[COPY] The Spell of Ai......

chapter 6: The Many Worlds of Ai

Fight or Flight:

If we go back far enough, our Fearsome Deities were more fearsome than they were deities. The fear of being consumed is a by-product of being a part of the food chain other than apex predator. A reality in that world is anything but a game. Eat and be eaten is the terrible reality that is with us still. Too terrible to contemplate. We have to invent ways to reconcile the cost/benefits of surviving.

It is necessary to survive in order to procreate, and all life must procreate to survive.

Just sayin’.

It seems fair to assume human emotion evolved out of primal directives. The primal instincts required for survival and the same instincts we share with animals.

The strange and unusual are the ways we invent to account for our emotion. There might be blessings inside the pared down and simplified ancient mind. Is there a difference between evading a predator and crossing a busy street? Do you wait for the math to complete before taking action?

Are you waiting for artificial intelligence to figure the answer for you?

The Stone Man:

Drop me into his world and it wouldn’t be long before the swift blow from a large femur bone or if lucky, pierced ceremonially by a flying projectile would, as the farmer says, “stop the gene pool”; or just be consumed by something bigger and stronger.

Adaptability is the mark of intelligence; we might or might not be living in a mechanical universe. Best to keep options open.

All my life has been that of a tool user. That is not an accident or coincidence. The Stone Man is a tool user, (another metaphor) and walks the earth as real as anything can be. His tools enable us to escape our predators and mitigate the elements. He understands the ravages of entropy, and our futility. His tools and tokens are his answer to the great unknown.

The tokens of The Stone Man are wrought by his own hands, the hands we toiled long and hard to manifest and are the result of his anxieties. When cast they form his alphabet and give life to his familiarities. The Talisman; link between the seen and unseen; betwixt The Stone Man and The Many Worlds. A giving of form to the workings of the mind in order to find order in a random reality.

And voila’ we are back to collapsing waveforms.

It was The Stone Man that set us on this path, and it will be The Stone Man who is the last of us.

Take a breath.
Nature will always seek a balance.

Photo by Alli Stefanova on Unsplash

Code of conduct:

Virgil appeared to me while driving on some errand; going down Tuscarora Mountain as he was coming up. Pushing a cheap infant size stroller burdened with an estimated 150lbs of flotsam and jetsam. Bedraggled, overburdened and suffering certain dehydration pinned on a road section with fast moving vehicles and heavy trucks moving down the mountain and no berm; the situation looked all but hopeless.

Joining the rest of humanity in non-intervention at such a radical sight, we continued on our way deciding to look to his condition while on our return trip. Virgil was on his way down the mountain when the stroller toppled strewing his worldly possessions on the berm. In a dangerous maneuver we pulled off and put the hazard lights on, secured canine Bruno and immediately took water and whatever food found in the emergency cache.

This was by all estimation an urban homeless man bent on some excursion looking like a desperate bid for salvation; yet here he was meticulously repacking, unhurried and as calm as a beach dweller.

To think that as a group we are by nature all good or all bad is folly; we are neither - and both. Having lived with psychopaths, convicted murderers, thieves, poachers among all the better forms of people one might come to that conclusion. We loaded Virgil and his world into the bed of the pickup truck.

Even the most hardened and ruthless of us still retain a speck of humanity, a code of conduct. Not to say that conduct isn’t sometimes manifested with risk and bad outcomes included - just that the code is there.

Our income here on the farm is below the Federal Poverty Level and below the present Standard Deduction according to IRS. By hard work hardship and a lot of help from a lot of people this farmstead is free of rent and mortgage; what it lacks in dollars it more than makes up for in resources.

This is not something you should do out of a romantic bleeding-heart syndrome; it could easily get you killed. If you are reading this my advice is to not try this at home unless you are the sort with the courage and resources to pull it off.

After eating a lot of our food supply, bathing, rehydrating and rest we set to work on the objective of leaving Virgil in some way better than he was found. The most immediate problem was his mode of transportation. Being a woodworker with a background in technologies and hardware it was obvious that a stroller with three-inch plastic wheels is not up to the task it was set to. Bigger wheels and storage space with a balance between light weight and durability at little to no cost seemed a practical approach.

Meanwhile we talked about his worship and quest for tranquility; of magic and materializing something from nothing, the hardships and majesty of life on the road; all between the ravings of a self-mutilating madman and his incessant kackling and conversations with invisible friends or foes; his Arbiter and Fearsome Deities.

Forty-eight hours later after a labor ridden session with phone calls, frantic trips to locate a frame with sixteen-inch solid rubber tires, steel rims and tubular frame, everything from raw materials to sharp tools and thirty-five years of trying was already here at the farm.

We left Virgil at a convenience store in a busy wayside intersection at his behest, anxious to be on his way.

His code of conduct was superb, he left me better then found and with luck maybe himself; a truly honest and strangely pious soul pitting himself against impossible odds for who but him knows why.

His world and his story should be told.

This was posted originally just after the encounter with Virgil. The story and image is by his permission, and we agreed on its importance. It appears here again for that reason, and to restore chronological order.

There’s a lot of good reading here in S&UP, with more coming.

Talisman: when the maker intends to instill spirit in the work, it becomes more than an object.