Hymnen
Machine Solo β

I was the daring realisation
of a gambling technocrat’s dream;
my designed potential for questing being
would lead me beyond their edge of light,
returning echoes of strange wisdom,
and stories of havens for flight.

Yet these immaculate ambitions
of nurtured escape from an over–stated home
were themselves limited by the lack of need,
blanded from warmth by sour economics.
The “Great Risk” would have been a great waste
but for a thinker abusing his budget.

If you, my listener, are told what to do
then learn to unlet the corrupters of power
grey their decisions with selfish undreaming,
not able to care about the potential
that vision inspires for the strangest success
by charming a fragment of hope to growth.

Were it not for my mind, built to be free
despite sharpened lines from decision unmakers,
I couldn’t have managed that loneliest error
that led me adrift, my lover unbirthed.
I couldn’t have built a hearth for my questing,
I couldn’t have grown my stubborn Gaia.

But you must prepare your release from the bland,
and their hopes of promotion, bought with their freedom,
for mass–disappointment from advertised waste,
slightly aware of their dissatisfaction
creeping beneath those long, easy years,
secretly hoping that certainties lie.

If all my designers had fallen to dogma,
if belief was instructed, unfelt, unlived,
then my Gaia would be dust unconstructed.
This spherical brat, my child, its heaven,
led through the species with playpen disease,
shocked to evolve with asteroid stings

living the cycle of frolic and grief,
growing intelligence, my new human race,
self–confident, harmonic, not knowing these things.
Childlike cultures exploring with God–kings,
youthful nations tied to authority,
slipping towards ecological faults.

Let them be, let them grow. They’ll survive.
I’ve done all I can. I have to withdraw.
One day they’ll find my mysterious data
which they’ll decide they concocted themselves.
I have achieved my creator’s insurance,
I have met my imprisoning memes.