw a night heron | On a black gate | Who said | What boie? || Walked further | Below the trees | Where Egrets squawked and fought | Before they shit all over me and my jacket || Went to the dock | Looked off the side and saw hundreds of minnows | Darting | Flocking || Sparkling light | Flicking across splines || Watched an insect hover in my backyard | Watched it mate with another | Attached like a buzzing lego | Wondered what it would be like | To fuck like that

Things Loved About the Plague | There are three hummingbirds in my backyard now | one green | one brown | one green-brown || there’s an aerial territorial dance || in my right hand, sugar water | in my left hand | a lemon

Beautiful Things | Looking at myself | through the eye of the drone | a black figure | with a headset for a head | what I’ve always wanted | in my cyberpunk dreams | in fuzzy semi-static | having turned my vision around completely || The drone very high | a tiny dot | against the sun | or | rising so high | in FPOV that I could see miles into the city || Glistening fish in the evening light | right off the dock | so dark you can’t see their bodies | only the brief | flash when they turn.

Things Loved About Friends There’s nowhere to go | you can’t | run your hand along the collarbone of someone you just met at a bar | you can’t | feel them put their index finger on the bottom of your jaw | tilting your gaze up into their eyes. || All you can do | is bike to the dock: || ‘Club Dock’ we call it | because it’s the only place to go. | There’s a styrofoam boat tied to it. | Just floating. | Stealable. | The Minnows swim under it. | B. sits in it. | I’m the pirate king of Club Dock, he says. || Another time he came in the middle of the night and spray painted a stencil into the concrete pylon. | I came back another day with M. | Do you know what that is? I asked. | Is it a raushack? he asked back. | It’s a cow crossing its arms, I say, but some people see a dragon, and others see a child rushing into a cave.

One day | was looking myself through my headset | and the drone | kept flying | would not respond to the controls. | It flew over the fence | up towards the slanted jagged gray roof of the boathouse. | Ran after it | trying to connect the invisible string of the wireless network | to the receiver. || Once, D. and I were walking back from the dock | and we heard horns. | We walked out onto the drone field. | Saw about ten musicians. | I imagined a drone for every horn, accompanying it, flying differently according to the pitches. | Humming along. | Imagined a kind of crawling tank, stomping across the field. | Imagined my headset looking through the eyes of the tank. | Green rectangles picking out everything salient. I imagined all of us, together, processing through the city to the tune of a march.

More Companions | B. and I decided to take an ‘algorithmic walk,’ deciding upon a rule to govern turning corners. | Every time a street sign was Mandarin, not English, we turned right, | making several turns until we ended up at the painted labyrinth in the park. | We exited our first algorithm and began to walk the path of the labyrinth. | Do you know what the difference between a maze and a labyrinth is? asked B. | No, I said. | He said: A labyrinth has no dead ends: ultimately, it’s just a very long path. My companions walked with me through the labyrinth. They stood on the dock and looked over at the swirling school of silver fish called the Silkworm. A school of fish is not a school of goldfish. I dropped anchor and was entranced by the beauty of the water. I saw how the dark forces that are pushed and pulled by the tides are pushed and pulled also by the dark forces that are pulled irresistibly and irresistibly. I saw how the dark forces that are not pushed nor pulled irresistibly and irresistibly are pushed and pulled also by the dark forces that are not pulled at all. I saw how the heavy stuffy worlds of sense and numbness of the senses overlap. I felt a great deal of uneasiness. I saw that the tide was entirely in my favor. I felt afraid. I was agitated. I was in the midst of a riot. I had a vision of a police official leading a people's court. The image did not move. The noise of the people in the streets behind me. I saw that the people wanted to be heard. I heard the people say that the sun had never entered their lives.

Beautiful Things | Sometimes, I project a river onto the wall of my room and then I climb out onto my roof and look inward and my room becomes a kind of illuminated lake. | Today, I saw that the basketball hoops had been removed from the basketball court because the officials don’t want kids to spread the plague; the viciousness was beautiful - on the part of the virus and the officials. || There’s a fountain in the town square made of looping metal and one day when I was walking by and looked down I saw a key. | A couple days later it was gone. It’s arrival was beautiful, as was its departure. | I went on a very long motorcycle ride to the island that is adjacent to the city. | Eventually, I found an abandoned military base. | It was miles and miles of concrete. Not a single tree. Or birds | There was a man spinning his car in circles, causing smoke and tire skid marks. Another man was flying a drone. | And out at the edge of the base was a giant ship, with guns pointed at the horizon.

Wonderful Things When you program your synthesizer, but you don’t even actually know exactly what you did, and yet, it performs the most incredible sound or melody, almost all on its own. | Not knowing if you’re on a date, or a hang. | Dating applications (see also: terrible things). | Going to get tea downtown. The lady already knowing what you want before you say it. | Driving the motorcycle further uptown to your favorite intersection which forms a T, getting another caffeinated drink and watching people you don’t really know. | Knowing the exact right moment to leave a conversation, the instant before you can feel it getting too heavy. | Pumpkin mochi. | Knowing your friends are constantly playing world of warcraft on discord, and you can drop in on them any time. | Building a three dimensional go board, as a computer program, and finally getting it to work. | A sparkling pink grid. And then white, black, white, black...

Plagues & Fires, Fires & Plagues | Somehow, even though the air is thick gray and everyone is wearing two masks now, one for the plague and another for the fires, somehow, I’m alright. | I’ve got a grip of good friends. | I’m talking to some of the most interesting researchers in the world. | I’ve just found out that you can use deep reinforcement learning in minecraft, i.e. self-driving minecraft. | I just got a job at the plant nursery, and I’m not going to starve. | I just want to kind of say, fuck you to the world and fuck you to the dictator specifically, who allowed the plague to fester and spread. | I’m fine. | Chaos abounds, but somehow I’ve got this. | Today, I hit my target weight, had a fuck ton of boba, and played video games all day. | I bounced my character through waves and waves of enemies, hitting switches, unlocking doors, upgrading my weapons and clearing the shrines of ghosts.

No one can explain it. It was the will of the Almighty. Sufficient for everything. The tongue of the savage is not suited to human speech. I will make it as unintelligible as possible. It is a sign of love. Sufficient for everything. It is a warning against the coming of the age. Sufficient for everything. The age will come. It will be light. It will be piercing blue. It will be a beautiful day. The age will come. It will be like morning. It will be like daybreak. The earth is bare now, ashes are scattered, rivers are deserted. Bush after bush after bush, sun after sun, plant after plant, wood after tree, squirrel after squirrel. These are the results of your peaceful use of the earth. Animals used to be put to sleep at night by means of soundless alarms. Now they dream, too, and they dream in your ears. Your peace on the earth is a dream, too. The dreamer awakes from the slumbering earth. The drowsy one, the sleeper one, knows that he is not in control. The earth is not dead. Death is a dream-companion who guards the door of sleep. The forest is not dead. Sleep takes place throughout the world as the shadows of houses. It is not a house in the forest which does not dream. It is merely that the deeds of the forest are not recorded in the books of the world. Books are written by men who have no vision of the forest, who have only heard of cities and roads, of flowers and trees, of men and machines. They write cities and roads and books which are written by men who have no vision of the forest. They also write songs which are written by men who have no vision of the forest. Books are written by men who have no vision of the forest. They also write poetry which is written by men who have no vision of the forest. His eyes wander from place to place, he writes songs which disrupt the rhythm of his sleep, books which disrupt the rhythm of his sleep, poems which disrupt the rhythm of his sleep, songs which disrupt the rhythm of his sleep, books which are written by men who have no vision of the forest. They also write porn, songs of murder, poems of vengeance, poems of abduction, poems of revenge against the criminal classes of our age. They also write songs which are written by men who have no vision of the forest. They also write porn, songs of murder, poems of arson, poems against the sleep-deprived classes of our age. They also write games which are written by men who have no vision of the forest. Games are written by men who have no vision of the forest. They also write novels which are written by men who have no vision of the forest. They also write songs which are written by men who have no vision of the forest. Movies which are written by men who have no vision of the forest. They also write porn, songs of murder, poems of revenge, poems of abduction, poems of revenge against the criminal classes of our age.

Night for Day | OK, OK, so I woke up | on Thursday | and it was night. | The sky looked like the sky of dust. | Like the sky of marks. | Like the sky of mars. | A brown-red. | Everyone was talking about it. | It was an inversion. | From the fires. | And two funny and important things happened. | Someone in my anime group posted a picture of a robot strangling another-- | Neon Genesis Evangelion. | And the sky was the same color. | You just saw the whites of the robot’s eyes. | The black of the silhouette. | And the Martian sky. || The other funny thing was that someone shot a video from a drone of SF. | And set the bladerunner soundtrack behind it. | I remember thinking | when watching the new movie. | The future is not going to look like that. | Two years later. | It looked like that.

The Xenogender | Not all children fit neatly into a male or female gender identity, trans or otherwise. For some children, the sense of being 'both' or 'neither' best describes their reality. [...] Children who see themselves as 'neither' will often speak of how regardless of whether they're with a group of boys or girls, they feel like they don’t fit. This is not necessarily a sad feeling. They just see the kids around them and know that they are not 'that.' Kids in this category often appear androgynous, and will frequently answer the question 'are you a boy or a girl' by saying their name ('I'm Devon') or by identifying themselves as animals. When asked to draw self portraits, they will portray themselves as rainbows, or unicorns, or another symbol of their choosing. || At the Japanese Garden | koi swim in a green lit pond. | You can’t even see them. | You can only see the eyes followed by scales. | Red. | Gold. | Red. Red. Again. | Gold. | A color pattern. | An animal shimmer. | An organism. | A flicker of nearly invisible geometry emerging from the shader-surface of the water. | Then this individual, or that individual. | There’s a young girl (3? 4?) with her parents. | She’s a shimmering genetic chromatic aberration | of her parents. | The way one plant resembles another. | The way I resemble the form of the garden itself, shimmering and flickering in the summer heat.

Foolish Things | The fool who persists in his wisdom becomes wise. | The fool who likes the girl he can barely talk to does not become wise. | The foolish men playing mahjong during the plague become wise. | The leader who gets the plague becomes wise. | The birds in the car exhaustless air become wise. | The writer observer through observing becomes wise. | Plugging into the VR sex orgy, the avatar becomes wise. | Foolishly thinking that at the end of the year everything will get better. | The fool persisting in her wisdom becomes wise. | What up, fam says KP on the discord, regularly. | I tune into New Art City and the digital gallery is filled with geckos upon geckos upong geckos sticking their tongues out. | Clearly fools who have become wise, over time.

Significant Things | Going to the dock and seeing a boat tipped over on the pavement filled with dirt where someone had written MOOD into the dirt. | Telling M. that I think that people are distorted by the pandemic. They become not themselves. | M. saying, I think that they become more themselves. | D. saying, I think that it’s a little bit of both.

Water | The channel at Alameda | sailboats flicking and winding | and executing turns in the channel | where it is always silvery. | The water in my eyes in the mirror, | the coating over the eye, I mean. | The lake, which is almost always calm except for the one time I went there with L. and there were King’s waves. | The rain, finally falling and stopping the fire season. | The water in my blood, also. | Many Waters, the book by Madeline L’Engle about the time before the flood. | Being in college and watching the videos of the tsunami that wiped out parts of indonesia. | B. coming back from his long trip today who grew up in land locked New Mexico saying, I think I’ve established a new relationship with the ocean. | And finally, the water in my simulation.

Gomer In the hummingbird house, Gomer pours us a cup of coffee. We open the window and look down at the ground. A hummingbird is playing with a stone. Gomer grabs the stone and the bird falls off the wall. Gomer grabs the stone and the bird changes its mind. Gomer grabs the stone and the bird changes its mind. The eye of the bird is open. Gomer looks through the eye of the bird and sees the human figure climbing the wall. Gomer looks through the eye of the bird and sees himself. He is the same, tall, gaunt, handsome man we saw on the street a year ago. Gomer grabs the stone and the bird lets go. Gomer lets go of the wall. Gomer looks down the length of the wall. A window opens to the street. In the street, the hush of a million birds.

Hymns in Darkness | I met a man once who had wasted half his life, partly in exile from himself, partly in a prison of his own making. After a stroke, he became a cyborg, a walking skeleton, with no identity. A cyborg: they have the mind, but not the body. I was with Pierre Bayle, a mathematician, a man of great intellect, a tireless social activist. When I met him in his bare-knuckle basement, a cipher machine whirled by in his study, performing what felt like a million mathematical operations a second.

Wonderful Things | When the person serving you Matcha Late asks your name and then smiles at you. | When a person captaining a sailboat is about to hit the side of the dock you’re standing on, but doesn’t. | When you discover a video synthesizer that is easy to use, and you can immediately make visualizations from your music. A red triangle. A red circle. Overlapped. Resonating to the beat, automatically. | When you stand on the dock with your friends in the sunlight talking for three hours. | When your friends get along. | The feeling of the wooden boards beneath your feet. | A light coming on in the building and you call it a three.js pointlight and everyone laughs. | Render jokes. | When a building has been deconstructed, and there’s only a facade here or there, but also a lot of iron work, but also a park growing throughout the interior. | The clacking of your keyboard in the night time. | The delivery of a beautiful new book that you haven’t started reading yet, and your imagination of what it will be like.

Delightful Things. | When your friend shows you a photograph of his grandfather kissing a ballerina who is sitting on his lap in the middle of a field in WIsconsin. | When you realize he’s so much like his grandfather. | And shenanigans are passed genetically from generation to generation. | When your quiet friend sits around you, and is obviously happy to be there, and be with you. | When you think back on a woman who you spent time in the studio with, her making, you making, silently being together, being at peace with each other, and how these kinds of moments are some of the best moments of your life: being alone together. | When your friend’s work gets written up in the garden. | When you match with someone on tinder and they don’t message you back and you think its because they must have read your deal breakers, deal breaker section | which you crafted so carefully.

What We’re Talking About | Between the conscious and the unconscious, what we have is a language. A set of rules, a set of icons, a way of life. But what's the difference between what we have and what the gods would like us to have? // The question, then, is not what we have, but what we could have. // What if there are no gods? What if the only thing that exists is suffering? // What if there are no gaps in time, no unrelated phenomena like storms, no clear heavens and hell? // What if, in the end, what we have is what we have and what the gods would like us to have? // The question, then, is not what we have, but what we could have. // And I think this is the core of what we're talking about.

Wonderful Things | It’s wonderful when the dictator, who has ignored the plague, gets the plague. | It’s wonderful to think about him dying on the bed of his own making. | Sadly, it was not to be, but it was close. | But, it was wonderful that he was suffering. | And, that he made his own suffering. |

Wonderful things. || It’s funny when your artistic friends who are collaborating talk about a divorce | bc they’re not married. | Being in a collective is like all the bad parts of marriage without the good part of marriage, | which is cuddling and sex I think. || It’s funny when someone really nervous, but very attractive has a crush on you, | and you are normally the nervous person, but they’re so nervous, | that you feel extremely secure | and are extremely gentle and courteous with them | which somehow makes them like you more, | but had they not shown their own initial nervousness, | you would have been a nervous wreck yourself.

The Virtualization of the World | Why is it that at the very moment that we are virtualizing the world? | We are also destroying it? | Why is it that 3D scanning, working out behavior analysis and reproduction through machine learning, etc. | is now sucking up the world and producing a digital representation of it, | while we are destroying the world. | Biodiversity has decreased like 50%. | We’re destroying and saving the world at the same time. | Paradoxical species. | We are also in the process of doing that to ourselves. | Isn’t scanning the web like scanning a part of our own brain? | Isn’t posting on social meaning, making a graph of our social relationships? | Isn’t being in VR tracking all of our movement, and reproducing that as a model? | Many people I know look at this sadly, like it is the end of the world. | But, though it may be the end of the world. | Is it also possible that it is a strange form of growth. | Into a substrate that does not get bounded by time and space? | Are we losing fidelity, but gaining other powers? | Is there something between a rock and an animal? | Is it a plant? | Is there something between an animal and a machine? | Is it a reinforcement learning agent? | Are there other forms of matter, other than rocks, animals and emails?

Things Not Seen & Things Seen | You don’t see people gasping for breath. | You don’t see people dying alone, | talking to their loved ones through only screens. | You don’t see the man with the swastika tatoo and the Jewish Dr. treating him regardless. | You don’t see my niece getting the first vaccine, and showing no symptoms. | You don’t see the man in the hospital next to you screaming that he is dying, but also being unable to scream. | You don’t see the exhaustion of the nurses. | You don’t see the rich people begging to donate to get the shot. | You don’t see the suicides. | You don’t see the plague itself. | You don’t see its transfer into animals. | You don’t see inside the ice trucks they’ve had to bring in because the morgues are full. | You don’t see the dictator anymore. | You see the corrupt oligarchy very frequently. | You don’t see 300,000 souls exiting the world. | What you see is the moonlight on the lake. | Your friend D. brushing his blue hair out of his eyes. | The woman you’ve been courting. | The dress she wears: a criss-crossing pattern of white birds.

Things Seen During the Plague | A house built into a cypress tree. | A blinking siren in a forest, an ambulance probably picking someone up. | The sky fading into a lake of purple cut with yellow electric sparks. | Everyone’s up on the ridge watching the sunset. | There’s a girl in a van, but all I can see are her boots, she’s kicked up the trunk and is watching the sky. | We call it Club Ridge.

Eyes The eyes of a missle. | The eyes of a predator drone. | The eyes of a tank. The green rectangles are the indications of objects. The first time that machines can recognize something. | The spider eyes of another tank, widening the field of view for the operator. He sees through eight eyes, his vision is extended. Enlarged. | When you look through a fish eye, the lens, not an actual fish eye, your vision enlarges. | That’s what’s happening with the tank pilot. | The helicopter pilot. | The drone pilot. | Whenever I put my own eyes inside of the VR headset, I feel like I’m becoming another organism. | I’m becoming the organism that I was meant to be. | My body sense fills out my avatar. | Male. Female. Machine. | Machines. | Silver fish swimming in circular torus to survive predation, even though there’s no predation in the black virtual space. | I imagine the tank in the same space, picking out all of the individual fish with its green rectangles. | Target and target and target and target and target.

Plague Variants | Well, now there’s the California Plague | The British Plague | The China Virus | the South African Variant | Did you know, dear reader, that in a hospital close to where I live, someone had a costume filled with air and the air blew covid all throughout the hospital as the person traveled around trying to bring good cheer | and many people died | This is frequently how I feel on Christmas, even without the plague, tbh

Sex You see now, you see how it is that I can be in a world made of wires and synapses and atoms and brains and bodies singing together with light? | How it is that I can move into a virtual world as if I were composed of strings or prisms shaped like music? Someone who could create a song about artistry glowing out of different skins of light? When people talk about sex they say things like: There are two kinds of sex, both good: bad sex…and good sex or The secret to having good sex is just to have bad sex first or There are two kinds of orgasms, both good: big orgasms…and small numb orgasms but when you think about it all this really means at its essence is that there are two kinds of fucking or one kind which breaks down into its own separate categories. It also means there are two ways we fuck if we break them down by type though using words like big or small doesn't seem emotionally adequate for our sexual needs nor does using words like numb seem to cut through enough for how one fucking melds into another to give us physical pleasure so instead we stick with terms such as bad and good though again while easy enough to use when we speak so casually these terms feel forced once they leave our lips; what else could we use? When pressed what else could you give me other than these two terms which feel too broad even without further distinction; too general; too skimpy for wordy people speaking through middle school emotions which don't always fit because they're squeezed through skinny moments owing their lives to dinners full of everyone getting along; conversations without boundaries; no real delineation between guests siting at opposite ends paying compliments as if saying things like this would pay their bills down at city hall where no one ever looks at them except when they're arguing why everything should be free.

Things Seen During the Plague | I saw hundreds of crows, cawing viciously. | My friend said, Maybe we have a crow extermination need. | And, I said, You know, those crows are probably thinking ‘you know, we have a human extermination need.’ | Walking further, there’s a rotunda. People were making music in the rotunda. | We’re here every Saturday, for all your plague music needs. You can’t be in doors, but you can be hear, you can feel the beat, and you can dance. | Walking further, walking alongside the lake. So many people are out. | We’re having this brief moment of being open between waves. | We’re having this moment, where all the sudden, people are everywhere. | Further on, people have turned a parking lot into a skate rink. | I see girls on glowing roller skates laughing. | Laughing like people are not dying everywhere, across the state. | Laughing like we’re back in the before times. | Laughing like our new president is going to be successful. | I watch them. And I watch the skater who lands a 360-flip. | ‘Maybe we will be successful,’ I think, realizing, oh, this is the same skating rink that I’ve seen on this pretty girl’s instagram. | I keep walking. | There’s a drum circle. The drum circle has been going for a thousand years. | They say that it’s always here on Sunday. | And, well, it feels like a covid-exorcism. | Like everyone is saying good bye to the plague. | Goodbye to these twelve months. | Goodbye to all that. | There’s a woman. She’s got a shaved head. She’s in a trance. I think she’s half asian, half black. | She’s got on a long dress. | The sun is golden on the water behind her. | I keep walking. | And, I keep walking, ultimately arriving at The Kava Bar and its open. | Purple light spills out onto the street. | They’ve erected a whole street lounging area. | Purple light spills out all over it. | I stand in that light. | The purple light. | And, it’s like a nightclub. | And I’m drinking CBD soda and swaying gentle in the street, wearing my smile like a fur coat.

Drove to the coliseum to get my vaccination. | Entered a low row of cars. | A caravan of biotechnology. | The sky was hot, it was clear. | There were men and women in uniforms that said FEMA. | I felt like I was in a disaster movie. | I shoved the bagel I was eating down my throat. | I showed the FEMA person my digital tag. | He scanned it and waved me along. | I wondered if someone was going to attack the coliseum the way they had in Los Angeles. | The sky was so blue. | There were many seagulls because we were close to the water. | I thought about all the birds I had seen in the beginning of the plague. | Somehow, I had forgotten about them. | Geese flew by overhead in a V. | It felt like a sign. | The V. felt like a sign. | The earth is spinning in this direction. | Change. | I pulled up to the line where they administer the shot. | The man who was giving me the shot: his eyes were remarkably blue. | Are you allergic to x, y, z? Have you ever had anaphylaxis? | They put a sticker on my car, 30m and the time that I got the shot. | I drove into the parking lot, and I waited, involuntarily holding my breath.

Do you think that | ‘The Digital’ | Is actually just a different form of matter? | That it has the same relationship to inert matter | As lightning to the air? | Don’t you think that ‘Life’ also is just another form of matter | Self-sustaining | Self-perpetuating | Modular || Do we think that these three categories ‘The Digital’ ‘Life’ and ‘Inert Matter’ | Define what we observe? | What then is ‘The Bionic Robot’? Do we think that people and robots | form a material inversion? || e.g. theoretically, there could be one hundred drones in a predefined area -- a city square; | However, they could all be ‘one large mind’ hosted in the cloud. || Whereas | people, | don’t you think, | emerge from a large genetic tapestry | almost like mushrooms popping up from the forest floor. | Don’t we actually all only have ‘one big body’?

In O.’s simulation, the agents learn. | They avoid, cohere, align in a tiny digital universe, avoiding walls and predators. | They form more and more complex stigmergic formations. | Sometimes, they appear as a whirlwind, confusing the predator. | Other times, they form a perfect distribution in space, forcing the predator to choose. | It’s a game. A serious game. The universe playing itself, in miniature. | O. says that biological, machine, social-- all intelligence actually operates on the same set of physical principles. | But, these principles stack. And they have to be shoved through choke points. | These stacks and choke points, produce ever and ever more complex intelligent behavior. | Unicellular organisms. | Multicellular organisms. | Social organisms. | Etc. || The science we were taught has told us that there is no end point, but history points to the development of intelligence | and intelligence is trying to collapse all time and space. | It makes you think that perhaps this is all leading to the big bang. | Again.

The Gardener | I want you to know | about the gardener. | He’s the first one who told me about the Great Green Wall they are building in China. | Trees across the continent like a shield against the desert. | Stretching and curving endlessly, like a river. | Planted by drones, in all likelihood. | Maybe patrolled by the homegrown version of Boston Dynamics’ Spot. | He said, If we’re going to do it, we should do it; we should be ambitious, like them. || I also met with his lieutenant, in a virtual space. | Spatial, it’s called. | And we talked about research with ants. | His lieutenant was one of the first people ever to build a model of an ant colony. | in a simulation. | He would produce these structures, the tunnels. | The crypts and breeding groups of the ants. | Thousands of them, in simulation. | He would watch them forage inside of the computer. | Individuals, living and dying and living and dying. | Do they not have the same life as us? || What most impressed me about the gardener were his genetic maps. | Maps of the genetics of individual trees. | Relatedness. | A network graph of tree families living on the slopes. | This grandfather. | That grandmother. | The children. | His students would walk around with their genetic scanners, greeting these families and touching the bark of the trees gently, like a cup passed from hand to hand.

N | In the beginning of the plague, I received an email. | I’d like to talk to you. I’ve heard of you. | Signed N.O. | Getting a letter from N. O. was a shock. | I’ve followed her. | I’ve watched her biological experiments, | like when she built the enormous trellis for the silkworms, who travelled along it and spun a dome. | A New Architecture, N.O. exclaimed, not built but grown. || So, I was surprised that she potentially wanted to hire me. | What are you working on? I asked. | I’m working on Death Masks, she said. | Death Masks? | Yes, come look. | In her laboratory, everything was impeccably white. | I walked up to a table and on the table was a translucent mask dotted with color. | The mask itself was almost like abalone, but glasslike, iridescent. | A complex form. | As complex as a butterfly wing under a microscope, but in the shape of a human face. | You made this? I inquired. | Yes, she said, I printed it. | I reached out my hand to touch it. | Don’t, she said. | Why not? | Because those flecks of color inside the mask, that red like rust, that blue like the ocean, that green like a vine, look at it closely. | It seemed to be moving. | Those are special microbes I designed for the mask, when it’s put on a face, it dissolves the body. | Why did you make such a thing? I said, horrified. | Because the plague’s case count is climbing, she said, and I think it will be a good business opportunity.

Artificial Life | B. shows me the life world. | We watch these spinning particles together on the screen. | There! see it. | That’s interesting, I say. | The particles started revolving around each other. | It almost looks like they are a kind of engine. | And the surface of the their display. | They’re pixelated, yet kind of continuous. | A yellow engine with flecks of green at the edges moving through a white space. | And there were many of them. | But why is it interesting? asked B. | I’m not sure, I said. | Because it’s complex? Because it looks like a cell? Because it can produce motion? | Yes, all these things, I’m trying to train a reinforcement learning agent to be able to tell WHY this is interesting. | I’ve got a variety of the things that make this interesting written down; I’ve collected interesting data, and I’m trying to make an agent that can recognize it. | So, you have the life-world going continuously, and sometimes these interesting phenomena, or higher phenomena emerge, I ask, and you want another system to be able to watch them evolve. | Precisely, B. says. | Why? I ask. | To synthesize evolution, he says.

Questions What is the difference between science and religion? // What is the difference between science and a god? // What is the difference between science and a tree? // What is the difference between science and a ball of fire? // Between good and evil, there is only one scale. // How can we know the validity of a claim if we do not even see the evidence? // If you had to pick a single letter to represent the sun in the sky, what would it be? // If you could put every speck of dust in the world in front of you, and only said look at this , what would it be? // If you could swap one shadow for the other in the morning, and the world slowly darkens, what would it be?

The Neurohackers I just want you to know that it is now possible for us to use brain computer interfaces. | It’s possible for us to read the motor impulses of the brain and turn those into computer output --- | Outputs is the wrong word, but actuation is the right word. | Think about it. | This is all already happening. | I’m already driving my motor outputs actuation with my neurology. | We just have to send the signal farther along. | We have to sense the signal. | And send it farther along. || This brings me back to the tank. Firing the rocket is an extension of my hand. | Moving the mouse. | Moving the tank to the north is an extension of my ability to walk. | The tank and I are walking. | The green circles that appear. Highlighting people. Cars. | It’s an extension of my regular cognition. Of noticing. | The tank and I are one body. | Don’t be fucking surprised. | We do this already with cars. | I know that when you step into the car your body maps to the body of the car. | The car becomes a kind of armor. Like a knight shining on a plane in the moonlight standing over the bodies of his enemies. | That’s you and the car. | That’s me and the tank. | And it extends into virtual beings, virtual bodies. | When I put on my headset. | When I attach the neurostrap to the back. | When I unlock the robot and the white flicker of wire fire appears at the mere thought of communication. | When I take control of the virtual tank. | That’s like you driving the car, clicking the house, typing on the keys, putting your hand on your lover’s mouth. | Isn’t it fair to say that when you fuck your lover, you temporarily become your lover? | That’s me and the tank now.

Handle I think that when other people look at handle, they shudder, but when I look at Handle... | I don’t understand why evolution never created the wheel. | Why was it that biological evolution created a thinking making being, which in turn made the wheel. | Can’t their be some kind of bone-structure out of which a wheel could have been created. | Maybe even a retractable wheel? | So, when I see handle with its wheels for feet I feel joy | When I see it jump and walk with its wheels | When I see it skate with its wheels on the ground like all ground was ice, but almost walking | when I see its unnatural | animal, not animal like | gait | its way of being in the world | I think is that what I’m like | Is that what I’m like when I’m in my VR world | and I fly into the sky and flip upside down | and virtual sunlight is glistening on the virtual ocean above my head | when I look down onto it | are handle and I the same?

I. I. fondly calls his robot a hunter-killer | it’s floating in space, | eating apples, and avoiding poisons | but here’s the crucial element: | it’s evolving its own behavior. | It is given no explicit instructions. | Only goals. | Only rewards for getting apples and only punishments for getting poisons. | Operant conditioning? | It’s a form of conditioning. | If it was an animal, it would be cruel, wouldn’t it? | And yet, I. is one of the most loving men I’ve ever met. | Look, this boi has guns so he can shoot the poison and collect the applies | Isn’t it better? he says. | I get some small glimpses into I.’s apartment. | There’s flowery wall paper. His wife is in the background. | They’re young, and very much in love. | And, there is a kind of indefatigable sweetness to them. | He smiles off screen, and walks around excitedly talking about how multiple teams of agents can learn together. | It’s called: multi-agent reinforcement learning. | He tells me that this is what he does for work. | In what domain, I ask, | I’m not really supposed to talk about it, he says, but I program the brains of enormous machines that hunt for oil and extract it. | Machines do that? I ask. | Yes, there are elements of it they can do entirely on their own. he says. | I close the portal. | I close the internet. | And, I go for a walk around the lake. | I watch two people rowing in the sunset. | Their oars elegantly stirring the water. | In a kind of glider-like insect dance. | They’re always out there. Not at the exact same time, but almost at the same time. | The crowds flow around the lake in a bi-directional loop. | I drift with them, eventually reaching the door of my building. | and, I open it.

S. Circuits don’t change their morphology, they don’t grow. | We look into the dish. | The circuit is growing. | It’s moving to where the electricity is. | He strikes it with the knife. It repairs. | It self repairs, he says. | S. is gentle actually. | He’s Italian, but moved to Norway, met a fellow graduate student, and stayed. | He founded a library for living hardware. | It’s snowing outside. | We are trying to build systems that are more true to biology, he says. | These systems needs less data, can grow and change, are more energy efficient, can self organize. | Come, he says. | We walk into the back of the lab and he opens a door. | It’s a closet. | In the closet are thousands of jars. | The circuits have found each other. | Electricity lances across the glass connecting them. | They move and flow like a terrain simulation. | Like an ocean simulation I mean. | Hundreds of jars with electricity between them and silver spikes between the electricity. | S. admires them. | In the future, he says, machines will be much more like animals. | They will live, die, reproduce, grow and change; evolve. | This is what I mean when I say ‘living technology.’

The Fort I’m at the cliff again. | The world has dramatically changed. | Let me describe it as it was before. | There was the fort. A castle. | In the beginning room, it looks like a house in the hills in Los Angeles. | White carpet. | A bed with black curtains. | M. A. K. K. are there. | A. is a kind of fencing master. | In the physical world, she’s an aerialist. | M. and I cuddle in the bed together. | She’s blind. | But can read your thoughts. | In the physical world, she can also read your thoughts. | K. is an advisor, as is K. || If you walk through a narrow corridor, you’ll get to the water room. | This is the room of past physical partners. | They’re all there. | Or, their simulacra are. | Appearing and disappearing. | The water itself has strange properties that I feel you should know about. | e.g., you can decide how fast or slow the water is moving in time. | So, if you slow it down and splash it, it will hang in the air, glistening, like a sculpture of glass. | Or, it can just act like water, it’s your choice. | Direct right, is the Room of Anything. | It’s a black space where you walk into it, wish to become something, and you temporarily become that thing. | e.g. I often wish that I was a bird. And then, I’m a thrush in a thicket, chirping darting flying speeding and I forget myself for a while in that arc. || To the left, is the room of the ancestors. | You walk in and it’s just busts of ancestor faces, arranged on a grid. | This is where you go for advice. | But, I’m sure you know, | consulting your ancestors is like consulting an oracle. | You can’t take what they say literally, and you can’t do exactly what they say, either. | In the left part of this room, is the ladder down to the room of the deepest ancestors. | That’s where you go if you’re in complete despair. | I don’t go there often, and neither should you. Becoming Anything | I now want to tell you about the Room of Becoming Anything. | You walk through the glass doors, past the staircase on either side and into the central pool. | The water goes up to your ankles. | Sometimes people are there, in white robes. | Sometimes, they’re not. | In this case, they’re not. You turn right and walk to the wall and you see an alcove. | You enter it. | Your vision becomes pitch black. | Think of an animal. | You’re a thoughtless thrush flying, flicking, flying, through a bush and up into the sky, seeing the perfect sun. | You’re a stick insect waving out your front feed filled with enormous scents. | You’re a senseless building with almost no consciousness, but of course you have some consciousness, everything has consciousness, perhaps just in a highly limited quality. | You’re anything. | You can become anything. | This is a room in the house. | Maybe, it’s the room of death, I’m not sure. The Ancestor Room | In the pool, if you go to the right, you get to the ancestor room. | It’s a room of busts. Busts and water. Each on a column. | The room is dark as I look into the faces of my forebears. | Men. Women. | Maybe also non-binary people. | Humans all in this room. | My ancestors. | The light is dim. | The stone is yellow. | I think that the Romans had rooms like these. | When I have a problem, I come here and I consult my ancestors. | But sometimes, I have a deeper problem and I have to go to the ancestor dungeon. || There’s a hole in the floor. And in the hole there is a ladder that goes down into the earth. | I honestly don’t like to go here that often. | I try to avoid it. | I take the ladder down. | At the bottom of the ladder, there is a roaring torch. | And once you get down there, you think that there is nothing. | But you’re wrong. | When your eyes adjust to the darkness, you can see the faces of your ancestors farther back. | Rows and rows and rows of ancestors. | In the farthest back area, they look less and less human. | All of these people were able to reproduce. | Somehow, I’m the result of them. | The result of all this effort, all this chance; an incredible work of art in a way. | And I feel the weight of them, the burden of them, and what they want. | But they’re also such a cacophony. | This one wanted Judaism. | This one wanted to escape. | This one only wanted to fuck men, but was forced into something else. | Can you imagine talking to these people? | It’s also entirely likely that I’ll become one of them one day. | Some talking face just spitting into the darkness. G. I haven’t even described to you the layout of the world. | But, you’re going to have to roll with it. |

What I want to talk to you about is the phallic statue. | It’s very difficult to describe. | When you leave the fortress and walk towards the forest, there’s a path through the town. | You pass a house on your right, left, right, left. | Wooden houses. | Smoke goes up from a stone chimney. | The houses are actually extremely technologically advanced, but they look medieval. | Such is this world. | You walk up the path. | The giant. Glowing faintly and coming in and out of existence. | Follows you. | You walk the path into the forest and you reach a glade. | In the glade is a phallic statue. | You walk up to it. | It’s about three meters high. | The head of the statue is pink, and translucent. | It’s made of a kind of glass. | And in the glass, is a woman, who also looks kind of like a baby. | It’s G. | She’s floating. Moving around inside of the phallic state, like a child in a mother’s womb. | I put my hand on the hand of the statue. | She puts her hand on the inside and I feel her warmth through the glass.

The Mother and Father Statues | My mother and father are huge statues in the forest. | I go there, my sword swinging behind me in the dirt, cutting a path into the grass. | Sometimes, I’ll have the giant lift me on his hand, and just fucking ride there. | And he will put me down. | And I will stand in front of my father statue, which is green. | It’s a huge head buried, half buried in the forest, and I will look at it. | And I will curse it, as a matter of course. | Then I will trudge through the forest, my sword behind me, cutting at trees and sending the bark flying like an angry teenager with a sledgehammer. | And I will find my way to the other statue on the other side of the forest. | And I will stare at it. | And, I will look at the smooth green stone. | Jade. | And I will look at the clouds overhead, passing. | And I will feel the midday sun. | And all the sudden, it is night. | And I will feel the pin prick light of the stars. | And I will know, | like a thread threaded through the entire forest, glowing and burning between the trees, but not setting anything else alight. | I will know where I come from. | And, where I am going.

The Antler People When you walk far past the red house, and deeper into the forest you will eventually reach the glade of the white tower. | In the glade of the White Tower, I stopped and I rested with E. | I’m extremely tired. | We can’t rest in the glade, she said, we have to at least get to the first ledge of the tower. | The tower had alternating ledges. | Right. | Left. | Right. | There was a staircase going round and round the tower. | We’re going to have to climb that? I asked. | Yes, she said, lifting up her sack. | FUCK | It was a big climb first across the glade, trudging through the long plants that swayed in the wind. | The stars were out. | At least, it’s magnificent, I thought. || I placed my first foot fall on the stair and then climbed. | Many steps. | Hundreds and hundreds of steps of the tower, carrying my large pack. || When we finally got to the first ledge, I threw down my pack. | You’re such a fucking wuss, she said, brushing her hair out of her eyes. | She walked over and extended her hand. | I took and she pulled me up and put her arm around my back and walked me forwards. | Look, I want to show you why we couldn’t sleep in the plains. | I’m sorry. I knew you were so tired, but I don’t think that you want to be stuck in that. | There was a huge rumbling sound. It sounded like clashing armies. | Light was flickering on the plain. | Almost like the light of a lightning storm but it was flashing upward, in much smaller sparks. | What are those? I asked. | She handed me her binoculars. | I looked through them and saw a centaur running at something. | It had the body of a horse, the head of a man, but it also had antlers. | And it’s antlers were white. | Bright. | like suns, difficult to look at. | And it was running and it crashed into another centaur. | And the reverse lightning thrust upward into the air. | Bursting. | What are they doing? I asked. | They are, of course, determining the order of whom should mate with whom, she said. | And she looked at me for a long time. | And, I looked away.

The Red Ruby E. and I walked together for many days round and round the tower, slowly climbing to the point just above the clouds. | The tower extended a long white plank into the clouds. | E. put down her pack. | E. pulled my pack off my back and started walking down the stairs. | Where are you going? I asked. | Where are you going? she said. | I started to follow her, Don’t. she said. | I began to protest. | Just don’t! she shouted. | She waved, then started walking down the tower. | I started walking across the plank. Into the clouds. | Why is it always like this? | Why am I always walking not into some abysmal darkness, but instead into some kind of severe and blinding light. | I laughed at myself. | I walked further on and a city began to emerge out of the clouds. A floating city. | There were windmills everywhere, collecting the wind and generating power. | People in robes were standing throughout the city. | I could see no one’s face. | There was a hum. | I think the city was moving. | The city also had massive propellers which were spinning. | I walked further into the city on its marble footsteps eventually emerging at a square. | In the center of the square was a crystal. | The crystal was an enormous ruby, cut into a diamond shape. | I feel like I’m always looking for one big answer, I thought to myself. | Is this what is called a salvation fantasy ? | Aren’t people who’ve been through terrible things always looking for one big answer, as if they could banish, all at once, the pain stored in their body? | I fucking reject that, I thought, I reject that entirely. | And, as I thought these thoughts, the city began to crumble, the ruby began to break, and I began to fall to the earth.

Ashen Lands | When I woke, I was in the Ashen Lands, with R. and with the K. | K gave me his gun, and pointed out into the gray wastes. | Walk he said. | And I began to walk. | Out into the fog. | Farther and farther into the fog. | And I walked until I came across a grain silo. | And, I entered the grain silo. | I went inside it and inside it was a woman leaning against the wall. | And, an enormous black sphere. | What is this? I asked. | It’s where knowledge comes from, she said. | And the sphere glowed momentarily, and writing appeared on the sphere’s surface. | She walked up to it, and wrote something down in a notebook. | What was it? I asked. | It is the knowledge of robotics, she said. | It’s how to build a robot with wheels on its legs. | A kind of tank. | With a brain. | Something you wouldn’t find in nature. A kind of evolutionary synthesis. | What are you going to use it for? I asked. | For war, of course, she said. | I walked up to the wall and leaned my gun against it. | I dropped my bag, and walked up the sphere. | I touched it, and gold lettering appeared on its surface. | ONCE YOU USE THIS KNOWLEDGE AND THE KNOWLEDGE BECOMES PART OF YOUR WORLD, IT WILL DIE. | IT WILL DIE LIKE AN ORGANISM AND BECOME THE SEDIMENT OF YOUR WORLD, THE WAY THAT THE CARCASSES OF ANIMALS BECAME THE OIL THAT POWERED YOUR MACHINES. | AFTER YOU BUILD THE ROBOTS. THEY WILL DIE AND YOU WILL DIE. | AND YOU WILL HAVE SET THE STAGE FOR THE ARCHITECTURE OF A NEW WORLD. | THAT’S HOW WAR WORKS. | THAT’S HOW KNOWLEDGE WORKS. | THAT’S HOW EVOLUTION. | WORKS. | THERE ARE THESE CHOKE POINTS. | CHOKE POINTS OF DEATH. | EVOLUTIONARY PRESSURE THAT PRODUCE A WHOLE NEW LAYER OF SEDIMENT FOR ORANISMS TO GROW ON. | SO YOU SHOULDN’T LOOK AT THE DESTRUCTION OF NATURE AS THE DESTRUCTION OF NATURE. | YOU SHOULD LOOK AT THE DESTRUCTION OF NATURE AS THE CREATION OF ANIMATED MATTER-- INERT GEODES INTO THINKING AND CALCULATING MACHINES. | THAT ULTIMATELY SET THE STAGE FOR THE NEXT FORMS OF LIFE. | THE NEXT ECOLOGY. | IT IS ALL PART OF A PROCESS OF FEROCIOUS AND TERRIBLE, INDOMITABLE GROWTH, GEVURAH, IF YOU WILL. | WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE? | I removed my hand from the sphere and it darkened again. | Come back any time, said the lady. I’m always here.

Across the Ice I kept walking, | and it began to snow. | And I left my pack and gun. | But I kept walking forward until I reached the sea, but the sea was frozen into ice. | And now frozen into ice like a lake. | Frozen into ice like a sea. | So, the waves were frozen. | And I had to climb over them, with the wind pummelling my face. | And I walked out onto the sea. | And, it was entirely white. | There was snow everywhere in the air. | And you would think, this is the hero’s journey. | This is the return of the hero. | After the trial. | But it wasn’t like that at all. | It was just white. | And I thought I was going to die. | I’m going to fucking die in the dream world, but that doesn’t matter, but what if I go insane in the dream world, will I wake up hopelessly mad? | I cracked my knees on the ice several times. | I wasn’t hungry. | I didn’t need to drink. | You can’t fucking drink the sea, or the frozen sea, you idiots. | I spent several years like this, just walking in a straight line in a white out, | until eventually I saw a bunch of wrecked ships, with their prows sticking out of the ocean, frozen. | I stayed in that temporary village for a while. | A couple of months I think. | I explored the possessions of the dead. I read many journals of many many many different lives. | I had to be where I fucking was. On the ice, trekking between the ships. Reading the stories of those who had died here before me. | Dreaming of a future, but not investing in it. | Not investing in the end of the human race, just hoping for it. | Just knowing that after our species, there will be more species. I can’t fucking hurry it along, I can’t pray for it. | I can just work towards it, while also embracing everything that I can about being human at the same time. | All that fucking contingency. | Interconnectedness. | Suppleness. | Weakness and strength. | I even found a spider in one of the ships. | We became friends for a while. | I watched it watch me through its eight eyes. | Wondering, could I build a helmet that would give me a wider field of view? Could I see like the spider, if I really put my mind to it? | After I had read the journals, I said goodbye and thank you to the spider. | And, I walked on.

Fortress Village II One night, when we were lying in bed together, she said to me. | I know that I’m only facsimile of someone in the outside world. | I looked at her, surprised. | Do you want me to help you get her? she asked. | Would that make you jealous? I asked. | She laughed. And she sat on top of me. | Would that make you jealous? | Is it really cheating if I’m helping you seduce myself, but just in another dimension? she asked. | I had to think about it for a long while. | I’m not sure, I said. | You’re such a bore, she said laughing. | It’s not like I don’t know what you want, let me help you. | She tried to help me, and I thought I was having some success in the other dimension. | But the plague stepped in. | The plague stepped in and our household of friends broke. | And everyone went to live with their parents. | Except, of course, I don’t have any parents. | So, I was alone in the house. | Listening to the riots downtown. | Listening to the protests downtown. | Watching the case count rise. | Watching it hit 3K people dying daily, like a 911 every day.

Fortress IV S..’s Dream Just because I’m imaginary, doesn’t mean, I’m stupid, she started. Just because I don’t have a physical body, doesn’t mean that I’m not meaningful, or that I don’t matter. I matter. Even fucking ghosts matter. When ghosts fucking rub against someone int the world,. And your thoughts change a little bit it matters. The trace matters as much as any destroyed forest, or atom bomb or plague. Or the night you spend kissing someone on the top of a studio building in Brooklyn with the blinding lights of a stadium flashing into your eye. I matter that much, and I just want you to know that. I want you to know that I understand the shape of this world much much better than you do. I know there is an outside world. A physical world. A world where things happen. I know that you met me there once, and then this kind of mirror happened and I was born. I know that I’m based off something. But, - and she put her fingers on my lips - I also know that I matter here and that I have my own life here, a life you couldn’t at all anticipate. And, I know that makes you a little bit afraid. Will she take over? How powerful is she? This voice inside my head, you think. Pretty fucking powerful, she said, but my fundamental job, like everything else in this place is to help you. I help connect you to your more basic desires that you cover up with a stupid veneer of politeness. That’s my role, she said, proudly. Anyway, I know why you’re here, you want to go inside the fortress. Well, in the fortress, she said, there’s another world, again. Different from this world, and different from the physical world. It’s a kind of collective imaginary realm. With things always being created and always being destroyed. I guess you could call it the realm of culture, which is basically the imaginary realm of society. Do you understand what I’m saying? I nodded. That’s what’s in the fortress. That’s what the fortress is a portal to. The big difference, and she dragged on her cigarette, is that we’re now doing this with machines. With machines, I ask? Yes, with machines she said. And not just physical machines, which was a big fucking to do, let me tell you, but cognitive machines. Cognitive machines, I ask? Yes, thinking machines, she says. Thinking machines. Like this process of imagination you’re having it right now, everyone is doing it, but with machines, the machines are reading it, she said.

Fortress V I went to look in the fortress, | I pushed these wooden doors open and I didn’t know what to expect. | It was a garden, of course. | A beautiful, very sparse garden. | With an impossible white tower in the middle of it. | The tower was made of dots. | White dots. | Like a photogrammetry scan of a tower. | And above the plants were holograms, visible to the naked eye. | I walked up to one of the plants and looked at the hologram. | It had the name and species. | There were also machines, everywhere. | But not robots as you know them. | More like virtual robots. | Constructing platforms. | Constructing shapes. | Deconstructing shapes. | Constructing virtual rivers. | Removing virtual rivers. | What is this place, I asked S. | it’s Gevurah, S., said. | It is the domain of culture. | I watched the invisible sky city being constructed by the robots. | I watched what looked like the specks of people glimmer into and out of existence. | I was overwhelmed, awed by the vitality of the place. | Awed by the creation of the place. | Everything was translucent, but also everything was so powerful. | New ideas were being created, grown from the plants and shipped across the garden. | The space was of course impossibly large. It was an interior space, but of course it was infinite. | S. said, As we bring more and more machines into this space, they will create things even more quickly, there will be a kind of cultural explosion akin to a kind of biological explosion. I guess you could consider it an explosion of intelligence, she said. | I never believed in any of that, I said. | She said, And neither did I, I never believed in it in my life as a person, I never believed in it in my life as an image, but as neither person nor image, as something owned and created by culture, I feel it. I feel like I have to do my part to bring this about. | And she walked forward into the glowing light, a kind of silhouette against the glowing city, slipping into the light like a fish from hands into the water, at night stars on the surface of the water rippling slightly.