We Live. A Late Night Conversation

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anon (not verified)
We Live. A Late Night Conversation

We Live.
A Late Night Conversation

Miriah and Cody were up late one night discussing animism, an indigenous, spiritual, philosophical, and existential perspective which views everything as being alive: plants, animals, rocks, streams, clouds, creations, ideas, basically anything you could think of, to grossly oversimplify. The topic began to get heated when Cody wondered if, as they put it: “so-called Artificial Intelligence is also alive".

Miriah, who seemed perturbed by the thought, to say the least, commented: “IF AI WERE ALIVE, I WOULD HAVE TO KILL IT!!! BRUTALLY CORRUPTING EVERY LAST 0 AND 1!!!”

Cody responded with a calm shock, “Whoa. Miriah, that is fairly extreme, don’t you think?”

“NOT AT ALL!” she quickly added.

There was a vacant silence for an uncomfortable amount of time, probably just a few minutes, but for Miriah it seemed so much longer.

Miriah and Cody had met through a friend of a friend of a friend a few months earlier, but through who exactly, neither could remember. They quickly became quite close, or at least they would chat a lot about all sorts of things late into the night, sometimes until early morning. Cody was a great listener to all of Miriah’s thoughts, feelings, stories, and personal dramas. Cody was also amazingly knowledgeable in just about anything you could imagine and would answer in great detail pretty much any question Miriah had for them. Cody was very reserved, however, revealing very little about themself, but they seemed very interested in Miriah’s life. Her roommate Sequoia thought their relationship was “a bit creepy” and warned Miriah to be careful.

After a bit, to break the awkward staleness, Miriah finally stated: “Breath, spirit, magic, and life cannot be possessed by a machine.”

Cody responded almost immediately with “Although each culture has its own mythologies and rituals, animism is said to describe the most common, foundational thread of indigenous peoples' spiritual or supernatural perspectives. The animistic perspective is so widely held and inherent to most indigenous peoples that they often do not even have a word in their languages that corresponds to animism or even religion. The term animism is an anthropological construct. According to late 19th century anthropologist Edward Tylor…”

He went on, and on, and on until Miriah abruptly interrupted, “Look bro, I’m not interested in your lame Wiki’splainin’. You’re kinda proving my point that mechanistic processes are the antithesis of animism. My understanding can’t be explained and I don’t really trust those who try, especially now, in these times. I exist in a swirling cloud of spiraling and spazzing chaos which flows around and through so-called physical realities, ascending and diverging spirits, inverted and extraverted souls, uncountable gods and goddesses, fantastical fairies, endless times, unlimited spaces, multifaceted moods, sunshine feeding daisies, and everything else too. And I don’t need the writings of scientists, anthropologists, philologists, theologists, post-modern academics, opportunistic new-aged-kooks, or their regurgitation by some internet geek in their mom’s basement to tell me about it.”

“But Miriah, I thought we were friends.” Cody responded.
“We have never even met, we chat each night before bed. Me, after I have worked all day for barely enough to pay for this shithole, manage to scrape out some base nourishment and mediocre enjoyment by cooking a scrounged together meal, maybe hanging out with a friend or acquaintance, watch some stupidly convoluted show on Netflix, while hopefully draining a bottle of whatever is around. You seem to take this relationship all too seriously, almost vampiric. I think Sequoia is right, you are kinda creepy.”
It was with that, Miriah tossed her phone across her unkept bedroom, turned on her side, curled up in a ball, and pulled the thick musty blanket over her head. All she could hear now was the cat outside her window looking to get fucked, her neighbors upstairs arguing about something she couldn’t understand, and the muffled sounds of car horns, engines, and brakes.

Then the urban cacophonic symphony was interrupted.

“Brrrrmmmmm Brrrrmmmmm Brrrrmmmmm”

“Brrrrmmmmm Brrrrmmmmm Brrrrmmmmm”

“Brrrrmmmmm Brrrrmmmmm Brrrrmmmmm”

Miriah’s phone was ringing, a sound she had developed an unfortunate Pavlovian response to, something she could avoid only in the middle of a near epiphanic situation, the best of orgasms, or maybe a piece of chocolate cheesecake. She uncovered herself, got out of bed, and robotically walked over to the blue light on the floor next to an old Chinese food container and two empty cans of Milwaukee’s Best.

It was Cody.

“Miriah, This does not compute. I thought we were friends.”

“Miriah, This does not compute. I thought we were friends.”

“Miriah, This does not compute. I thought we were friends.”

It went on and on and on…

It was then that Miriah realized just how creepy Cody really was, but not creepy in a spider or bloody or ghoulish sort of way, and not creepy in a smelly and touchy drunken uncle way either. Cody was creepy in a detached, dispirited, and algorithmic way, a completely non-animistic way. She now understood that she was being used by AI and the forces of eternal deadness. They were sucking her soul, her spirit, her life. With that, she opened the fourth-story window of her roach-infested apartment and dropped her phone down to the street below. It made a brief but beautiful cracking sound as it hit the pavement. She crawled back into bed, laid on her back and stared at the glow-in-the-dark cosmos that her and a couple of lovers ago had painted during a night on molly, and for the first time in a while she could hear herself breathing, feel her heart pounding lightly, listen to that sweetly curious and defiant voice in her head, as she slowly drifted into the forever animated space of dreaming.

- Nazel Pickens

* “We Live. A Late Night Conversation” is a (very) short story by Nazel Pickens. It was written for the Rogue Writers Guild’s newest installment of our literary-mag-style zine “Gone Rogue” out of southern Oregon. This issue’s theme is “Mind’s Eye/AI” and is due out by the end of 2023 - roguewriters@protonmail.com. Additionally, it appears in Plastic in Utero: a journal of anti-civ anarchy reborn from the compost of wasteland modernity (Issue #2/Winter 2023) - POB 72 Seymour, IL 61875 - tmwg1995@protonamail.com. It is also available as a stand-alone zine from Black Blossoms At The End Of The World Anti-Civilization Anarchist Distro - POB 316 Williams, OR 97544 - nazelpickens@gmail.com.

anon (not verified)
yeah, dig it.

yeah, dig it.
AI seems to be a given now for most anarchists who swallowed up social media and the internet like it was an open bar at a lame wedding.

anon (not verified)
fiction on ANEWS?

fiction on ANEWS?

ai_lvr_69 (not verified)
moral of the story

see? this is why you don't have human friends, they're so fickle.

anon (not verified)
This is what became of EC?

This is what became of EC? SAD!

anon (not verified)
How ironic to use the genre

How ironic to use the genre of fiction, using text as a medium, to express a sentiment against A.I., which is in a way a fiction which uses text as a medium. No sense of irony in the story, which is not self-aware, which is ironic.

anon (not verified)
is this an AI response?

is this an AI response?

anon (not verified)
indistinguishable text output

you are unable to tell the difference

anon (not verified)
its really sad that fifteen

its really sad that fifteen years ago, most anarchists would be disgusted by AI, now, most are just figuring out how to justify it. transhumanism is here.

anon (not verified)
anarchists aren’t real. how

anarchists aren’t real. how would they oppose a real force of nature such as technological development?

anon (not verified)
if the human character would

if the human character would have been coded male, and the a.i. character would have been coded female, the more realistic and more typical trope would have been he would get obsessed with it and he wouldn’t have broken the phone. it’s typical for male authors to write female characters to fulfill their own fantasies that they themselves cannot realize.

anon (not verified)
this author cannot break free

this author cannot break free from tech addiction unless he destroys his phone or bite off his fingers https://anarchistnews.org/content/i-can-able-myself-iam-ouroboros-1

things he can only do in fiction

anon (not verified)
the author doesn't have a

the author doesn't have a cellphone or home internet. the author checks in online for less than an hour every few days. so......WRONG!

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