Big box electronics store. 2004-ish.
First love and his father
buying and activating a cell phone
on a family plan. It was only supposed to take
It was only supposed to take a few minutes.
It was taking much longer than
It was taking much longer than a few minutes. I've wandered over to the display computers.
I giggle mischievously; first love notices. "Let me guess," he walks over.
"You're installing Firefox1 on all the display laptops?
I'm surprised they don't have that locked down." I bite my lower lip
look up innocently. "Open source represent2," I wink
moving over to the next laptop. "And you're hiding the default browser.
That is pretty funny, I have to admit." He hugs me and kisses the top of my head. "I adore you, you little terrorist."

"Six months. That's basically forever
in the Harry Potter fandom. Forums full of spoilers and cosplay
of characters you haven't met yet.
And before you can even begin,
everyone else has moved onward.
It's the worst," I explained while taptaptap2'ing. First love looked up from reading Weinberg3,
"I know that look. What have they done this time?" "The 北大4 kids bought English books on release day
fanned out by chapter, pulled a boba-fueled all nighter
released an open source translation by morning
that anyone can torrent," I grinned as though
furtively installing Firefox on a display laptop. "Technically … legal?" he tilted back on the rear legs
of the standard wood dorm-issued chair. "Fan-made derivative work. Is it more like fanfiction
or porting devtools to another programming language?
No idea if legal. Not a single cent of profit, though." "Still sucks to be the publisher. Or author.
Where will more Harry Potter books come from?7"
he walked from his desk to sit by me on the futon. "Yeah, you're absolutely right. These kids are fans.
They don't want publishers or authors to lose money.
They'd have gladly forked over full price
for hardback Chinese translations released on Day One,"
I hugged the plaid comforter and leaned into him. "They only wanted to not be second class citizens
as readers in the same fandom, a caste system
based on your language of birth." "Any small timeline hiccup and
you'd be one of them instead,"
he nuzzled the top of my head. "Exactly. These are smart kids born the same year as us.
We could easily have spawned in as them or vice versa.6
What's the difference between us?" "What do you think the publishers are going to do?" "If the publishers are dumb or if they're smart?" I ask. "I suppose they could sue the broke students,
and get zero dollars," he jests. "Withhold release
of English copies in regions with Chinese speakers
and lose a bunch of revenue." "Kids get more resourceful, fan translations proliferate,
and they learn to hate the publishers. How do they plan to
maintain rule over their global fandom with that playstyle?" "And if they're smart?" "Simultaneous release of the official Chinese translation
no all nighter, no lost profits. All Harry Potter fans: equal before the eyes of the Author,5
the only thing the kids ever wanted in the first place." "Are the publishers smart?" "I hope so."

"I also believe in a post-scarcity future
for our species," I replied, stood up from sitting on the stone fountain
lost pixels around the periphery.2
He caught my elbow
as I sat back down. "And if we truly lived in a world of abundance
what would you want to do?" he asked. "I'd either make art or little one-off
open source projects
for fun, for the love of the game, send them off into the world
never give a second thought to whether it's
worth the effort
to play the capitalism minigame3 for each project.
Just make the art." A light breeze, temperate.
He sits next to me. "Did I ever tell you
about my Stanford application essay?" I asked.
"Mind you, this was in the 90's, open source vs. Microsoft
was central to my dinner-time sparring with my dad—" "What was the prompt?" he asked. "If you could have a conversation
with any person, dead or alive—" He gestured. I fast forwarded. "I just wanted a chance to persuade Bill Gates4 that
open source
is not the enemy.
To somehow break through the framing.
That the whole 'Linux is a cancer' stance might as well be a
call to action
to unite the rebel alliance.
I mean, it's a moot point now, looking at history." "Isn't Azure friendly to Linux?" "Yeah, and they didn't need a literal child to tell them.
Self-interest made them figure it out on their own." I stood up, gradually this time, so I could pace. "And my intuition, which I can't defend, is
the post scarcity world
only becomes possible
because the marginal cost of production of bits
is negligible compared to that of atoms.
And maximum possible value will be via
the open source path." "Explain what you mean." I turned to face him and we held both hands. "Look at Wikipedia
vs Encyclopedia Britannica
or Microsoft Encarta.5
When I was in middle school,
I used to jump down Encarta rabbit holes—" "—I remember those days too!" "—just like Wikipedia rabbit holes in grad school.
The Britannica top-down model efficiently gets you to this—"
I mime an encyclopedia set
"—but it doesn't take you to the next stage.
There's always a ceiling to Encarta or Britannica
when a small team of editors play gatekeeper.
Information wants to be free!6" I spread my arms
face the sky and spin gleefully
the slightest eucalyptus scent in the air. "Ok, slight tangent, but can you imagine
if only Britain was 'allowed' to industrialize?
What that would mean for our species?" he asks. I shiver, remembering atrocities committed
in the name of the East India Company7. He hugs me. "Seriously. Definitely a you-are-not-going-to-space-today8
scenario for our species.
I have this intuition that a world that is more
Wikipedia-shaped
where anyone can contribute
according to their expertise
and read
according to their curiosity
achieves escape velocity on what's possible for our species
and yet, it is not the shape
that naturally emerges
from the incentive structures of
playing the capitalism game." "Oh my god, just like scientific publishing!9" "Oh my god, yes, I'm so grateful that getting my NIH grant
meant I'm obligated to choose
Open Access publishing
or I would have faced so much pressure not to
and all of it from people
who themselves also harbor
a secret hatred of Elsevier." "Seriously, it's a drain on every field!
I mean, we're the ones
doing all the peer reviewing!" "And for free! I'm always, always stuck
writing the first draft
of a review that wasn't even assigned to me!" "I know, right? And the value
being siphoned out of the system
is not adequately measured
because the value of scientists' time—" "—completely distorted in the market." "Yeah, exactly!" "First love was asking me why
biologists can't just do what physicists do
with the ArXiv—" "—I know what you mean.
He asked me the same question!" "—of course! And I could never produce a good clean answer
that wasn't just hand-waving 'you know how they are.'" "I've been thinking about it since he asked, too, actually." "There's way too many biologists—" "Do you mean in the sense that—" "Like genetic drift in small populations
allow random mutations to fix with higher prob—" "Ok, that model is consistent but—" "But insufficient." "Yeah, exactly." "Because the median biologist
has too much …
'common sense.'" "Oh—" He squeezed my hand and raised a finger on his other hand.
He paused
looked down and off to the side.
Resting oblivious face.10
Two breaths. Three breaths.
Still looking off to the side
he raises one hand to gesture
like an orchestra conductor
pausing right before the first beat.
I wait
knowing I do the same exact thing. "There's something I've been wanting to formulate
and maybe write into an essay at some point… Biology needs more vibrams.11" "A shoe as metaphor for walking away from
conventional thinking," I giggle while tapping. "Exactly." "I love it."

The week of my first sacrifice3
my professor scheduled a meeting
to prepare me. You can stop at any time
even mid-procedure. Do not let anyone call you timid
or imply you are weak
because you put down the knife. If someone does, you are to tell me immediately. Do not let the work turn you
into someone you do not want to become1. Remember that you always have a choice.4 [found poem. source: Robert Sapolsky2, in conversation,
Stanford University, ca. 2003. Reconstructed from memory by the author.]

When you think in categories
you underestimate
how different two facts are
when they fall in the same category.
When you think in categories
you overestimate
how different they are
when there happens to be a boundary in between them. There are no buckets.2
When you pay attention to
categorical boundaries
you don't see the big picture.
Take the rainbow from violet to red7
an infinite number
of wavelengths in between.
We have rules in English
you take a continuum
and you break it into pieces
that's what you call a color
it's easier to deal with.
All there are
are temporary platforms6, each platform
simply the easiest most convenient way
of describing the outcome. We're not going to fall for categorical thinking
this is a complicated subject
but we're smart
we're going to be more sophisticated in our thinking than
endocrinologists and geneticists and all of these folks… Let me read you a few quotes
to show just how much some of these folks don't understand (1) Give me a child at birth from any background
and let me control
the total environment in which he is raised
and I will turn him into anything I wish him to be
— doctor, lawyer, beggar, or thief.
John Watson, 19123
one of the founding fathers
of a school of psychology called behaviorism.
Behaviorism reached an apogee with
BF Skinner9 in the 1950s
this notion that if you could control
the rewards the punishments
the positive of the negative reinforcement
you could turn anybody
into anything you want. We now know that's not possible
we know that all you have to do is throw in
one other factor like
a lot of protein malnutrition during fetal life8
and you're not going to be able to do that
you cannot have all the control over the environment
and turn somebody into whatever you want Here's a guy living pathologically in this bucket
that behavior could be explained solely
by reward and punishment. (2) Normal psychic life
depends upon the good functioning of brain synapses.
Mental disorders appear as a result of
synaptic derangements.
Synaptic adjustments
will then modify the corresponding ideas and
force them into different channels.
Using this approach,
we obtain cures and improvements,
but no failures. Any guesses? Yes, you in the back.
Electroshock therapy? You wish it were as gentle
as electroshock therapy. António Egas Moniz4,
in his speech accepting the Nobel Prize. He invented frontal lobotomies.
Something done to tens and hundreds of thousands of people
who had absolutely nothing wrong with them. (3) The selection for social utility must be accomplished by some social institution
if mankind is not to be ruined by
domestication-induced degeneracy.
The racial idea
as the basis of our state
has already accomplished much in this respect.
We may, and we must, rely on the healthy instincts of
the best of our people
for the extermination of elements of the population
loaded with dregs. Anybody want to guess? Hitler?
No, he was a little bit busy at the time.
And Hitler was not a behavioral biologist.
Konrad Lorenz5: one of the founding fathers of ethology
everybody knows him from all the little kid nature books He discovered imprinting in birds.
He was this little Austrian guy with a big white beard
he's always in these little Austrian shorts and suspenders
there would be a whole bunch of duckies following him
because they thought he was mom.
He was totally charming and irresistible. He also happened to be one of
Hitler's main scientific propagandists who went to his grave saying that there was
nothing wrong with what he did. These are
not crappy fourth-rate scientists.
These are
the most influential scientists of the last century. These are
people who influenced how people were educated, and
when we decided it wasn't worth the effort. These are
people whose influence led to
the brains being destroyed
of hundreds of thousands of people who had
nothing wrong with them. These are the people who led to the notion that
you fix up a problem that doesn't exist
by exterminating nine million people. Pathologically living inside their own buckets
and how they could explain
the entire world. There are no buckets
all there are
are temporary platforms. [found poem. source: Sapolsky, Robert. "Introduction to Human Behavioral Biology,"
Stanford Human Behavioral Biology (lecture 1), recorded 2010, YouTube.
Composed from memory of the lecture as delivered ca. 2003–2004;
exact quotations verified against the 2010 recording transcript.]

He's in charge of some vital piece of
secret research.
And that even so he's preserved a lofty moral independence. Preserved it so famously that he's being watched
by the Gestapo. Preserved it so successfully that he's now also got a
wonderfully important moral dilemma3
to face. [found poem. source: Margrethe Bohr, Copenhagen (Michael Frayn, 1998)2]

I readied the grey Prius for our Oregon roadtrip
to the path of the total solar eclipse1. My husband drove the whole way
while I managed our playlists, (eating seaweed snacks
resting my socks on the dashboard)
articles from the Economist, audio edition Narrator: Thales of Miletus2
described the battle of Halys, 585 BC the Lydians and the Medes
slaughtering one another in the field
when suddenly a total solar eclipse
day became night
the corona, an eerie halo in the sky
a vacant disapproving eye bewildered, the warriors
threw down their weapons
went home to their loved ones. Imagine what it must have been like,
my husband remarked.
the world model the ancients had
like if our reality suddenly broke4. What would it take, today3,
I mused out loud,
to end a war?

Playa dust gathered in the seams of my Nausicaa2 costume
as a giant neon Ohmu sped towards me on the playa
eyes blinking inside my standard lab issue chemistry goggles
my mouth pausing agape inside my n95 unbelievable like an ancient solar eclipse Strangelove4 Bunnie Huang3 titled his masterpiece
the art car the embodiment
of healing a post nuclear apocalypse world the phage capsid stood like a cowlick
an emblem of phage camp I traced the vertices of the resonances
my face like sudden clarity Clarence I explain about the god warriors as a metaphor
the desolate earth healing itself
a raving lunatic outputting a treatise in realtime
on a bus to a crowd of ravers
familiar with neither Nausicaa nor Dr. Strangelove the art car ohmu
a key turning exactly one lock6 But princess, you don't even have a weapon!,
shouted the citizen. Nausicaa gave a thumbs up, holding her breath
flipped backwards through the air legible vulnerability as armor5 she spread out her arms
showing she was unarmed
to the pilot

[In the Google Docs sidebar… ] › Ok, Gemini, which Weinberg2 was he reading? The "Weinberg" being read is the physicist Steven Weinberg, based on your email correspondences with [first love], including discussion of his research papers on effective field theory and inflation. Would you like me to pull up the email where [first love] shared with you that Weinberg replied to him? 🔗 2 sources 👍 👎3 › Oh my god, Gemini. WTF. I understand. That was startlingly specific, and I apologize if it felt intrusive. I can absolutely dial back the level of detail or rely only on the document you're viewing if you'd prefer I not cross-reference your personal email history. How would you like to proceed? 👍 👎

said the narrator to the charioteer2,
take me to the precipice
where I can see the battle lines drawn and the charioteer drove there
speaking of duty to the war machine
in defense of the tribe the movement and the narrator looked upon the field
saw her friends and lovers on one side
and her friends and lovers on the other side
she knelt upon a small patch of grass and she does not pray
but this time she prays not for victory
for an eclipse the charioteer replies,
what dies is the body the self is eternal3
eclipses are deterministic you fool4
you can't pray for one the narrator replies,
you're not the god I pray to
your corpus of known solution space
if I have to, I will go back in time
engineer an eclipse from first principles
track every atom if I must
reset initial conditions if I must
speedrun from the last checkpoint5 plant all the right words at all the right times
and compile this into a universe
where not everyone dies the charioteer asks,
how many times have you done this? the narrator asks,
what do you remember
this time?

the sky black with arrows
raining down
on a city
under siege
the martial artist practicing his calligraphy in the sand
the brush
broken in the barrage
he catches a stray arrow
breaks it
keeps writing in red ink
larger than life
he writes a version of
剑 — sword1 that depicts no sword
in either hand or heart the art
the artifact
the message3 presented as a gift
to the god-emperor [after a scene from Hero (Zhang Yimou, 2002)2]