Option One

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Option 1

Every paper has to have 3 options they said. Its just how government works they said. It doesn’t matter if Option 3 is nonsensical, just give the Government Minister 3 options. 3 options and 1 recommendation, be clear which option you are recommending.

Its 1am and I have not eaten since 4pm. It was a muffin and a diet coke. It was all I could afford. This internship is unpaid.

I also feel like this options paper is above my pay grade, but the senior advisor needed to go home early to walk his dog. He left at 4.15pm. His dog has separation anxiety. He asked if I could stay to finish it.

I need the reference so I said yes.

The central question in the paper is should government give permission for open slather AI which will almost certainly result in the death and destruction of all mankind.

Option 1 is easy, yes it should. It also seems unlikely that anyone would recommend that option.

Option 2 is easy as well. It’s a flat no, we should not give permission for development of something that will lead to the death and destruction of all mankind.

I am big on Option 2.

I am studying at university, final year. After that, minimal job prospects, because I am studying one of ‘those’ subjects, the ones everyone likes to denigrate, Sociology. It is not helping me with this options paper.

The mooted third option, which has even made it into the press, is really a non-starter, but everyone in the office here seemed to like it. It is clear there is no way it could work. AI will result in the death and destruction of all mankind, except for those in London. To be clear when parliament is voting on this and they say all mankind, they just mean the UK. It’s a bit 18th century.

But the rest of the world is taking a vote as well, across different parliaments. The UN is asking for some kind of consensus. I think they said they’d take 33 percent for or against. Again a number that seems wrong.

I don’t know how we got to this point really. There was a campaign that governments should decide on extinction level developments and not tech bros. That feels right. This feels like maybe it should have been a referendum rather than an options paper though. And if it is an options paper, not one done by the intern at 1am, on an empty stomach.

I’m here for five weeks. Unpaid. I think I said that already. Not that pay matters because I am living with my parents, because no matter how much I earn I will never be able to afford more than a room in a share house. I will never own my own home.

They have literally just given it to the youngest person, who will understand all the tech speak. I am a ‘digital native’.

I was going for Option 2, but then I realised we already have nuclear weapons, so technically extinction level technology exists already. Is it ok to have extinction level technology if its controlled by government? Should that be an option? Everyone else in the meeting said no. Something about investment and capital and markets.

I won’t even take home enough from the job I get even if I manage to get one, to invest in anything, so I didn’t pay much attention. Good thing I live avocadoes.

It is by no means clear whether this extinction level AI is going to get rid of all humans or all organic life. I mean why just humans? Because we are the smartest, well so far as we know? That’s a bit arrogant though.

Especially given we are even thinking about inventing something that will kill us all, well something else that will kill us all I suppose. Frankly not sure the golden dormouse or the snowy owl  or whatever doesn’t have us on this one.

If it’s a choice between us and the rest of the planet, is ‘us’ the right choice.

I have managed to figure out that London in and of itself can’t be saved, Option 3 is a no go, but obviously that is the one everyone currently prefers. It’s a balance between total human extinction and some human survival. All of politics is a compromise, even when that compromise is shot through with holes.

There is a secondary debate about whether they will move all the immigrants out of London, and move the ‘indigenous population’ in. I am still laughing. What are they talking about, will this be another disastrously stupid one for one scheme. Although I am endlessly curious to see how London manages when it is suddenly full of northerners. They are scrumming about trying to argue which department would be responsible for that.

Maybe I can get a job running that scheme. It doesn’t matter, any job will never be enough to pay down my student debt. Its such a big number. I can’t even think about it without sweating.

I feel like Option 2 is the one.  We should not vote for the destruction of all mankind, but then here I am the unpaid summer intern, at 1am, the only person in the office, tapping away on my keyboard, writing the options paper. With no job prospects, no chance of home ownership and rising student debt.

I didn’t have any dinner, I had a late lunch at 4pm, a muffin and coke was all I could afford. Tubes aren’t even running to get me home tonight. I haven’t really enjoyed this internship. I feel like the dogs anxiety has been more important than mine. I am not sure what I want to do with my life, even if I could figure that out I probably can’t  do it in this economic climate. It feels like there is a new war everyday. The world feels awful everywhere, all the time.

I know I shouldn’t. I know I shouldn’t. I will probably never own a house. I will work until I am 80 and still have no money on retirement. I have never had a boyfriend or girlfriend. I probably never will. I can’t even afford to have fun with anyone who is just a friend. I will have so much debt when I leave university that it will cloud my future forever.

There is just war after war after war and we can watch it like a spectator sport, but that is honestly people dying and no one seems to want to stop it or care. We can afford to feed people but we don’t. We all hate each other. It feels hopeless.  

I know I shouldn’t. I know I shouldn’t.

I shouldn’t.

Sorry, I recommended Option 1.

Drop me a comment if you like this one.

An Earthen Queen

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Its rained for days.  Weeks really.

The sky a dull grey, clouds looming, hour after hour. There has been the odd gap, a shaft of blue but it has been rare. It has not been apocalyptic rain, not sheets of water pounding into the earth. It has been a slow tedious drizzle, falling out of the sky. A steady, stealthy, beat, bent on a ponderous breaking of the spirit, rather than a thrashing of the soul.

It has fallen on pavements and rooftops, on hospitals and schools, in churchyards and backyards and roads and playing grounds. The world is now soggy and damp.

I have not been outside much.

I want to write to the newspaper, to open the machine and type in the words. Tell them this isn’t the first time, this has happened before, centuries ago. I can’t. How would I know that? Its before proper records began.

There are several of them, of us. Spread out across the country, all with the same thought, somewhere out there, something, someone, has called the rain.

English is one of the few languages where the word queen does not derive from the word king. This is why. This queenness thing, born of the land, eked out of the soil. Britain and its earthen queens, I remember them all. Not all queens but all of them queens.

Victoria  was not one, nor the last Elizabeth, although we someone times wonder about both. The Elizabeth before that one, she was one of ours. There was Boudica with all her wildness. She was born this way too, with the rain.  And Aethelflaed, the fearless Mercian prodigy. Each of them, born ready for war.

And this one will be too, a new queen, forged from British soil, literally.

I take out ancient robes, dust them down, ready to begin the journey, to seek out the child, if indeed it is given up as a child.

The rain, a new queens insatiable appetite for the land to nurture her at birth, to give her sustenance. She might be born fully formed. She is a queen with the clouds and the land as her womb and the rain as her milk. Formed in the mud and chalk and the clay, features fine and chiseled by the roots of Oak and Beech, Birch and Ash, Hazel and Blackthorn, succoured on rain tinged with the tang of nettles and blackberries, wild garlic, and wild strawberries.

I wonder what this one would be like, a war monger, or a woman of peace. There has never really been a woman of peace born this way, of the earth itself and not the womb. There is something about this birth, this island, that births them ready for war, even Elizabeth. So almost certainly a war monger, leader of men  but a slayer of men. A warrior queen.

What will that look like in the 21st century?

Will she be born like the others? Boudica was born fully grown. It had rained for months and we stood knee deep in mud as she writhed and fought and finally extricated herself from whatever held her in the earth. She arose like a goddess before us. Her reign short but bloody.

Elizabeth had a more even temperament, she came out of the earth as a child, yet still she had found war. I remember her standing on the banks of Tilbury, still remembered for her urgent message to soldiers, bring me blood. And Aethelflaed, who was born on the winds to the west and stayed there to slay all who defied her. She fought like a mad thing and was the best with a sword I have ever seen.

But it is a different world now. What if CCTV finds some naked woman emerging from the mud and screaming she is queen?

As I start to drive I can smell it already. Its primal this birth, wild, a queen, a thing, caked in mud and grime emerging from the land, an unfurling of limbs from the murky darkness of soil and clay. The rain will stop, the weather will calm and she will be here.

Then if we are lucky there will be days of sunshine before the days of blood. I can feel her, I can feel her power. She is coming. I look at the rain, at the way it is falling, called from the sky for a fickle mistress. I want to pray but prayer has long since left me.

If this must be bloody, let it be short. Let the days of sunshine be long. Let the rain stop. Let there be calm. Before the storm. Because I can feel the power of the storm, of its attraction and I can tell, this one is more Boudica than Elizabeth and the ground that is soaked in mud, will dry and then at her whim, be soaked in blood.

If you like this, hit the button. I wrote it as prose, but am not sure it would not make a better poem. If I was going to write a novel, I think this is how I would start it.

And then I Flew

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

The beginning

I cling to the tree. A spindly, sparsely leafed whip of a thing that is no taller than me. I’m not sure I should call it a tree. It’s a cluster of gnarled branches with the odd bit of greenery. Its central stem only slightly thicker than the rest of it.

Its roots can’t go that deep. The top of this cliff is sand and dust and beneath it is the stone that is this edifice. The tree is the nearest growth to the cliff edge, a brave little soldier that clings on to life, much as I cling on to it. Sometimes I pour the remains of my water bottle on it. I like to think I am keeping it alive and not vice versa, or at the very least our relationship is symbiotic.

When I let go of this tree, there is nothing between me and the edge. I come here often. And I cling to the tree. I feel its papery bark sticking into my fingers. Sometimes I get splinters, small grey bits of  tree that I take home. I dig them out with a needle. Little specs of blood and bark intermingle on a tissue on a table in my lounge.  

I am scared of heights. Or edges, maybe edges.

Some people are scared of heights because they are afraid of falling, others because they are afraid they will jump. That last one has a name, that fear of jumping,  High Places Phenomenon.  Apparently its your brain misfiring, misinterpreting the signals, that’s the science stuff. In literature when its described, its more about freedom, about the void, about flying, about wanting to know how it feels. A few seconds of absolute freedom, of falling.  Its hard to describe why its so attractive as an idea.

That’s why I am here again clutching the spindly tree. I am back from the edge. I am not thinking of the landing, just wondering about the sensation, the feeling of those first seconds, milliseconds. How will that feel?  To just go over the edge, to know that sensation. I cannot control it, that urge, desire.  Not easily. So I hold the tree. I let myself imagine. Close my eyes. See it. Guess at the feeling.  But not too much. After a long time I let go of the tree. I turn around and I go home.  

I do not think it is healthy for me to live near here much longer.

The middle

I moved away. Down along the coast. Somewhere flat.  The highest rock on the beach, about 2 feet, most I could do was jump onto sand and sprain an ankle. I swam in the ocean. I drank in cutesy coffee shops. I had long lunches with friends. I held a job, bought a house. Years passed and I thought it was gone. That feeling in my belly. That thing I was never quite in control of.

And then one day I was swimming in that ocean, and I felt it. The lump. I thought a lot of things, and I thought of that again, of that sensation, of free falling. Of not ever knowing it, well at least not in a physical sense. There was a visceral sense of falling but not a physical one. I went for tests, there was a treatment plan. A diagnosis. A prognosis. A life, a future, curtailed but there behind the meds. Hope. And I went back to the ocean, to its coldness, to its salty embrace, to prepare, to deal with it all, to get my brain in gear.

But I knew. I knew the end.

The end

The day before treatment started. I packed up the car. I drove. After 20 years the old town looked different. I went to that car park, which was now much closer to the edge. They moved it, but my beloved little tree was still there. Not much taller, still spindly, still clinging on. I booked into the only hotel in town. I slept. At 6am I got up. And then before daylight came I drove back to the car park.

It was empty. I got out of the car. I took off my boots and socks. This was a bare foot trip. The car park was gravel so the first few steps were not pretty. After that it gave way to dust and sand.  I went beyond the barrier to the tree. That wondrous, spindly, spiky creature that had held me steadfast for so long. I high fived the warning sign as I went.

Danger beyond this point. It should have said freedom.

I grabbed that little tree like I had so many times before. I spoke to it softly. Remember me. And I’m sorry.  And there’s a lump, they say I will get better but I don’t want that. I asked it for forgiveness, like it was a God. And just to bear witness. I felt its bark dig into my hand. It had not changed in 20 years and deep inside I hadn’t changed that much either.

Then I looked into the sun that was emerging on the horizon. I peeled each finger off the tree. I stood beside it briefly. I didn’t scream or yell. I just ran. Only a few steps. I felt my feet pound into the ground. The dust being kicked up.  And then there was no more ground. And one foot felt the air and then the other foot.

And then I flew.

The Line

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Its us. And them. There is a line. Its been that way for awhile now. My mother talked of it. And after she was gone so did my father. Now I talk about it. To my children.

We watch from one side of the boundary. They feign ignorance on the other. But there is a line, there is even a physical line. Its a skinny strip of land with a muddy, dirty waterway running through it. The water way is artificial with a cement bottom. Shallow. It separates us from them.

We hardly ever cross it, traffic is mostly one way. I do go over sometimes. I look at them, clutching their phones, clutching, scrolling, scrolling, clutching, scrolling as if you can eat pictures. You cannot eat pictures. Or phones.

‘Hey, wanna buy a phone.’

‘No, I don’ wanna buy a phone.’

Its better if people don’t know about us. I’ve been offered a lot of phones. I know the value of a cow and it is not the value of a phone. A phone is not worth a packet of seeds, not a single seed for a phone.

They don’t say it out loud. They mutter it under their breath, AI, its AI, its AI that’s done it. Its not AI that’s done for you, it’s the system that’s done for you. I don’t say that out loud. The phone tells them otherwise. If they just got a new skill, if they were more positive, if they got rid of the toxic people, if they were thinner or had better hair. That phone that tells them all of that, but not how to live when there is no jobs and no money. Telling, telling, telling them it is all their fault.

It is a scrappy bit of land between us, unusable, plastic polluted, smelly. The cows won’t go near it. It takes courage to cross it. They come. As a last resort, to this place which looks lush yet frightening. The insects horrify them. The plants terrify them. They are stunned by how chickens actually look and smell. The chickens I own are layers, they are not picturesque. They are not on social media. They are chickens. We eat them.

It used to be the other way. We’d cross that scrappy bit of land, looking for jobs and education and money. How did it reverse, fall apart, how am I to know? I just hear their whispers, some days when many have lost their jobs simultaneously it’s a chant, AI, AI, its AI that’s done for us. But they cannot rage against something they cannot see for long and their phones tell them all the time, eat better, work out, feed your mind, up skill, down time, it is you that is the problem.

I had a phone once. I buried it in the sand a long time ago.

And so they come.

‘My designer trainers for a meal.’

Designer trainers are no use to me, they get muddy just the same.

‘Here, here is a tomato, enjoy it, it’s the first of the season, I will take one of your shoes and you can bring me the other tomorrow and you can trade for something else.’

I do try and be generous, but I cannot save them all.

They slink away in hunger, one shoe on and one shoe off. I think I am generous, perhaps it is humour. I do smile to myself at the one shoe on, one shoe off.  Perhaps it is cruelty, but I only have two feet. I often wear mismatched shoes. I don’t really like tomatoes.

They’re too frightened to fight. Then too hungry and then they are dead. The dogs. The dogs are a problem, the other side of the line.

There are some that still live well. Some small few. Or so I hear.

It has been this way for awhile now. It will be this way until the last phone flickers out. Not the end of the world but the end of any number of lives. Do not confuse the two things. It might be the end of the them but the ‘us’ are still here. The platitudes and clichés will pass, no more pastel painted plywood signs saying ‘Love’ will hang on walls. I am not living my best life. I am just living an ordinary one.  My advice to my children, the best that I can give, ‘learn to grow potatoes, keep your chickens near, start tomatoes off indoors, and when you milk the cow, side on, further from the front, closer to the rear.’  

Fisher woman

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Its common knowledge that you should not fish at the mouth of the river. I did it anyway. It’s how I ended up in the water, although the exact sequence of events is a mystery.

I thought I could swim. That was just the waves teasing me, tossing me back and forth as I lay submerged in the early morning surf. I was trying to gasp for air because I did not yet understand that my lungs were full of water. I wasn’t sure if I was dead. I felt I was mostly dead but not completely dead. Just a bit dead, if that makes any sense.

It was a flounder who told me to relax, really just a pair of eyes poking through the sand, the occasional flurry of shell flakes announcing a presence. I don’t remember hearing fish talk before.

‘Is this death?’ I didn’t ask that question out loud but I guess flounder are clever.

The flounder laughed a sort of raspy laugh, sand at the back of the throat I guess, ‘Not quite, this is near death.’

It wasn’t painful, I was just a little bit alive throughout my body. The flounder was gone.

I felt the next fish nibbling at my flesh. I wanted it to go away but I couldn’t say it. My mouth was salty and dry, but really my mouth was wide open and full of water. I couldn’t see the fish. I wanted to close my eyes. Because of the sand. I could smell the sand, it was in my nostrils.

The fish stopped nibbling and spoke.

‘Fish know a lot about death.’ The voice was deeper than I expected, ‘because we are often pulled into your gaseous atmosphere and suffer gill collapse’ (fish words not mine), ‘near death, close to death, dying, maybe dead, only to be plunged back into the water, still near death, still dying, and eventually dead even though we were meant to be saved.’

I always thought they survived. The fish I put back, I thought they just swam away.

I felt something bigger tugging at my leg. It was an octopus. I could hear my leg calling to me saying goodbye. I wanted it to stay. Fortunately the femur held, disjointed, unjointed but attached. I heard the high pitched giggling of the octopus, as if being able to keep your limbs in situ was a funny thing.

The sky was darkening, I had been rolling under the surf the whole day, dead, not quite dead, some bits dead, other bits not dead, talking to the fish.

In the darkness I felt air on my back. The waves had rolled me to the beach. I thought I could expel the water from my lungs and live again. I felt the tickle of a crab. Then another. And another. I wanted to laugh. I felt their pincers, expecting sharpness but instead soft, gentle, tickly tugs. My skin gave way. I was coming apart, finally I was coming apart and the fish would be quiet again.

Yesterday

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

He calls from far away
To find out if I’m Ok

Ok?

We left ok behind some time ago
Have you seen the numbers here

His voice just fades away

He talks about the weather
His getting worse, mine getting better

He is just a noise in the background now

He’s read bout viral load
And treatment, maybe cure

No one mentions vaccines anymore

There is just the stunned silence of reality

Immune systems, vitamins

Have you been working out?
Hope you’re well, All good here
Meaningless words,
All tinged with fear

I breathe in, I breathe out

I breathe in, I breathe out

Breathing is in itself,

An act of joy,

Of hope

There are things I want to say

A long lost explanation
About why I went away

I have lived out in the world

I am not sorry for it

It was a choice I made

There is silence on the line

Then he talks of the economy
I try and pretend I care

I look at my nails,

Twiddle my fingers in my hair

I no longer lie awake at night
And think of him
The night is full of horrors
I know that I can’t share
He wants to know if I’m ok
I can’t think of the words to say
The pain of thousands dead
Will never go away

The pain it is unbearable

Intangible

Yet palpable

We are all scarred forever

We will wear it like a mark

For all eternity

They will talk of us in whispers

Stare when we come in the room

I know he’ll call again
And it will still be all too soon
Because we are worlds away
Yet I haven’t got the words to say

Something moved me on

And us, me, we,

That was yesterday

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Faces in the darkness

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I try and make out

Faces in the darkness

The ones we’ve lost

They haunt my sleep

But they aren’t there

I toss, I turn

There is no peace

We struggle on

Beneath the creep

Of slow guilt

Of relentless pain

Of all those we lost

For no reason we can easily explain

I drift through the house

Worried about flour and soap

There’s a world out there

Where there’s little hope

I can’t seem to grasp

The enormity

Of a world that shut down

In a kind of uniformity

We are one together

Yet hopelessly divided

Fed and unfed

Those home schooled

and those denied it

I must be contributing

In ways I don’t know

To this division of lock down

Into those who have

And those who have no

I sit in the bath

Crying fake tears

Because the ones that I love

Are safe and held dear

What do I know of the grief and the pain

I sat here through lockdown

Slightly worse when it rained

I look into the darkness

In the dead of night

Try to make out there faces

Understand their plight

But it eludes me and

Shames me

It stands just out of sight

I am very lucky

But it does not sit right

 

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On the inside, there’s rain

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I sit here
Resolute
A sofa soldier
Ideas out there
I can’t refute
A sober new reality
I can’t compute

Umbrella sales are down

I flop, I flip
I flip, flip flop
Its like a dance
And I can’t stop
Inside my head
Once pink, once blue
Now purple thoughts too

Umbrella sales have crashed

I don’t understand
How it came
It wasn’t in my plan
I live on crisps and cake
Thinking,
Maybe even I should bake
Because we can’t go outside
An unintended consequence
I must have looked askance
I can’t find a way to reference

I have put my umbrella away

We look forward to Sundays
Because the numbers are low
But the truth is we’re scared
And there’s nowhere to go
We call them saints
But among them are sinners
We cloak it in war
We want to be winners

I want it to rain

But the numbers are big
It’s a truth we all know
Stuck here in lockdown
Life seems to go

Slow

But somewhere out there
Is horror

Words can’t describe
And we here in solitude
We stay inside
Left to imagine
A truth to behold
Its taken our poor,
Our vulnerable, our old

I wear my raincoat on the couch

We think we’re important
But we ‘re small, we’re minute
Insignificant, irrelevant
A truth
Somehow we all know
But we’re not machines
The numbers they scare us
They haunt us and dare us
They’ve stolen our sleep

I pull up my hood to cover my face

Because the truth is a lie
We don’t all get to die
Injustice is rife
We made up this life
We must never forget
Surrounded by death
The ones who fell here
Those were the ones
We failed to hold dear

There is silence in guilt

And guilt in our silence
No pitter, no pat
On the glass or the roof
No rainbow that glows
As if we needed proof
Here in the house
Is the truth we all know
When we look outside
And there’s nowhere to go
Out through the window
Through its bitter clean pane
Its bright and sunny outside

Here on the inside, there’s rain

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A different day

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Here we are
In that moment
Where what matters
Is your ability
To distil
The past from the present
To recognise what is gone
And what is here
To understand
Change
All change
Is not about what goes on in your head
You can’t wake up tomorrow
Full of positivity
And turn it back
You need to glance into the sun
Squint your eyes
And see the world ahead
Because what was yesterday
Is gone
Buried and dead
All the days merge into one
Time is spinning around us
Like a vortex
There are things going on
Outside, inside
That no one can see
The hours toss and turn
The minutes spurn us
As they linger here
And here it is
Later than it should be
Earlier than it could be
Skipping forward
Whilst we try and pedal back
But the past is gone
We didn’t even close our eyes
We only looked away
It ran off
Left us here
And we have to find
A pathway forward
To a different day

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The gilded lights of the golden age

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

To the gilded lights
Of the golden age
We miss you now
Now you’ve gone away

To every change
A silver lining
Life goes on
Despite the dying

Maybe its obscured
And we can’t see it yet
But the world it changed
And we must not regret

When things were plenty
And life was fun
The time we spent
Living in the sun

That time is over now
That course is run
Life moved on
Its said and done

The sun still shines
I cower in the light
I welcome change
From day to night

Because change
Change is all this really is
My heart beats on
I choose to live