also find it in Ctrl-Zine Vol. 1, Issue 2 :D
What the machines do, what they think, is out of our reach, and perhaps forever will be. The machines can adapt exponentially faster than us. That is why we use them to solve all our problems nowadays. We don't have to be able to control them, we just have to be able to kill them off when the work is done. And yes, we use machines to develop those mechanisms, too.
The squadrons out there, patrolling the asteroids, would never think once about how each missile they fire, is conscious. It is the copy of the brain of a fish - one that thinks it is swimming towards food. Having been bred with unparalleled spatial awareness, and thousands of years of evolution in three-dimensional movement, it was a better solution than wasting time to train neural networks to do the same thing. Less capable militaries thought so, and so did we. The first version was released, and after that, billions upon billions of bio-digital copies of the poor creature's brain were embedded into our weapons. For each and every one of the thousands of missiles that are fired from the warships every standard day, that poor fish wakes up with a pre-programmed affinity towards its "food", and simply dies.
The professor used to go on and on about the finest details of technology. He considered it a privilege, for someone to know how things worked, especially when surrounded by levels of technological complexity that towered over their world.
After Computer Science, came Literature class.
"Look on my works, ye mighty, and Despair!", an excerpt from "Ozymandias", the ancient Sonnet by one Percy Bysshe Shelley - what does it bring to your mind? I will tell you what it should.
In his dream, he stood on the banks of a sparkling blue river. It flowed slowly and silently below the morning fog, taking the ashes of the dead to their spiritual resting place. He felt like he was waiting for something. He had visited the place before, but the scene had been different then, more "cluttered".
"There it is!" he exclaimed, to no one's attention, as large debris flowed before him in the river. The concrete mixed into the river and made it impure. He saw the millions upon millions of small pieces of plastic that got mixed into the ashes. The people around him started whispering,
Pity on those dead. They remain impure, even at the final gates.
The bombings had taken his parents and little sister. He had been away from home for something he had been forced not to remember, making the effort of recalling it all the more painful and meaningless.
It is in there, somewhere.
No.
The bombs had immediately vaporized those who stood in close proximity. There was no warm embrace to return to.
Half-aware of the classroom thanks to its ever-present, unoriginal atmosphere, he woke up with watery eyes. His head placed on folded arms, he clenched his teeth and swallowed to get rid of the lump in his throat.
It had only taken ten minutes for the towers of the mountain city of Naizo, his home, to be transformed into picturesque, grayscale ruins.
The teacher went on to list keywords that had to be included in their answers to fetch the maximum points on the test.
"Nothing beside remains, round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare."
by ~chiptune