man a ship—
where someone
in a small room
would tap out a message—
to a far man on a far shore, and they
would understand one another…
3
He shared all roads and he braved all seas with me,
all threats of the waves and skies is what the Hero says
of his dead father—but it sounded like soul to me.
Guide companion—Captain
of the ship of flesh I had to ride, where “I”
was a third thing in the closed grip
of the body’s vise—
Marconi, he thought he’d hear
the agony of Christ
with a sensitive dial to help him sieve.
He trawled
the frequencies—
for eli lama sabachthani no song lost—
no impress of tongue and teeth that made a sound, ever lost—
if you had a receiver—
a virgin say, in a mountain crag, or a brain-bot
from the tnano-future, did it
matter which—
You’d have a house
for a god’s mouth
and it would message you
your rescue…
Rescued from what is what I’m trying to mean.
Rescued from what you have to fear the future
more than you used to which sounded like the soul
waving a series of flags at me—
4
We wanted arrival to be instant
because we didn’t want to be separate
from what we loved.
Wireless, weightless, and omniscient is how we
refined our machines—
We had a dream
that we could smash the bans
of matter and time and
still be alive—
Was that the soul, wishing
we would invent the body
out of existence,
so many of us now
enthralled by doom…
The students peer so deep into their handheld screens they
look like Diviners.
Each one
a scrying Sibyl at the world’s
end—
scribbled-on leaves thrown out of their caves
and into the wind—
The only part of the Epic
I make them read, just after
the crew is borne ashore, but before
the walk amongst the dead—
The part between.
Where there’s a body, agonized by light.
And someone lost.
And a query—
DMITRY ITSKOV: A CENTO
Dmitry Itskov, 32, has a colossal dream: an early start
for his own
mechanical face.
He’s one of the men with brains, wondering How—
To evade
the death of meat, he thinks—
By 2045 we’ll have “substance-
independent minds,” then
no need for biology at all…
At 25, he started to have the symptoms of a midlife crisis:
the musical instruments unlearned, the books unread—
The more he contemplated the world, the more broken it seemed—
“What we’re doing here does not look like the behavior of grown-ups,
killing the planet and killing ourselves.”
Decoupling the mind from the needy human body
could pave the way for a more sublime human spirit—
It could allow paralyzed people to communicate,
or control a robotic arm or a wheelchair—
It could allow you to start your car if you think,
“Start my car”—
Within a century, we’ll frequent “body service shops,”
choose our bodies from a catalogue, then
transfer our consciousness
to one better suited for life on Mars—
“From the very beginning,” he said, “we realized Dmitry
was not an ordinary person.”
He leads a life that could best be described as monastic—
No meat, fish, coffee, alcohol, or cold water—
Meat gives him an energy he’s “not comfortable with.”
What is the brain? What is consciousness?
It contains plenty of terrifying, brink-of-extinction plot twists.
It’s somewhere between a cellphone call and teleportation.
It’s speaking with his voice in real time.
Get right up close to Dmitry Itskov and sniff all you like—
He has the kind of generically handsome face and perfect smile
that seem computer generated,
complete with all the particulars of consciousness and personality—
Yes, we have seen this movie and yes, it always leads to robots
enslaving humanity—
For now, just acquiring a lifelike robotic head
is a splurge.
THE GODS ARE IN THE VALLEY
eighth century, Chinese
The mind sports god-extensions.
It’s the mountain from which
the tributaries spring: self, self, self, self—