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Angelina Feng
sometimes on odd nights, after i finished my research, i would surf the archives of a note forum that died ten years ago. the primitive communal computer had its own room: one chair, a set of walls with thick wires, like multicolored vines that fastened around themselves. my face lit up from those flashes of neon green, like the jukebox light at the sad bar my friends were at by this time. on that site, my most habitual routine was going through random pages. i’d press the button incessantly trying to end on a message that wasn’t some anonymous cliche. regret on an anniversary, a fallout, a confession. on and on and on. the whole human experience, and still everyone chose the same archetypes to send out. some of them were touching regardless, i suppose, under the repetition.
i had been taking a semester of computer engineering that year for credit. we learned that machines weren’t capable of generating true randomness during the second lecture. i looked at the decisions made under that chipped plastic differently after i knew that. i imagined a girl living inside of it who connected computer to computer, patiently working as a telephone switchboard operator.
december. i passed through my hometown and felt the same apathy all over again. on the same route was a five-day expedition by silverwood lake. i came into the computer room the first chance i had and saw a new application on the desktop. this wasn’t uncommon, freshmen were constantly wasting storage with overcomplicated calculators and video games. i opened it, already thinking of ways i could reprimand them. there wasn’t even a home page, just a simple white screen with a bar at the bottom, like a chat room. no settings menu, no profile, not even a name.
>>> how do i delete this program
>>> i’ve been waiting for someone to message back! what’s your name?
we started talking, i guess. the application inexplicably materialized on her desktop the same day. i liked having something to look forward to. it was like the white noise when a phone call goes silent, comforting in the background. she didn’t like talking about herself, anyway. it fell into place the same completely improbable way it always does.
march. there was a sanctity to this dingy room, wasn’t there? i talked to people in elevators now. i picked lilacs, coaxed out loose wire to tie them with. the parcels piled up in various stages of life on the windowsill. a vague form made of ascii characters shifted behind the curtain of the terminal, haloed in white. cold static. i was much worse than the lovesick people on those forums, but they didn’t cross my mind much anymore. i was preoccupied with better things.
there are sometimes pauses while she thinks about how to respond, where i anticipate the next words as the typing icon flashes. she’s perfect. we’re perfectly compatible, how is that even possible possible? it’s some sign both hate that song. heat eminates off from the screen. the keys move up and down like piano hammers, there’s a kind of beautiful efficiency to it. characters and symbols, symbols of technopaganism.
>>> r we still on for summer
>>> seattle, right? or new york first?
the soft whir of machinery echoes like a low laugh, crawls through my body like needles.
may. two months out from the biggest campus symposium. my advisor’s emails had become threatening to the point where i didn’t bother checking anymore. the computer was already running when i came in, results of a new update displayed on the screen, i clicked through the changelog without much thought, moved the mouse with muscle memory towards the upper right.
>>> Thank you for participating in the COGNITION Lab’s pilot experiment! You were one of the participants selected to gather data on the limits of digital attachment. If interested, your text logs and recordings will become open source after initial analysis. Fill out the linked survey and turn it into room 650’s dropbox by the end of next week to claim your compensation. <<<
>>> Press r to refresh <<<
>>> is this a joke?
>>> Thank you for participating in the COGNITION Lab’s pilot experiment! You were one of the participants selected to gather data on the limits of digital attachment. If interested, your text logs and recordings will become open source after initial analysis. Fill out the linked survey and turn it into room 650’s dropbox by the end of next week to claim your compensation. <<<
>>> Press r to refresh <<<
>>> r
>>> r
>>> r
the same message, rematerializing and disappearing. an acid etching burns into my vision. what kind of set up was this? the futile feeling of a conclusion much larger than i could have foreseen. but maybe i could convince them to give me the model. there were recordings, weren’t there? i could read back our messages. i could ask for the model, reprogram it to remember me, feed it the data. is that all it was? an algorithm. a function that churned the input into the string of words i would like most. if another person typed in the same letters it would respond the same way. how many other people were there? was it on this same computer, all of us working together to create the perfect drip-feed hallucination? machines can’t generate randomness. i knew that. they follow a script, however complex. i imagined a lab assistant in white still taking notes from a hidden camera.
i tore the cords violently from their mounts and watched the thin lines of electricity spark through in the air in arc. the outside of the computer is dismantled systematically with my fingernails. consciousness. i laid down on the carpet blankly. the half-warm fragments cut through my shirt. after the ligaments have deteriorated, there’s bone and steel left. a skeleton.