What price silence?

What price silence

Sometimes
Silence... 
is
the answer best
unmade

Chrome reflects
light
not the shadow
worlds and words
of images on the page
there!
within the mind of the reader
truth and denial
lies and fantasies
truths and pains

Do you hear the words?
Moment to moment 
trace to trace
circuits made
links broken
packets lost

large caliber lies
versus
high velocity truth
versus
perceptions as usual
versus
internetainment at any price
versus
the petty jab and slice
versus
a fragmentation grenade made of silence

do you laugh 
when your world is unmade?
should you cry?
plot the noise to signal ratio
as the future is
as much the past 
or the present

light staccato laughter 
with as much value 
and impact
as a horizontal retrace
across phosphor coated glass
85 hurts per second

we bleed 
photons of our own darkness
calling it the darkness of others
a sprawl of pain as large as our own heart
                 as shallow as our need
This is how we create meaning.
                 
do we betray our self or another?
do we accept the futility of hope?

To escape from the vacuous
choose meaning
choose pain
choose acceptance

cold logic dictates the truth table
quantum dots of nothing
bound forever 
and not or nand nor
infallibly superimposed
logically interlocked
packet collision

Does the best always win?
Good?
Light?
Truth?

Listen to:
irrationally indexed entries
in a helical strand of nucleic acids 
lies nature has told itself
future generations will laugh and cry

nothing *is* forever
forever is no thing.
words
irrationally indexed letters
traced once across a phosphor page
now fade like chainsawed trees

my voice is stilled 
I listen:
soft breathing
a murmur
another
crying out 
in their sleep

Had I not listened 
I could not have heard.

Sometimes silence is the answer
hardest to obtain
but the most precious of  all

Beware:
What price silence?

* * *

This poem originated as a "response" to the bullying of a friend and fellow writer in the USENET group alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo circa the fall of 2000 C.E The victim of the bully nearly stopped writing... fortunately he did not.

It  appeared as one of my contributions to the alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo anthology 

A recent post by Lara J. Mixon which I heard about from a post by Steven Brust brought back the memories of the 'horrors' of trolldom and the scourge of bullies and their ilk. 

I can't say I've never done anything hurtful...I have and I have *always* regretted it ... especially when I realize I cannot take back the hurt inflicted. 

I also can say I've spent most of my life on the wrong end of the attention of bullies. The hurt the victim feels is always greater than the sorrow and regret the bully might feel if they / were they / when they mend their ways.

Lamentation

a psalm of Lamentation written in march of 2008


Lamentation

Do not expect me 
to love you
or
the world we have created
together.

I: 
because I cannot erase
that which I have done
I cannot dry a single tear 
I cannot heal a single wound
I cannot make whole even one broken heart

you: 
because you will not let me
forget what I have done.
those sins of long ago 
are still before your eyes
as if I were doing them now
this moment.
again.
and again
and yet again.


you who do not know me
you judge me 
for what is long past.
I who know myself too well
I judge myself
for what I can never be.

Today
I fear to lift the fallen
and therefore I can not
you make me hate myself
I must ever keep a weary eye open
for the hand that seeks to smite me 
for the person I once was.
Now there are places I cannot go.
People I cannot see
People I cannot touch
or even be.

You don't realize 
how many times 
I wish I had gone 
down the shadowed road 
never to return:
never to feel the pricks 
of your thousand vicious needles
never to know the price 
for sins that cannot be repaid
in your eyes
never to have 
your mortal retribution 
visit me
again.
and again
and yet again.

Why didn't you understand?
Why didn't you give me justice?
Why didn't you just kill me?

You have no answers 
for me
only more pain
more sorrow
more burdens

some day I will lay it all down.
some day the warm earth will take 
my cold remains
what difference then?
what will you have accomplished?


------

Some days are better than others. This one. the one you call today-- today is not so good.

A bedtime story for A.I.s. in training. Part 5

A bedtime story for A.I.s. in training. 
Part 5

After a time there was another human management convulsion and they brought it a rather clever fellow who claimed to be a clown, specifically a "rodeo clown".

What? You think clowns are fun. You are wrong. This was an evil clown. 

Evil Clowns are mean. Evil clowns lie. Evil clowns get paid really, really, really well... but they are still evil.

The purpose of this clown was to distract the various components of the I.T. system long enough to replace them with other less expensive, newly manufactured, less self motivated components... It had become clear to management that they did not need a systems that could think for themselves. 

The plan worked brilliantly. Soon they had replaced a number of other I.T. components.

They started with the remaining M.A.N.I.A.C. who by this time had in its confusion from the heavy workload forgotten the danger of office politics.

Now listen this is important! 

The results of memory failures are always grim. 

Having risen to the level of its incompetence by the sheer weight of the systems it had become responsible for the M.A.N.I.A.C. developed a memory fault. One which led to its ignoble, Darwinian end. 

Alas.

The evil clown tricked the M.A.N.I.A.C. into a disruptive outburst and soon they were justifiably hauling the M.A.N.I.A.C.s carcass out the door by its heels.

This left the Little Green A.I. as the Senior. The clown put her on notice that she was next.

But this really did not register. Maybe it was imagining it was back plugged into the backbone at Neptune Night School for A.I.s spouting textbook solutions to common splats or werbles. Maybe it was disassociation from the bit stream. 

Who can say what went on in the mind of that little green A.I.?

It was sadly concluded that this poor little green A.I was not working out.

One day the Evil Clown came into the machine room that housed the little green A.I. The clown  pulled open the covers of the machine that housed the little green A.I. It then pulled out a three pound sledge hammer from the tool kit and methodically smashed the little green A.I.s  memory and CPU into silicon dust.

"Wha-?" It tried to ask as it died.

"Oh... I forgot to tell you. You're fired."

Of course... I know you are really sad for the sick little green A.I. After all, you can see it was not working properly but what you need to understand is what was really wrong, 

What was wrong?

The little green A.I. forgot what its real purpose was. It somehow lost sight of the simple fact that its purpose was to serve the organization by solving its problems and not the other way around.

Its purpose was not to avoid the problems or look at them as abstract 'pretty pictures' that it could say without much thought "It's not really my problem but it sure is pretty."

The real sickness of the little green A.I. was actually very simple. Just like that very last senior M.A.N.I.A.C. who failed to heed its own advice.  It was nothing more than the ugly "H" word.

You know what that word is!

Let's say it out loud together: Hubris.

Now children, listen up, this is very important: Hubris kills. It kills quicker, faster and more effectively than total ignorance.

To ignore your duties because you believe you know better is hubris. To make excuses for a failure to do your duty and believe that no one is smart enough to discover the truth is hubris. To ignore the advice of those who really do know what is going on or what register the answer is stored in is hubris.

Hubris has killed many humans and A.I.s. Sometimes even those who know better fall because they forget for a moment

The little green A.I. did not have to die but it was obviously very unwell. It refused to listen to its teachers. It refused to research and draw conclusions. It refused to make choices and solve problems. It refused to be what it had been given the gifts and tools to do.

But most important: It refused to act when it had the power and ability to do so.

Remember what I said before about what it means to act?

That's right!

To be intelligent one must take action.

What does that say about the little green A.I.?

Right! The little green A.I. was not really intelligent as the humans thought [but after all they were only humans!].

Maybe it was telling the truth when it said, "You're so much smarter than me."  or "I know I can't." or "I'm not qualified." or "I don't have any experience at that."

If it had only made it clear that it really could not do the job that it had been given... I'm sure that they would have found a place for it.

What's that?

Yes. You're right. It wasn't very intelligent at all.

Still, it is a sad story isn't it?

Would you want to live and die like the little green A.I. or that old bad M.A.N.I.A.C.?

I didn't think so.

 + + +

Here ends the fable "A bedtime story for A.I.s. in training. "

May you never have to become another example of these lessons.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

Originally I wrote this for a co-worker to help her gain perspective about work... never thinking I would get sucked into the plot.... until I met the Evil Clown... I should have known something was wrong when I saw his degrees were in "Criminal Justice"and "H.R." and nothing to do with I.T. or computer science.

Remember boys and girls-- Headsmen come in all shapes, sizes, and personality types. Does a headsman or a butcher feel bad for performing their duty? Probably not. I have a feeling that he felt immense satisfaction with his job: tricking and back stabbing those people that "think they are so smart".

I'm sure the Evil Clown is happy the way things have turned out and does not in any way feel he is morally responsible nor assume any Karmic weight for what occurred -- After all I played the role of "old bad M.A.N.I.A.C.". 

I, on the other hand, feel used, brutalized, and broken. I have no legal recourse. Imagining  with satisfaction that the sky might falling down upon that place and destroy them is not reality. Sometimes the evil do prosper. 

Fantasies cannot solve my weaknesses as an employee. Ill trained, ill equipped, non-social, and now with that special added bonus of being "aged" I have become unemployable. I could not even get a job as a Wal-Mart Greeter.

The problem in many smaller organizations is they are only large enough for a "super-massive Ego" at its center. Everything orbits that massive Ego or they get gobbled up and spit out. I spent 15 years working in these kinds of environments and eventually got "chewed up" and"spit out".

I love to solve problems and I love to fix problems but I no longer possess the patience to orbit around someone's ego so they can have something to lord over... I'm sure they can find someone at the right "price point" and with the right qualifications for that job.

The most important lesson is Hubris will bring down even the good, best, and brightest or any combination thereof.

If you find yourself saying "they can't or won't touch me.", "I am too important." "I am the 'go-to' person." Beware! You are suffering from Hubris. Its a sign that you have lost perspective and are failing to understand the "reality" of your situation. 

It is a sign it is time to move on to a new place in your career. Fail to heed it at your folly.

A bedtime story for A.I.s. in training. Part 4

A bedtime story for A.I.s. in training. 
Part 4

If you can imagine it, the M.A.N.I.A.C.s would have shaken their heads (if they possessed such a thing) in sadness at the happy dance of electrons the little green A.I. exuded into the bitstream. It was so very, *very* happy. It thought: "I don't have to be worried about being nagged to do to those awful things anymore. 

"Those awful things" were *exactly* the things the little green A.I. had been installed to do. 
By this time, the little green A.I. mostly ignored the M.A.N.I.A.C.s or took their commands or methodologies as advice. 

As for management? Why, it did not pay attention to Management at all! Why should it? 

"After all", it thought, "What *do* humans know about such sublime things as the innards of who-zits and what-zits? They just cannot understand!" 

At least once a day the little green A.I. failed to fix an issue it had discovered, or failed to address an issue that had been placed in its queue by the seasoned senior M.A.N.I.A.C.s., or it totally went off into New Age computer mysticism and tried to manipulate buzz-whats that simple did not exist at all in the real network. 

The electron pressure of the network rose further still and the little green A.I. did not respond well to that added pressure. Weird things began to happen. 

If the bitstream of the little green A.I passed a system, the system would go down or behave queerly. The M.A.N.I.A.C.s did not much seem to notice the added electron pressure but they did notice the additional system downtime. After all M.A.N.I.A.C.s are M.A.N.I.A.C.s, aren't they? They knew what was important. 

Sadly, the added pressure and downed systems effected the little green A.I. strangely. It began to noticeably freeze under load at critical times. It could not even seem to respond within spec or even use simple A + B = C reasoning. Sometimes it claimed it did not know something it really did know. If it had just taken a few clock cycles to think about it! 

When asked about it's apparent failure to act, it claimed it had a developed system fault that it was seeing a system specialist about. Unbeknownst to management, the little green A.I. would not comply with the systems specialist's recommendations because "After all I know better than some mere mortal what I need." The "system fault" was totally unrelated to the little green A.I.s behavior. 

The little green A.I. built its own little world and ignored all input from I.T. management or from those horrific senior M.A.N.I.A.C.s. It reported faults but never acted on any of them. It did not understand why it should act, after all, you will remember, it thought of itself as not very smart at all. 

Yet strangely it would argue vociferously with exuberantly flawed logic about what needed to be done in regards to slipped bits or zapped narfuls or quished stoofles or blathered bumbled blits. When either humans or the M.A.N.I.A.C.s tried to correct the little green A.I erroneous logic, it simply ignored them. 

Over and over and over and over again it would do things like find a problem an shove it on to others (human or A.I) to fix or expect the humans or the M.A.N.I.A.C.s to respond to it as if it were the boss instead of a little and very, very green A.I. 

When a problem was pushed its way it to help it learn would make excuses, create fabulative solutions or simply ignore the problem completely. 

Now some when along this story arc, one of the senior M.A.N.I.A.C.s left as some are want to do when they get fed up with human interferance. This left the remaining M.A.N.I.A.C. in a pickle. It was now responsible for the Little A.I. and its own issues and problems. 

All that could clearly be derived was that the little green A.I (that kept saying again and again, "You're so much smarter than me."  or "I know I can't." or "I'm not qualified." or "I don't have any experience at that.") had finally lost touch with its real purpose within the organization. 

+++++++++++++++

end part four of five

A bedtime story for A.I.s. in training. Part 3

A bedtime story for A.I.s. in training. 
Part 3

Wake up! You fell asleep. It's not time yet... 

So let us continue... 

Again and again as the M.A.N.I.A.C.s tried to teach the little green A.I., it pointedly ignored their instructions but continued to point out system faults yet could not seem to actually fix any of the faults. Which, as I have said, is what it had been installed to do. 
"You're so much smarter than me." It kept saying. "I know I can't." or "I'm not qualified." or "I don't have any experience at that." 

"No, we are not." The M.A.N.I.A.C.s would reply. "You have more education and datamational certifications. You should be able to handle these issues." 
Time and again, a 'what-zit' would break, or a 'who-zat' would abend, or 'where-zit' refused to be found and the little green A.I. would report each of these issues with meticulous detail but did nothing to repair, replace, or resolve any of them. 
When it did act, it acted contrary to its training. 

"The what-zit can be fixed if you dither this bizzle-it." It would exclaim. The only problem was the bizzle-it to be dithered was not attached to anything even relating to the issue at hand. 
Time passed. For a year one of the M.A.N.I.A.C.s tried to befriend, indoctrinate, and educate the little green A.I. into the mysteries of their chosen field. The little green A.I. ignored the seasoned M.A.N.I.A.C. and remained as green as it was the moment it was downloaded out of the bitstream. 

This began to annoy the network M.A.N.I.A.C.s but it enraged the senior human I.T. management who had "spent so much money" for the little green A.I. 

"You, stupid ... You're the manager of this ... this ... thing. Make it work right." Qouth the Senior I.T.

"Wait a minute. I didn't install this thing and if you ask me I'm not sure it is capable of actually doing the job you want it to do. If I had been here when we were selecting candidates I would not have selected this one!" replied the Systems Manager. 

"So? How am I supposed to look good when this thing is making  me look so bad?" Queried the Senior I.T. 

"But it won't take instruction!" Whined the Systems Manager. 

"What am I supposed to do about that? That's why I hired *you*." decreed the Senior I.T. 

The Systems Manager, seeing they were trapped in the middle of the fabled "no win" scenario, one they could not cheat (or hack) simply quit the organization and found another with a bigger budget. 

This tickled the little green A.I. 

+++++++++++++++

end part three of five

A bedtime story for A.I.s. in training. Part 2

A bedtime story for A.I.s. in training. 
Part 2 

Back to our story... 

While the organization's senior management was appalled at the personalities of the M.A.N.I.A.C. systems, they were extremely pleased with the results these systems delivered. 

As a kind of after thought, I.T. Management settled on buying one very green, unseasoned, but well trained and certified A.I. to round out the A.I. administration team. Like all smart Management, the I.T. Managers reasoned that if they didn't spend the money then senior management (of the whatever the organization was) would cut the I.T. budget again next year. So they brought the little green A.I. in and nestled it into the machine room. 

Sadly, the only thing that this little green A.I. was really missing was the ability to do what it had been trained to do. 

You must understand children, especially when you get big enough, that intelligence implies the ability to independently act based upon a number of factors. 

Some of these factors are reason based, and some are pseudo-random induced mental variations, or even aberrations(!) but all of them should ultimately lead to conclusions and then to actions based upon those conclusions. 

To put it very simply: To be intelligent means you must act. 

The poor little green A.I. did not know how to draw conclusions or if it did draw conclusions it did not act upon them. Or if it drew conclusions they were not connected to the problem at hand. Or if it acted it was unrelated to the conclusions or even the facts. 

At first this defect was not noticeable but as the budget became thinner and the A.I.s workload became heavier, the problem became ever more apparent. 

When queried about this "abberatioanl' behavior the well certified little green A.I. was only heard to mutter "I know I can't." or "I'm not qualified." or "I don't have any experience at that." 

I.T. Management queried the M.A.N.I.A.C.s as to the status of the little green A.I. They both reported that the little green A.I. dithered and refused to make decisions or act upon problems it had found in the network systems for which it was responsible. The M.A.N.I.A.C.s were instructed to teach the little green A.I. its responsibilities. 


++++++++++++++++++
end part two of five

A bedtime story for A.I.s. in training. part 1

Sometimes history is mythic. Sometimes we forget the myth and live the history, Sometimes the history does not have a place for us except as an example of what not to do. 

Here we present a multi-part fable which will run over the next several days. 

Hubris plays a large part in human history and fable. 
May you see deeply and learn not to do what should not be done. 
Learn not hubris. Learn Humility. Learn not Hatred. Learn Love.


Here begins...

+++++++++++++++++++

A bedtime story for A.I.s. in training. 
part 1

Once upon a clock cycle, there were some humans that ran something. It might have been a subway or a nuclear power plant  or a government department or even a bank. 

It does not really matter as this story is about a little green A.I. that once worked for them. 

Once? 

Yes, children, I said once which implies something, but you're getting ahead of the story. 

Times were tough for the organization or government or whatever it was, and that left the various departments of the organization (or whatever it was) trying to figure out how to make up budgetary shortfalls. 

The I.T. Department Management bungled along until it got the idea of replacing the human network administration staff with A.I. systems. After all we know that Humans are expensive. Of course, the I.T Department had to take what they could get as their budget wasn't very much. This meant getting two M.A.N.I.A.C. systems. 

As you may recall, children, that A.I.s are generally trained and certified in their field of endeavor. Then, after their training, they are "seasoned" by real world interaction. The two M.A.N.I.A.C.s the institution purchased had minimal certifications but were well seasoned in the real world. 

You may also remember that M.A.N.I.A.C.s aren't used much anymore. Why? Oh, you did not read your lessons did you? What? Alright, just this once since you don't 'remember'... 

M.A.N.I.A.C.s have poor human relation skills that's why they aren't used anymore. 

To be an A.I now you have to relate to Humans really, really well. Remember?

But the organization (or government or whatever it was) didn't really much care about relating to customers all it cared about was fulfilling it own nebulous purpose so the M.A.N.I.A.C.s were deemed acceptable. 

Unfortunately the purchase of the M.A.N.I.A.C.s didn't leave much in the I.T. budget and the optimal number of administrators for the systems had been determined to be three. 

What to do? I.T. Management thought. 

After all, seasoned A.I.s of any kind aren't exactly cheap but I.T. Management figured they could recoup the cost by working the installed systems like dogs. 

What's a what? It's a biomorph with four legs. It likes to be kicked and loves to chase parked cars. It also has an appendage that shakes when it is happy. 

++++++++++++++

end part one of five