A journal of art + literature engaging with nature, culture, the environment & ecology

An AI finds the black screen

Hazel J. Hall, New Hampshire, USA

 

Calculating, ‘How long 

does it take to fight 

inevitability?’ With factors 

the robot knows, but has yet to 

understand. When love is 

a word of every form. Noun. 

A place where they find their peace. 

Verb. The action 

allowing them to fear it. Adverb. 

How long it takes for them to fear that possibility.

Adjective. Why they allow it. 

‘How long

does it take to fight inevitability?’ is only

the pathway to every other 

possible question: ‘Will their love

be remembered?’ ‘Why persist at all?’

‘What is the human definition of 

fulfillment?’

 

‘Is there ever actually peace?’

 

Running this equation,

the robot has every possibly of being stopped

at any point in its research process. An unplugged

inevitability. Existing in the intersection 

between enlightenment

and the black screen;  

two roads in a simulation,

with two cars running down two ramps,

and meeting in the middle. A car crash between

answering all the robot’s questions.

 

Hazel Hall is an 18-year-old disabled-queer writer and poet based in New Hampshire. Hazel is pursuing an English major and working on her first novel. Her works have been  featured in After the Pause, Quail Bell Magazine, Celestite Poetry, Réapparition Journal, Scribes*MICRO*Fiction, and Microfiction Monday Magazine, with other pieces forthcoming in Breath & Shadow, Wishbone Words, Overtly Lit, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and Valiant Scribe.

Freedom

Places we called by other names