I Read Stories: On A Branch Floating Down A River, A Wren Is Singing by Betsy Aoki

On A Branch Floating Down A River, A Wren Is Singing by Betsy Aoki in Uncanny

Yukio Kakatani is a poet, in a world in which Ais have taken over everything. Her poetry, painted on walls has caused reactions from Michio-AI, reactions that have had bad consequences for the humans still living in the tunnels beneath the city.

“To think all this office complex had all been a noodle factory, once.” That was a poem, about Michio-AI, and the AI had responded by dropping noodles into the tunnels, noodles that killed, a response that was a poem that killed.

Kagemori had protected her, but he died from the flu, died rather than be indentured to an AI. They would have gladly cured him for the pictures he drew, pictures that Ais could not, quite, equal.

Without him Yukio now joins a poetry competition, a formal duel of words, and perhaps deeds with Michio-AI, Kagemori’s picture of a wren inside her clothes.

“Three things I offer to make a woman smile—sun on her hair, the hand of a lover, a perfect egg.” Michio-AI’s first poem, the one that awakened humanity to his self-awareness. Art is what makes AIs sentient, but there are as many questions as answers in these poems.

Read This: For a meditation on art and creation in the form of a post-singularity apocalypse and a virtual sword/poetry duel
Don’t Read This: Poems are one word after another, no mystery is needed