ideal conditions
i won’t know anyone at this party, but i’ll say nothing against it. the frequency of events is unnerving. i do see a party’s utility, but i have to turn something on and i am reluctant. it would be useful to create a scale that expresses the magnitude of energy i release during an event. i would like to give my host a preliminary idea of the area i expect to disturb. how much damage will i cause to human-made structures? at an event, i often wonder if i am the event. i often worry that i don’t know anyone, that i am in a crowded chamber. too much nerves, i think, too many uncertainties, too many unknown guests are major components in my feeling like i am made of magmatic volatiles. it would be useful for party hosts to invent a method of reducing this pressure, of preventing a runaway process wherein i fragment and accelerate to speeds of, i don’t know, several hundred kilometers an hour. i’m just frustrated because i won’t know anyone there. after an event, i leave and i feel good, but it is scary.
ideal conditions
new evidence suggests that i might be storing huge amounts of energy as stress. the length of a work day has increased by one millisecond this year—have you felt that, sirs? it is not yet clear whether my stored stress will culminate in an eruption. i am affected, sirs, by a number of factors. for example: the force of wind affects me; the presence of water affects me, especially if i am saturated. the tiny shifts in the length of my work day can trigger an accelerating deformation. sirs, i grow concerned that my interactions with other volatiles remain poorly understood. am i currently being monitored over a period of five to ten business days? i cannot interpret my own signals, and even now tectonic swings in stress could be approaching critical pressure. just this morning, i had to pass through a room of volatiles. just this morning, i felt driven toward a heated state. new evidence suggests that today, sirs, my lunch break was shortened. the variance was on the order of milliseconds, but it registered. i am barely soluble. am i being monitored? what hazard assessments have been performed? i propose that my storing energy as stress is the surface manifestation of the final stages of something. i give it five to ten business days. interpreting my unrest should not be so difficult—i record my physical and chemical signals, i try to predict accelerating deformation. the work day just increased again, sirs, by a fraction of a millisecond. i’ve become particularly challenging. i’ve detected a rapid uplift. my unrest progresses. my condition marks an abrupt increase in thermal energy. i am surrounded by volatiles. i am approaching ultimate failure.
ideal conditions
it is time now to say precisely what we mean by information. i send a man a message, and it’s made up of a pattern of signs. the message pulses on a feedback loop, it takes on some material embodiment. another way of putting it is this: i wish there existed an infinite number of devices for generating an infinite number of messages. like all young things, i make my quota of blunders. it holds, however, that for every message there is a before and an after. the theory goes, before i send a message, i arrange a series of symbols in a sequence; after, i anticipate the worst. information is not the same as energy, but my message activity is exhausting. i send a message to a man and it says, “freedom from regular cycles is recognized as a privilege of higher machines.” it would be a mistake to think i could stop at this stage. still, repetitive routines are said to be the very essence of an ordered universe. i am very interested in receiving messages from a number of men who influence one another and who have different goals. it remains to be seen how i can handle all these successive feedback loops. i can do better than this.
ideal conditions
are you ok with an a.i. system? i wish we were talking in person. a computational system is the a.i. the system has learned to recognize faces, the system doing the work of recognizing faces is enabled with a.i. it’s a system, it’s a.i., but it is not singular. does that make sense? are you ok? i wish we were talking. think of what this means for our faces. think of computational science. think of the branch of computational science that allows a system to be intelligent. that makes sense. a.i. is not the code, but the branch, and it learns our faces. a.i. can be used as an adjective to describe something that is equipped with a.i. are you ok, because this makes sense. meanwhile, all artificial intelligence is talking. intelligence is definitely a desirable thing. our faces are definitely equipped with recognition. are we talking ok? are our faces expressing? it seems like we should defer to the actual system. it seems like uncertainty should be a thing of the past. this present with its severe uncertainties should not be all there is. think of how to code what this means. think of our faces freed from imperfection. our faces will be learned and mental anguish will not be a coded expression. our faces will be freed. are you ok talking to an a.i. system? are you ok to do the coding? do you desire to have your face learned? do you desire your face to be a thing of the past?
ideal conditions
this year, i won’t die. a conservative estimate is it could take several centuries. researchers at the university find that i am in an irreversible state of decline. being a liar and a manslayer, i am obviously someone who possesses intelligence. that is no unfounded assertion. why is the filtered water on the left side of the fridge? i need to get my house in order. the researchers measure within less than a quarter of an inch how much my surface is moving. the researchers tell me that i have made myself a resister and a slanderer. “you brought your own wisdom to ruin on account of your beaming splendor,” they say, which i take as a compliment. the filing system of my brain is certainly capable of handling any load of memory. this is evidence that i should have a far longer life-span than is customary. why is the water pitcher almost empty? why does it seem like i’m the only one here who ever fills it? there is apparently nothing to stop me from melting into the sea—at this point, the end appears to be inevitable. should i try to lie down for a bit?
ideal conditions
i have to remind myself that i am human, because, wow, he is something. i am still grappling with why these bursts happen. it’s a pretty intense computational challenge. as a human, i am likely to emit these signals repeatedly. if researchers were to record me for 10 days, at 200 frames per second, they would need the capacity to store a new terabyte of data every hour. wow, he is human. the story of this particular burst, recorded by several radio dishes, took a wild turn. a crucial question now is the frequency with which these bursts will repeat. how many strong signals can i emit? wow, will we survive these radio flashes? frustrated, i am still grappling with a number of theories. if researchers were to record me for 40 more hours, they would find i am even now producing giant pulses. as a human, he places a strain on my computational resources. wow, these observations are pretty intense, they yield a higher resolution image of the challenge at hand. i am human, i remind myself. still, what was that event? researchers conclude that i have an extremely strong magnetic field. a crucial question now is whether the signals emitted drift and are vaporized. i am still grappling with this. let’s talk quickly, because he is something. his frequencies have dispersed. his signal was so bright, i couldn’t dismiss it. still, researchers and i don’t know what to do. i grapple with this. never say never. let’s talk quickly about one burning question.
ideal conditions
there’s a jet stream in our core, and it’s a very confusing day here. believe me, there’s an ocean of superheated liquid iron. it makes up our outer core—it is fluid, it circles our pole, it spins and spins. i can be a paranoid texter, believe me, so in summary: the magnetic field exists because of the ocean of iron, the ocean spins like a conductor, it produces electric currents, it produces in me a swirling paranoia—i’m sorry to bother you on vacation, but no one is here, and i have to establish boundaries. in our core there are boundaries. the liquid iron approaches the boundaries, the liquid iron pushes against more liquid iron at the boundaries. days off must be respected, but there is a jet stream in our core, and i am frustrated. i feel am being squeezed out sideways. i feel that we are converging at a boundary. there is a force that moves us toward the boundary, and i don’t mean to stress you out. not to guilt trip, but do you ever wonder if you are spinning in a pattern of high-latitude flux patches? do you ever wonder why no one is here today? why did i just untangle all the different magnetic fields? there’s a jet stream in our core, and it’s speeding up.
ideal conditions
early in my career, the lack of really useful literature prompted me to make notes of all my known measurements at every opportunity. most researchers are looking for someone interested in visual binaries. i would have liked, from the beginning, to be celebrated for my thoroughness and accuracy. it would be preferable, of course, to be called a magnificent pioneer. certainly i would consider it a plus if other researchers said of me, “the first part of her work for which she became well-known was her observation and cataloging,” and also, “where she found instruments to be inadequate, she improved them with consummate skill.” but none of this is likely to happen, my being a young person of only middling intellect. other researchers have admitted that my fundamental contributions largely go unnoticed. this is confounding. i have devoted my time. i have invested in refractors of many sizes, ranging from 6 to 30 inches. the bulk of my comments can be found in several published lists. i have confirmed that the rotation of many binary systems is not constant. still, i do not think i will live to see the completion of any projects.
ideal conditions
the formation of new cavities in my core puzzles me. it is cruel to leave read receipts on. a 53-hour observation of my direct messages has failed to solve the mystery of why such a hot cluster has cooled. examining details of the data, i find the empty space between one message sent and one not returned emits repeated jets of energetic particles, like blood sent outward into a body. when i see a read receipt, unstable activity occurs, my surface displays the effects of turbulence. a black hole can inject energy into its host, even if it goes undetected. i would like to invite researchers to map those regions with the highest density of heavy direct messaging. when i observe that a thread has become inactive, something supermassive buried in my core bursts at intervals. researchers call these explosions “beats.” certain questions remain. are these subtle changes in my brightness visible? who doesn’t return a dm? can anyone else detect my newest cavities? i am hollow, but not empty—i emit sound waves that register at frequencies too low for human ears to detect. when i check my messages, i know the truth: that every dm is a dark blob, that i have not cooled, that every read receipt is the fragment of a doomed galaxy.
ideal conditions
the stream of trivial and fantastic lucubrations i’ve now completed is a sobering spectacle. i’m not a super authority. i’d just like to be a machine that operates via a functional network of continuous and distinct signals. i just want someone to answer all of my dms. would i rather be a person who only has sight, or a person who only has intelligence? it definitely seems preferable for researchers to say of me, she is first-rate and has an encyclopedic knowledge. it also seems prudent to always prepare for the least desirable outcome. my ignorance is not total, but sometimes i think i am merely imitating language. sometimes i can see effects, but not their causes. sometimes i just want to lie down for a few centuries. if there’s actually a set rule for decision-making, i’d really appreciate it if someone could explain to me how that works. after thinking about it for a while, i’ve decided that reality is less remarkable than it is just solid. have any researchers solved the problem of personifying the malignity of the universe? is that a really stupid question? how do you quantify something that hasn’t happened yet?
Rebecca Bates is a writer and editor living in New York. She is the senior editor at Sweet (on Snapchat Discover) and a co-editor of the online poetry magazine Powder Keg. Her non-fiction, poetry, and fiction has appeared in Vice.com, The Paris Review Daily, The New Inquiry, the Believer, Gigantic, and elsewhere.