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 broke. What would it take, today3,
I mused out loud,
to end a war?

The squadmates queued up for the next match
in the Helldivers 2 lobby1. Both hail from Sector 2 of SuperEarth
they've coordinated their team strats so tightly
before they noticed
one IP address was Mainland
the other was Taiwan —in voice chat
neither could tell. "I really hope politicians don't force us
to murder each other tomorrow." "Same, bro.
Whatever happens tomorrow,
tonight, we fight as brothers." "To defend SuperEarth!" "You're as real to me as anyone else
who holds the same passport as me.2" [reconstructed from a screenshot circulating on social media;
translated from Chinese by the author]

Early 2025. The looming ban.
They called themselves TikTok refugees1
nearly a million ordinary Americans
swarming the Red Note2 community
were met with:
Show us your cat!
#CatTax Chinese kids asked for help with English homework.
American kids shared their school lunches.
Chinese moms shared ginger apple tea.
American moms shared their Costco hauls.
The sisterhood of Red Note shared
skin care, recipes, silly dances
cramming for exams "They're just like us!" Someone drew a cartoon:
high on platforms—politicians point
fingers and weapons across the Pacific below the platforms—multitudes of hands
exchanging flowers and cats ordinary people to ordinary people Zoom far enough out
all wars are civil wars.3

No contact from Moscow for days.
Mission critical equipment redlined.
Limited reserves of water. The air
on board B-592 low on oxygen. International waters: US Navy
detonated depth charges
damaging radio antennae. The crew did not know
if war had already begun. Vasily Arkhipov3
alone opposed the launch of a
nuclear torpedo.

A guard in Duluth Minnesota1 saw
a figure climbing the security fence. (US military planners expected
sabotage operations to precede
a nuclear first strike.) He shot at it, activated the sabotage alarm,
cascading alarms on bases in the region. A faulty
alarm sounded the klaxon at Volk Field Wisconsin2,
ordered nuclear-armed planes into the air. Pilots fully believed a nuclear war was starting. Before planes took off, the base commander
contacted Duluth and learned of the error. The intruder: a bear3.

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 message presented as a gift
to the god-emperor [after a scene from Hero (Zhang Yimou, 2002)2]

It wasn't my first sacrifice2: I had killed a rat before
unconscious from anesthesia
I performed surgery first—
it was not a survival procedure.
Years later. Grad school: my first gas chamber
24 mice in a plexiglass cage. Rationally, I understood the argument
the value of human lives
the value of a mouse's life
the understanding we gain. My hands were steady in the moment
turning the valve to administer CO2
my eyes began to water
as they wriggled and gasped for air. It's only when I recall the scene
that my hands tremble involuntarily
that my stomach turns that I viscerally could not bring myself
to plan the next experiment without gagging on nothingness without debating the value
of my own life. It was my fault.
I neglected
to control for one variable
and 24 mice were sacrificed for no reason. To even out the score, I refused
to eat meat for years afterwards. Some cosmic sense of balance
in the murder balance sheet3.

The week of my first sacrifice
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. [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 red
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 platforms, 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 Skinner 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 life
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 dilemma
to face. [found poem. source: Margrethe Bohr, Copenhagen (Michael Frayn, 1998)2]

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."

Me and gal pals in LA to cosplay1
because retired post exit founders just wanna have some fun
relaxing in a modern living room in pajamas
after a dip in the pool with a view of the city. We discuss Three Body Problem
the books and the Netflix adaptation
my galpal R puts down her wine glass to do a search
as I tell her it's fantastic art, but
Dark Forest Theory is flawed and a treatise on why2
she finds a reddit comment about how unrealistic the Oxford Five3 were
how it could be that everyone
central to the plot to save Earth
came from one friend group the room went quiet we all looked
at each other
with pursed lips and then
none of us
could stop laughing.

Tell me about the dream with the Escher self-drawing hands2
and the mirror ball a Riemann sphere3 in my hand how the Prius was gridlocked in traffic from the Giants game
the traffic cop in her reflective vest ordered you to turn
and every time you argued with her
my seatbelt tightened around me
until it was locked and chafing how we're on a roller coaster train
pulling out of the station on the long ascent
the padded safety guardrail clamped down
on our shoulders
I'm looking for an eject button
and I don't know why
I have to be off this ride
a flashback or a premonition—what's the difference4
we're approaching the first summit
what happens if I don't
a trapdoor opens beneath us
we're in freefall—
I'm in freefall
scrolling a litany
of error messages
on the console
and I look for you
there's no car no city no rollercoaster
just a terminal % reload from checkpoint Tell me how I'm not supposed to remember
as I'm watching brick buildings render in the mirror ball
how back in the car you're frozen in time, unfreeze
and you've rolled down the window to explain to her
there's not enough space to make the turn
you turn to me and squeeze my hand, Can you believe this?
and I want to tell you an incantation
a move 37, a jedi mind trick5
but you'd demand a proof
like tightening the bolts on the tire
I know how to but not how I know
I can't prove it to you
my voice is locked
I think it at you
I don't pull my hand away
what's the point of meseeing through the illusions
if I can't warn you when it matters
I find my voice, Actually—
trap door
scrolling errors
crashed simulation % try again, find the button Oh.
vertigo
back in the rollercoaster
but it's a class 4 sim6 of a cockpit
and I'm looking for the button
outside you said would be here Tell me how to wake up
why won't you just tell me if I'm supposed to—
do I have to play this through—
I press the button
and I'm back in the car Tell me if figuring it out
was the point of the test
and if I'll ever get used to it.