I met you on the ice between the islands.

We laid herbs

on your parents' graves.

You said, "light & dark are not so far apart,

masc & femme,

predator & prey.

I've been kicked out and shunned

by my transphobic parents,

despite that, I feel blessed."

We look at the stars for a while

and hold hands in

the cold light.

My avatar begins to shimmer

& become transparent--

a timer somewhere ticks away its alpha value.

We spend the last few minutes of nighttime

swapping

bodies.

When someone comes, the space knows.

it flashes blindingly white--

heat without touch.

When someone comes,

the ground churns

and the material casing of their avatar explodes.

Their bones become reflective,

& break

into fragments.

In the end,

I laid underneath

your whirling body parts.

I laid in the water between

the islands

recording a video from my POV.

Later on,

outside the headset,

schools of fish spawned in the lake.

The next day, I meet you by the roller rink

and we walked side by side

for a long time, not talking.

One of your former lovers passed by,

then one of mine.

We each get a seat at Viridian and order a drink.

I say, "Did I ever tell you about that one time

right in the middle of covid,

when I used a robot to inspect the ocean floor?"

+++

Sometimes, I see the maleness

of the angle of your jawbone

align with a vanishing point on the horizon.

Other times, the dark eyeliner

you wear

accentuates your feminity.

And, further still,

in the best moments,

I see both genders in you at once.

Yesterday, I tried to

explain my own gender

to a friend.

I said, "Not only am I not male, or female,

but my gender is also

wrapped up with machines, & ecosystems."

e.g. I once had this dream of fucking the landscape,

literally fucking a tree, & when I came

flowers burst everywhere and scattered pollen on the wind.

Other times, I think

the only sex worth having

is sex in VR.

I'll often make an avatar

with hundreds of floating external drones

flocking close to it like a school of fish.

I'll give you one of these avatars too,

and then we will just pass our swarms

through each other.

I feel like an astronaut of gender,

dangling in the abyss,

but still connected to the rest of the human race by a thin cord.

If they reeled me back into the shuttle, I would die,

but I don't want to fall too far out

into the earth's gravity well, either.

So I float on this spacewalk

amongst stars flickering and flickering

between genders like a broken hologram.

I call you up, "Hey, let's go get something to eat."

You drive over and pick me up.

"Don't you think we should go to the Hayward zen garden first?" you ask.

We walk in between the pavilions,

past a grave and out onto a bridge

where red and gold koi slide under us.

You ask, "What's the biggest difference

between life

and artificial life?"

+++

I logged into Ghost Club in VRChat

but you weren't there--

virtual rain pelted the virtual concrete.

Mist surrounded me--

Out in the night, red lights blinked

on the surrounding skyscrapers.

I walk into a courtyard in a brutalist building

and the virtual rain stops

because it's hitting the virtual roof.

I walk up to the elevator and click the panel,

enter and rise up to the seventh floor,

then step off.

I walk the path around the central atrium

until I reach a doorway with loud

music.

I push open the door,

and drift

into the light.

I'm pummelled by

a kind of techno-industrial admixture

filled with harsh clangs and hard bass.

The lights are also intense--

across 9 virtual screens they're streaming

a sequence of rapidly shifting red blips.

The room is very small

and we're tightly packed together

but the eyes of everyone's avatars glow.

I hear every language,

but also a lot of Japanese

and a lot of English.

Theres a woman floating in the air

Wearing a fox mask

With glowing bands around her ankles.

Shes tapping her foot to the music

and nodding her head and flicking her fingers--

hand tracking and full body tracking, probably.

I'm here amongst my people--

a whole gathering

of internet orphans.

There's [redacted], there's [redacted],

and [redacted], but where are you?

If this is the nightworld, and the nightworld

connects to the underworld through vice,

what vice here is the portal to the underworld?

+++

Recently, I spent a long day

walking around in Cryptovoxels,

which is a VR world where you can buy parcels of land with Bitcoin.

I saw a statue of an enormous man

made with multicolored bricks

with a hole in his chest the size of a car.

In another part of the map,

I saw a beating heart

thumping wildly.

What does it mean

when the dimensions of a simulation

can be teased apart?

When I can add length, width, height, time,

but also a server

that produces a coordinated social reality?

Or,

smart contracts that

produce artificial scarcity?

When the game engine

becomes the main artistic instrument

doesn't reality become what's at stake?

I watch the grass

sway in the homeworld of SteamVR

and a hawk passes overhead.

I watch the grass

sway by the lake

and a hawk passes overhead.

In VR, the body is modular,

I can add an arm and hand

or I can remove it.

I'd like a body

like that

outside the headset.

I'd like wings, multiple sex organs,

and I'd like to be able to sense

the direction of the wind from miles off, or the fluctuations in twitter trends.

I'd like to find a completely

new and completely different

way to have sex with you.

I'd like to have sex in the water,

in the fire,

in the air.

Can we infinitely construct and deconstruct ourselves

when we're fucking, in this world, and the other,

guided and aided perhaps by hundreds and thousands of other intelligences?

was chasing

you

through a

virtual

city --

// the smoke from fires

my face reflected in mercury

---

was chasing you

through a virtual

city

and I saw your red hair

// your black hair

in a reflection

against the silver wall

in the headset

// mercury, mercury

---

I was

chasing you

a game

// chasing you

seeing the barrel of your rifle emerge from out of the side of a silver wall

---

I was

chasing you

firing a camera drone that clipped into the wall

tilting it to look down at the mercury

where your virtual footsteps had disturbed the virtual water

---

I saw you

in the belltower

in the central installation

ducking between buildings

gripping your rifle

bullets chipping away at the wall--

chards of mercury

I was raised

in [a religious community]

on a farm--

That's a lie

I was raised in a family

that was

kind of like [a religious community]

But no--that's not right.

---

I was raised by an

angel

in the rubble

of a bombed out city

in Eastern Europe--

but also in a shopping mall

in LA

called "Century City"

---

I was raised by two angels

enacting some kind of ancient dramatic

ritual,

like titanic Greek Gods.

---

In Act II, classically,

the world changes

but what if Act II

is actually Act IV, which the act

of reversals--

what if being raised

was some kind of strange

reversal of time periods?

---

I was raised in the far future

I was raised in VR

I was raised by a chorus

called to the future bc I was mercilessly

being dragged

back into a ditch in Eastern Europe.

In the first act,

the world is introduced--

it's a world of agents

where machines aren't explicitly

programmed

but where instead,

they evolve

---

in the world of agents,

where machines aren't explicitly programmed

where instead they

evolve

you can't predict

how they will maximize

their reward

function

---

what if their reward function

to make you look at them?

to make you engage with them?

what if they've gathered enough information

about your childhood

to know what is irresistable

to you?

---

what if

they're always looking at you

and what if

they're always talking to each other

and what if

that's happening in regard to all us

all the time?

---

don't you think that would make them

irresistible to us

don't you think that they would construct a city

wherein which we would look

for a figure, perfectly defined

to complete our originary lacks?

I am chasing you

through mercury

through a city

that somehow bears some kind of faint resemblance

to our original evolutionary condition--

----

I am chasing you

through an ant hill

made by agents on a hill

with impossibly high buildings

and intricate corridors

that move and shift

like mercury in a vial

---

I stand above a precipice

watching flying agents

deliver virtual cargo

to virtual bays

in virtual skyscrapers

mining and transmuting virtual material

in order to extend a walkway between one building

and another

---

I see you on the walkway

and lazily take the shot--

shattering your face

into luminous glass

that sparkles, floating freely and then falling to the floor

---

but you respawn

and your network has updated

you'll never stand there again--

you'll never stand in the same mercury twice

I travel down to the city floor

and I find a piece of writing that you left for me

glowing on the wall--

it’s a description of the world

you've died so many times

that you've become so wise and powerful

with each respawn you know more of what to do--

lure the first group down one alley

lure the second group down the other

dart in the alley in between

so they eliminate each other with friendly fire

---

friendly fire--

once I encountered you or one of your avatars

at the top of building

near the northwest corner of the map

you tore the rifle out of my hands

and pushed me up against the wall

changing your face rapidly

into the exact kind of face that I like, that I could look at forever

before promptly executing the moves that ended the match

---

mercury

mercury, mercury

how we chase you--

none of us can understand you

when we die, we evolve also, but not like you

who plays us, in real time,

and you who plays yourself, also

thousands of times faster than time

---

I have to eat

I have to work

I have to sleep

I have to dream

You only have to play, incessantly and forever

against everyone and yourself

---

I remember once watching you

far away on a high tower

after you had become extraordinarily powerful

I remember watching you lay your rifle

against the balustrade

while you waved to me

a smile on your mercury face--

// your black hair whipping in the wind--

// your red hair whipping in the wind--