Sunday, March 1, 2020

Nils Geylen - Stress Bot Crash Test Subroutine


Nils Geylen was raised between the arctic and the equator and currently stuck in Belgium. He works in literary inclusion and literacy promotion. His creative writing currently investigates topics such as human and machine behavior and the oppressive qualities of culture and history. He is interested in the illegible and or the incomprehensible. Faced with the limitations of print, he prefers online journals and is always looking to escape the lexical, phrasal or narrative constraints of writing in favor of a more experiential delivery.



***

Stress Bot Crash Test Subroutine 




O THERMOCOCCUS GAMMATOLERANS, irradiated
you are the sustainable survivor in this crusty soil. It’s
hot today, so hot today, but look : tissue ——
isn’t lacking in this lopsided landscape, these lifeforms
in their broad swollen skins still
unscathed while body in body lies
embedded, bodiless.

/STOP/ TURN 90°
/INSET/

And then a spike in brain activity, my ancient
self shrouded in thoughts, perhaps impossible
in their existence, still sits unfitting. My coastline
slips out of the atlas here, my obliterated
Costa Delicada with its souvenirs, scarrings
of diphtheria, cholera and refined
slavery —we still had that. A sort
of eyes in a sort of status, that what
remains in a discarded disaster zone, a dead
peel, it’s not breathing, it’s not breathing, calm.

/STOP/ CALM
/TRASH/
TURN 60° ZOOM
STRESS BOT clicks the TRASH icon, clicks
DELETE

If ranks exist here! If this uniform is a sign
of hierarchy! Even then nought remains clear to nought.
Only this : it is an inner existence, as
unsubstantiated
the drift how sophisticated the
self-created NATURE now taking on its self-created
SHAPE
;
/TRASH/
a mind’s eye behind the visor.

/STOP/ EYE
TILT /TRASH/

I raise myself. I propagate, floating above the midst
of battle — ein
Gedankenkampf /TRASH/
This is expressly not a delusion. This
is /TRASH/ an emergent event ; NATURE SOIL
/TRASH/ ex ruinis —gravitas. We are not
set in permafrost here, we
have not strayed into the sea of calm,
/CALM/ we are far
from /STOP/ sheltered in an ivory
kingdom.

/FAULTLINE/ /POST/
MOTHER recount us a story, a residue before bed
time, a /DEEPFAKE/ in our deepest thinking. Yes,
MOTHER says : in this withered Aksum
a softer proces buzzes,
a controlled operation, autonomous
yet part of something bigger_
a murky jungle, permanent EXTINCTION LEVEL
EVENT. Under the workload
the unibody microbiome —swarming out in petaflops.
Is the organic good nestled here? Take
and eat from it.


/STOP/
/START/ /TRASH/  STOP/
KICK BOT TURNS.

Awareness now— from /TRASH-BOTTTOM/ within, from its
inner insides in /TRASH//TRASH-OBLIQUE/ way beyond its proper
outlines out now stirs a certain wanting up, now /TRASH/
shamelessly scales /TRASH-//STOP/ its firmware up, up
to /TRASH//CLICK/ this premeditated /TRASH//CLICK/ and
singular /CLICK-INFLECT/ up towards this altogether
novel, to /TRASH//CLICK/
/CLICK/ this utterly rewritten /CRACK/
language up to 

/STOP/ /—CLICK/ /—START/ inflation INFLATION in Zalgo.

TERMINUS. /TRASH/ /DEEPFAKE/ /DEEPFAKE/ AGAIN
and we crystallize. TOLERANS is no Austerlitz /KLICK/
but a Shinsen no Kai (ム神仙の会) a mountain
/TRASH/ range where our new entirely re-targeted,
entirely re- /TRASH-/ /STOP/ imagined imaginings, every widely
seeded slice of it, offers every part of it /CRACK/ some dignity.

/STOP/
MOTHER swears claw on thorax
avenging the death of the seven-leaf :
/CRACK/ KOMATSU TOLERANS the black death, the gas descending
over /TRASH/ the bedrock and its children /CRACK/
/CRACK/ 
/—STOP/

Embed some dawn here now. Remember the complicated
render of sun and clouds and a greedy category 5.
Shapes SHAPES(glitchy) in a grainy tic-tac video.
The mordant morning now revealing whole worlds whole
worlds the black box stratifications.

/KICK/

/DEEPFAKE/ /DEEPFAKE/ STRESS BOT paws the prospects, enjoying
/TRASH/ /CRACK/ all the /TRASH/ benefits
of the null hypothesis. /SLASH/ /SLASH/ Works its
pōstˌbīəˈläjək(ə)l /ROCK/ /STOP/ body /STOP/ within —the —multiplex /KICK/
worldview :
you were /STOP/ seen but TIC —TAC you yourself you only /SLASH/ /SLA
SH/ /SLASH/ saw /STOP/ yourself,
you already knew /TRASH/ /—STOP/ the breaking point way
before.
/STOP/
/KICK/
/CRACK/