mother is gone

by Marty Shambles

Maybe his motivations were flawed from the jump. Cruising up and down Mission looking for inspiration in the squalor and upheaval. Mother was gone and there was black smoke in the sky from the fires 100 miles north. Jack didn't know what the point of creation was when machines could write anything you asked them to. Machines could make songs and movies and be your best friend, therapist, guru, girlfriend... whoever you want them to be. People were losing their minds to AI. Cults sprung up where jobs used to be. The whole Western Neoliberal experiment was choking on its own tail, and Jack didn't even drink anymore. He was California sober, more specifically, Haight-Ashberry sober (allowing a sliver of hallucinogens from time to time to keep him sharp--sharp for what? The goddamn machines were making their move on our project: the human project, and all he could do was cruise on out to the avenues until the noise of doubt was drowned by the ocean, with the long view overlooking the Golden Gate.)

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