Niched
As meat puppets deteriorate to
where the end is nigh, we fly.
Cyber-medical upload centers
siphon us while electric sparks
still crackle, into titanium-glass
flash drives. Tiny-coffined, our
family pods shell out for one day
of resurrection each year.
Fearful and careless call it zombie palace
a place where dusteds attend year-round;
for each, an annual androidal dance.
Columbarium ash plants our trees
along sweeping forest hills, where
podlings may grieve under us 364.
On the same 365th each year, they
dress in finery or soft old cotton
to pilgrimage to the palace.
Androids' blank screen faces await,
with hologrammic bands of choice
on standby. Niched, we've been
watching home movies, old tv series –
and the calendar.
My drive's plugged into a biometric
latex body of me at thirty-five.
My face lights the screen and I see
them and they see me. Track 1: Zep
We dance like honey bees,
humming and laughing,
rumbling and recalling,
murmuring and hugging
all night long.
Too soon we say teary goodbyes --
until next year.
364 days of torture? Maybe.
1 day of life each year. Worth it.
I recently watched season 1 of, “Pantheon,” an 8-part series on Netflix, that revolves around Uploaded Intelligence (UI,) where a whole person’s being can be uploaded and stored in network storage. The loved ones can interact with them through a virtual reality environment but can never physically touch them again.
I took it a little bit farther, looking to a day when androids with tactile abilities exist. In the “zombie palace” families make appointments for one day a year to plug their loved ones into the androids and are able to touch and be touched by them again.
top image: “Engine Dance” by Lintza
Sanaa is today’s host for dVerse’ Poetics. Sanaa says:
For today’s Poetics, I’d like you to write a science fiction poem. It can be about anything! You can write about post-apocalyptic dreams or indulge in time travel reflections. What about interstellar messages? I am aiming for this prompt to have no predetermined limit or boundary. So, feel free to go with your muse. On your marks, get set … go!
Tao Talk 
You raised the bar with this one, Lisa! Wow, wow! I love how you took inspiration from “Pantheon,” and added depth to the concept with these lines here; “Columbarium ash plants our trees along sweeping forest hills, where podlings may grieve under us 364.” Sigh..
Thank you so much for writing to the prompt. You made my day! ❤️❤️
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Sanaa, so happy you are pleased with it. Thanks for giving us a great prompt with several good examples. I think we will be seeing a lot more sci fi poetry.
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OHHH! What a sci-fi story you have here, Lisa. I guess we all come to life right after Halloween!?
I liked these lines…
We dance like honey bees,
humming and laughing,
rumbling and recalling,
murmuring and hugging
all night long.
When I first read the line, I thought it said. “We danced like horny bees!
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Dwight, I’m just putting a thought out into the universe to see what happens. Glad you liked that part. LOL on what you thought it said. I had more of a platonic kind of thing in mind with the dance of the bees, but what the heck, you can wish whatever you want ;)
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Ha ha… it would work as well!
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A very evocative poem Li.
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Thanks, Sadje. I hope it becomes possible one day.
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Perhaps it will
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That show sounds really interesting…I looked it up a bit when you mentioned it…I like your last line “1 day of life each year. Worth it.” a lot.
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Thanks much, Max. I didn’t know there was a 2nd season out there. Not sure if Netflix will add it at some point. Yes, it is interesting and something that I think will come to pass, if we survive long enough as a species.
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The series sounds interesting though a bit frightening in the sense of advancements in the realm of artificiality of life. You capture this well in the poem, and I agree with Max’s assessment of the last line.
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Steve, it shows the personal side but the series also shows what can happen when a human ego, even one confined to the digital realm, can do a lot of damage. You’re right, it is frightening. Human nature, canned or uncanned, is a risk to the planet. Thanks, and glad you like that last line.
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You’re welcome, Lisa. To your point, I’d say human ego is perhaps the biggest threat the world faces.
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I watched a Frontline special last night (on youtube, free) on China’s current Chairman. Very interesting times we are living in. Hong Kong and Taiwan are under direct threat of being (re)assimilated.
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Oof, it’s a wild world.
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Ooh, baby baby…
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😂
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Quite the poem, Lisa. Great writing.💜
I heard that even today, all it takes for an AI, to model your personality, is a 2hour question and answer session with you. If that’s where we are today, I bet this future is really close.
I’m not sure how I feel about it all.
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Hi Jude, nice to see you :) I understand your ambivalence, and I share it. Theoretically it’s a great thing, but its application, especially involving human nature, is cause for concern, and especially in the hands of powermongers.
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All we can do is keep watching
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Nice one
much♡love
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Gillena, thanks :)
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Thank you for drawing my attention to ‘Pantheon’; UI looks interesting and I’ve put the series on my watch list. It really inspired your poem, which is fantastic, Lisa. I love the way you set the scene in these lines:
‘Cyber-medical upload centers
siphon us while electric sparks
still crackle, into titanium-glass
flash drives’
and
‘Columbarium ash plants our trees
along sweeping forest hills, where
podlings may grieve under us 364.’
I love the emotion in these lines:
‘We dance like honey bees,
humming and laughing’.
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<3 Thanks so much, Kim. Hope you get a chance to see it.
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Goodness this is quite a story set in sci-fi fantasy land. Would I like to live there – no but you have imbued it with the energy of that 1 day of living and dancing to the fullest. May we all dance like honey bees for the rest of our lives. Love your poem and backgrounder – will check that out in netflix.
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Grace, glad you connected with the premise and the feeling of that 1 day of living. Thank you so much.
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FULL on….the beginning had a tough of Future Legends, by Bowie to it, powerful stuff, but then it really took off, and I can imagine these as lyrics to a very good song.
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Ain, thanks for the feedback. If you do music, have at it!
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Ohh wow. That’s a brilliant take on the prompt, Lisa. It sounds intimidating and interesting in equal measures. This future might be closer than it seems but I’m not sure I’d want to be uploaded into a drive for one day of resurrection after 364 days of torture.
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Thanks, Shweta, and understandable about the UI.
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You’re welcome
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This is a new approach, with all that we have done recently I can almost imagine it done. The Machine Learning still has not developed to this, but I can imagine it being done. I can also imagine those 364 days being in storage for that one day…
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Appreciate the comment, Bjorn. I think it will happen. They mention in the series about how the UI takes the physical burden off of the planet because it doesn’t use resources. It kind of feels like The Matrix to me.
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Is there no end to your imagination? I love this entrance into your viewing and listening world, Lisa! The track is all the better for being relayed through BlueTooth into my head, through new hearing aids. I am bionic at last!
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Thanks so much, Kathy, glad you enjoyed the story. Amazing on blue tooth hearing aids! First hearing of them. Sure hope they work better than my car’s blue tooth!
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Those meat puppets and their eensy shock muppets! Modernity sure knows how to strip things bare.
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Shock muppets is a perfect term. I feel we are all being absorbed by the machine mind. Capn Kirk called them The Borg didn’t he?
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A fascinating and fun read. I love sci-fi.
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Thank you. I’ve been watching Farscape. It has some very creative plots.
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Yes, it’s so cool . :-)
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:)
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