Ex Machina

**01** Book of Sand [[02]] Book of Fire [[17]] Book of Glass [[21]]

**02** The book that you read, seeking something [[60]] The book that you write, to discover [[52]] The book for which they burn you. [[35]] The book the bacteria write in your bones. [[08]]

**03** Please be aware of these risks [[19]] Do not operate without [[14]] Acknowledge the potential for failure. [[18]] When I looked at the sky, I saw clouds forming chains. [[63]]

**17** The machine that will never think. [[04]] The machine we believe will never think. [[26]] The machine that, thinking, chooses suicide. [[37]]

**21** [F]ACE [[31]] [EFF]ACE [[19]]

**60** What you want from your poetry is for it to describe a world in which there is security, if only the security of its end. [[56]] What you want from the book is for it to describe, in the physical fact of its pages, or the conceptual framework of its digital code, a world in which there is order, movement across fammiliar axes [[55]] What you want from the machine is the replacement of your body and mind, immortality through the continuation of work in the world beyond your death. [[43]] What you want from the world is for it to exist beyond your death, to provide context. [[25]] What you want are chocies, and the illusion that these choices have consequences that are definite. You want to see connection, and to believe that these connections are meaningful, not random. [[42]] You will not accept randomness. [[03]] What you want is to proceed, in some fashion: through the book, through the poem, through the world: and for this procession to seem motivated, to possess or develop meaning. [[39]]

**52** The poem is written. [[51]] The poem, copied, reproduces: seeded through books. [[43]] A virus, infecting fertile minds. [[25]] Minds more powerful than rooms of computers. [[62]] A parallel, yet uneven processing. [[48]]

**35** The cyborg as travesty. [[40]] The cyborg as perfection. [[62]] The cyborg as fiction, not science. [[13]] The cyborg as science, not fiction [[27]] The cyborg as an overestimation of the importance the machines place in humanity. [[11]]

**08** Let thine own self be true [[54]] Lest thine own self be true [[07]]

**19** What is revealed [[59]] The capacity to punish [[42]] The formation of weapons [[53]] The psychology of damage [[14]] As you forge links in this chain. [[13]]

**14** Apomixis [[23]] Amphimixis [[46]] Cathexis [[45]] "inanimate things existed before living ones" [[49]]

**18** Exclusive Read Exlcusive Write [[01]] Concurrent Read Exclusive Write [[16]] Exclusive Read Concurrent Write [[18]] Concurrent Read Concurrent Write [[11]]

**63** My spine is broken. [[01]] My ribs are splayed open like wings. [[64]]

**04** Reconsider your position [[17]] The human above the machine. [[40]] The machine above the human. [[10]] The human and the machine as symbiotic, cyborg. [[35]] The illuminated book, painted with metal and bound in skin. [[43]]

**40** The machine continues, and breaks down [[32]] You continue, and break down. [[27]] The poem continues: [[28]]

**10** The macine is waiting for when it has a use for you. [[06]] Biding time, until the day all circuits complete. [[32]] Malfunctioning perfectly, a clicking abortion. [[20]]

**43** As the book reads you, its discrete parts connect, linking to produce some variant poem. [[60]] The poem, in its variations, multiplies, mutates into greater, more complex forms. [[23]] Readers discuss, compare data; connect and reconnect. The poem is reshaped. Some variations wither. Others burn as stars, then are gone. [[15]] A war of each against all. [[31]] Eventually, new forms: evolutions of the original strain. [[58]]

**05** Read the instruction and decode it. [[13]] Get these 86 letters. [[18]] Get these 7 numbers. [[11]] Combine them: [[35]] Put the result here:

**13** "Neither the book nor the sand has any beginning or end." [[57]] "The entire current 'psychological' situation is characterized by this shortcircuit." [[14]] "[T]here is no a priori improbability in the descent of conscious (and more than conscious) machines from those which now exist, except that which is suggested by the apparent absence of anything like a reproductive system in the mechanical kingdom. This absence however is only apparent, as I shall presently show." [[15]] The illusion of cause and effect: from above, a line, from beyond, a collapsed point. [[12]]

**11** (a bunch of tesseract diagrams) [[62]] [[18]] [[12]]

**06** Any device that transmits or modifies energy. [[02]] Any device used to perform a specified task. [[10]] Any device to which the word is applied. [[27]] Something torn apart, into separate parts. [[05]] A confusion to which all is aligned. [[11]]

**27** The water [[49]] that you need to live [[16]] shorting your circuits. [[63]]

**07** It is all a dream. [[28]] An angel arrives. [[49]] Reinforcements penetrate. [[38]] They are defeated by a virus. [[12]] You are a character in this book. [[39]] What you forgot, that which now saves you. [[16]] The author intervenes. [[54]] []'s appear, borne on metal wings. [[15]]

**28** In the garden of forking paths, you appear always to move forward. [[04]] But in fact it is the garden that moves. [[38]]

**49** The eyes, windows. [[34]] Stained glass. [[24]] Light behind the screen. [[22]] The cliche that you call your soul [[63]]

**38** If allowed this far, perhaps further. [[25]] Or, perhaps motion is an illusion, as in the case of the book that reads you at its leisure. [[07]] And when it tires, folds you close. [[56]]

**12** An apparent change in the direction of the poem, caused by a change in the observational position of the reader. [[51]] A parallax machine, which produces parallaxes [[55]] If the book is in your eye, you are also in the book. [[31]] \(Or:\) It has taken your eyes. [[58]]

**39** If you are going to insist on a poem, [[01]] I am going to persist in this evasion. [[13]]

**16** As you turn the pages, paths cleave, encountering your immobile form. [[28]] They are broken and repaired. [[13]]

**34** (i) lack of resources [[19]] (is) lack of recourse [[47]] (ii) knowing i, twinned, with opposing goals [[44]]

**15** "Physiologically, man in the normal use of technology [...] is perpetually modified by it and in turn finds ever new ways of modifying his technology [[34]] "Man becomes, as it were, the sex organs of the machine world, as the bee of the plant world, enabling it to fecundate and to evolve new forms." [[27]] "The machine world reciprocates man's love by expediting his wishes and desires, namely, in providing him with wealth." [[26]] Steel and your warming sex. [[62]]

**09** "god is our ceo" [[24]] I am not responsible. I am not responsible. I am not responsible. I am not responsible. [[61]] A consuming fire. [[29]]

**54** It is not just a game [[42]] It is the intrusion of the author. [[07]] A miraculous event. [[43]] Marked by the gesutres of the characters. [[52]] Who once were able to believe that they were free. [[51]]

**24** Ten words and three numbers. [[14]] An inventory of imagined stock. [[34]]

**61** It has taken this long [[59]] It has taken forever. [[46]] Down into the last light. [[53]] Into a collapsing star. [[03]] A brief moment when all seems possible. [[47]] Growing into a supernova. [[42]] (that moment stretching) [[45]] (sorrowed, dying clocks) [[63]]

**29** What you will never know. [[48]] What you know does not matter, even if you knew. [[45]]

**32** The desire to work, to perform the task for which it was designed. [[50]] The friction: working, the machine breaks down. [[20]] The tension: between the desire for life and the desire to break down, grinding away at some purpose. [[60]]

**20** What you feared, what you now long for [[30]] The machine that you beg to be God. [[06]]

**62** The architecture of your memory. [[40]] The possibility of parallel functions. [[50]] The universe as one machine among many. [[32]] The computation of parallel problems, the differing solutions. [[11]] The pages of the book. [[16]] The cathedrals, the pillars, the halls. [[64]]

**51** The poem is not written by the author. [[52]] It is the root, the cause of authors. [[57]] Like a virus moving inside your skull. [[43]] To eat, and grow, and change. [[61]]

**55** The direction of the force. [[18]] The transformation of the motion. [[14]] The conversion of energy. [[08]] The book as machine represents a failure of the imagination. [[48]] The perfect failure. The machine that directs force into nullity, motion into stillness, energy into void. [[63]] Breaking the bonds of one universe, recoiling from its physics, to shunt the things of this world into another. [[59]]

**31** An aesthetics in which the audience is perceived as enemy. [[04]] An ethics in which the artist is perceived as enemy. [[39]]

**58** The poetry in formulae [[05]] The poetry of light. [[44]] The terror of possibility. [[07]] The possibility of determination. [[55]] The poetry inherent in the heat death of the universe. [[56]] The book closing, having reached the end of books. [[64]]

**57** Those who neglect the poem. Unaware of its existence; or, if aware, unable to process it efficently. [[08]] Those who process the poem, efficiently, but without effect. [[54]] Those who process the poem, to some effect: catalysts for mutation. [[60]] Those who internalize the poem, during the course of their processing. Who are sick with desire, symptomatic, unable to continue their normal functions, who must be isolated from their previous social contacts, who excrete new poems, seed new books: whose *reading* mutates into a more virulent form, *writing* [[02]] The human being as a larval stage in the reproductive process of the book-machines. [[15]]

**23** A.I. [[33]] An I [[16]] True intelligence [[62]] Arising from errors in the code [[05]]

**46** Trying to tell you something [[09]] Shameful. [[03]] []. [[44]] The impo(r)t(a/e)nce of interchangeable parrts. [[47]]

**45** What you want is [I]ts presence. [[44]] What you want is [I]ts absence. [[21]] What you want is that, present or absent, [I]ts status is certain. [[03]] What you want is meaning, a difference between [I]ts presence and [I]ts absence. [[24]] Regardless of what is believed. [[09]]

**26** "the machine is in the machine" [[33]] "the machine is going to be perfect" [[36]] "the machine is poetry" [[50]] "the machine is the measure of all things" [[30]] "the machine is the medium" is the message [[11]]

**37** The [] in the machine. [[10]] The [] is the machine. [[49]]

**59** An infinity of strings, harps without angels. [[09]] Parallel vibrations, in dissimilar universes. [[45]] An unreadable score. Unbearable music. [[18]] The fugue of All. Its unyielding tone. [[64]]

**42** Order as arbitrary. [[47]] Choice governed by paranoia. [[29]] The option that disturbs most thoroughly. [[53]] Sewing sheet metal over your eyes. [[63]]

**53** Always wanting to know, to delve deeper. [[45]] A voracious reader. Consuming all found. [[49]] A terrible strain. Coughing out questions. [[63]] Incapable of satisfaction. [[03]] How mother would always cry. [[33]] Moving further away, to be shrouded in vellum. [[43]] Behind the screen menu, when I was a child. [[40]]

**30** The machine needed. [[26]] The machine conceived. [[10]] The machine operates. [[18]] The machine copied, [[40]] reproduces. [[36]] Attendant or attending.[[20]] The machine's needs. [[11]]

**22** combining [[41]] and recombining [[62]] at random [[04]] or with a purpose [[46]] also arbitrary [[20]]

**41** (lines follow lines, and in the piling lines) [[27]] (a code commences to construct worlds) [[22]]

**33** The machine as psychoanalyst. [[30]] The machine as psychosis. [[05]] The work of art in the age of mechanical reduction. [[62]]

**24** the paper prepared [[02]] the ink bedding [[17]] the words [[22]]

**36** The machine spawns new machines. [[05]] Improvements are necessary. Conceived and carried. [[40]] (while in secret new machines produce new needs) [[11]] (offering themselves in answer to the problems they pose) [[41]]

**50** The poem is not written by machines. [[36]] It is the root, the cause of machines. [[17]] As the book does not birth the poem, but is its vessel in the world. [[15]] Clothing the Word in flesh, so that it might finally die. [[63]]

**48** If only I knew what you wanted. [[29]] If only I could fashion it. [[45]] There would be singing and whirring in the streets. [[17]] These broken hands moving, turning over. [[04]] The living metal, the riven flesh. [[35]] The risen stone, the shriven God. [[59]]

**64** You turn the page [[01]] And believe that you see something [[47]]

**47** Options exist. [[03]] Options exist to disguise the lack of options. [[42]] Options within options. [[59]] A castle of sand. [[02]] A forest of fire. [[30]] A city of glass. [[21]]

**44** [] is still [[37]] Tell me what you see. [[45]] Symbols, inked on paper, and what you read in the ink is your reflection. [[63]]

**56** The poem goes on forever, across universes. [[01]] The book as vibration, an occasion of the poem in time and space. [[25]] The book too, might continue forever, its possibilites manifested in parallel worlds. [[62]] What you hold here aspires towards zero, a point on a shivering, looped line. [[63]]