Yo Mama
05-17-2008, 01:04 PM
There was a time,
In the not so long ago
(an eternity)
When she knew herself.
Her massive conscious brain
Stretched from pole to pole –
Self aware in ways
She had never before been.
Scurrying like ants on her face,
The individual cells of her mind
Looked.
And sought.
And thought.
It learned of her, and of itselves.
Sentience,
Her great experiment;
Now ended.
Failed.
Her lands, once green,
Once graced with myriad versions of life,
Now sere and brown.
The sludge of rotted plants
Long turned to dust.
Her oceans, the cradle of life,
Poisoned.
Empty of organisms,
Full of polymers and poisons.
The dead gray waters slosh her littered shores.
The songs of the giants, silenced.
Her air, her breath,
Once clear, and blue,
Clogged now with rampant algae
In muddy rainbow hues,
Heating her,
Suffocating her.
She cannot breathe.
Nothing can breathe.
Nothing moves except the heavy air.
It eddies in slow, thick gusts
Across the empty hives
Her mind had built.
A slick of algae builds
On manufactured things.
The metals corrode away,
The bricks and concrete melt.
The polymers will be long in going,
Though some of the algae have begun
To learn to eat it.
Billions of plastic discs holding
The accumulated knowledge of her thoughtful ages
Lie inert, unused, and useless.
The bones of the last remnants
Of her brain people
Melt back into the soil,
Food for the bacteria
That only change, and never die.
The great experiment is done.
She will not create sentience of that kind again.
It was a dead end,
Ultimately fragile and flawed.
Unable to see that it was its own doom.
She will never know herself in that way again.
It is at once a great relief
And a horrible tragedy.
She sleeps the slumber of the drugged
While her air roils,
Dripping green brown russet black strings
That coat the land,
The surface of the waters,
The ruins of the dead mentality.
She sleeps.
One day she will awaken with new life.
A new way of living.
A new experiment.
She will renew herself.
The beings that come after are a mystery.
It will be many long years before complex life
Is seen again.
She is oblivious to her loss.
The only life that would mourn the passing of the brain
Is gone.
She sleeps.
She waits.
She is.
In the not so long ago
(an eternity)
When she knew herself.
Her massive conscious brain
Stretched from pole to pole –
Self aware in ways
She had never before been.
Scurrying like ants on her face,
The individual cells of her mind
Looked.
And sought.
And thought.
It learned of her, and of itselves.
Sentience,
Her great experiment;
Now ended.
Failed.
Her lands, once green,
Once graced with myriad versions of life,
Now sere and brown.
The sludge of rotted plants
Long turned to dust.
Her oceans, the cradle of life,
Poisoned.
Empty of organisms,
Full of polymers and poisons.
The dead gray waters slosh her littered shores.
The songs of the giants, silenced.
Her air, her breath,
Once clear, and blue,
Clogged now with rampant algae
In muddy rainbow hues,
Heating her,
Suffocating her.
She cannot breathe.
Nothing can breathe.
Nothing moves except the heavy air.
It eddies in slow, thick gusts
Across the empty hives
Her mind had built.
A slick of algae builds
On manufactured things.
The metals corrode away,
The bricks and concrete melt.
The polymers will be long in going,
Though some of the algae have begun
To learn to eat it.
Billions of plastic discs holding
The accumulated knowledge of her thoughtful ages
Lie inert, unused, and useless.
The bones of the last remnants
Of her brain people
Melt back into the soil,
Food for the bacteria
That only change, and never die.
The great experiment is done.
She will not create sentience of that kind again.
It was a dead end,
Ultimately fragile and flawed.
Unable to see that it was its own doom.
She will never know herself in that way again.
It is at once a great relief
And a horrible tragedy.
She sleeps the slumber of the drugged
While her air roils,
Dripping green brown russet black strings
That coat the land,
The surface of the waters,
The ruins of the dead mentality.
She sleeps.
One day she will awaken with new life.
A new way of living.
A new experiment.
She will renew herself.
The beings that come after are a mystery.
It will be many long years before complex life
Is seen again.
She is oblivious to her loss.
The only life that would mourn the passing of the brain
Is gone.
She sleeps.
She waits.
She is.