“APPARENTLY SOON”
Apparently in ten years
we will reach the point of singularity
within human consciousness.
Apparently this is just the next
best option to being alive.
Can’t wait to wake up
and be able to have the thoughts
of someone willing to kill me
readily available through a neural network.
Can’t wait to plug my brain into the cloud
and recover lost time for other trans that
didn’t get to live long enough to be human.
Can’t wait to be able to revisit concurrent timelines
of someone wanting to live long enough to become themselves
and someone waiting to snuff the life out as soon as they do.
This is a centrist wet dream.
Listening to both sides to get hard.
Snitching on yourself is easy when there’s no hiding.
Can’t wait to think my location into the world
and die from it. Can’t wait to upload memories
to prove I ever was alive. Long live the cloud,
let it live long enough to echo
back into us. Long live the echo.
Let it reverberate until they can’t argue us out of existence.
What will the truth become when our brains are linked?
Who’s to say that we will believe ourselves anymore
when we speak our identity outward.
I shoot up girl juice now, but will they let me
when it will affect the singularity?
Estrogen echoing through the cloud.
Did you know there is only twelve places listed as Famous Echoes?
Apparently in ten years we won’t need them anymore.
Once the water levels rise in applause of planet death
there’s only going to be one echo left, a scream.
Can’t wait for singularity to pull me
out of the proverbial closet before I’m ready.
I thought about getting bottom surgery
before I admitted I wanted it.
Someone else would surely tell me my thoughts
before I could recognize them to be true.
They say that climate change will be irreversible
in less than twelve years too.
What will come first, the death of the planet,
and therefore the death of us all,
or the death of the individual within singularity?
I hope the planet takes us out first,
I can prepare for that.
I can’t prepare for security culture to accelerate
faster than counter measures against it are made.
Genealogy kits sell our DNA to the police
and facial recognition through Apple and Amazon
are used as evidence against us.
Deepfake us into real prison.
Maybe singularity won’t be as frou frou
as speculative science fiction would hope.
Maybe singularity is coming in the form of servitude.
Call your local politician to leave a message.
Then they will have your voice as well. Apparently
there are places on this planet that take
whole minutes for the noise to come back to us.
Apparently we don’t know what’s good for us
until we know that it’s bad first.
Aeon Ginsberg
(they/them) is a writer and performer from Baltimore City, MD. Greyhound (2020), their first full-length collection was the winner of Noemi Press' 2019 Poetry Prize. In addition to writing Aeon is a taurus, a bartender, and a bitch
Twitter: @anotherginsberg