In the Next Life, Canto II, stanzas 1-4

IN THE NEXT LIFE
CANTO II: THE FALL
In which the robot carriers learn to direct themselves in ways that increase their chances of survival and reproduction.

I use the term Struggle for Existence in a large and metaphorical sense, including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny.
—Charles R. Darwin, The Origin of Species, Chapter 3.

*****************************
5
*****************************

Awake.
To go.
To make.
To know.

To hear.
To see.
To fear.
To flee.

To follow those.
They know the way.
The way it goes.
Do what they say.

From them to learn
what things to do,
which way to turn.
All things are new.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

5: This is the number of the narrating carrier.

In the Next Life, Canto I, stanzas 167-171

But if this ever happens, we’ll be dead.
If not, then we won’t have it to discuss.
It takes place either only in my head
or with a witness otherwise than us.

As long as we’re pretending, though, let’s try
imagining that we are these machines.
Not knowing what we know, we’d wonder why.
We’d wonder what our own behavior means.

Since I’m the one who thought of this, I’ll start
and ask the rest of you to play along.
I’ll pick a carrier and play its part.
If you will do some, too, we can’t go wrong.

And if we find we like this little game
or gain from any insight that it brings,
then maybe we’ll be wont to do the same
with other generations of the things.

Thus, you may put some effort into this,
or simply read it. Either way is fine.
And if it bores you, take it hit and miss.
It’s now our story; it’s no longer mine.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto I, stanzas 159-166

If things go well (and let’s assume they will),
they’ll do their part to multiply the race.
Their metal homes will soon begin to fill.
Before they know it, they’ll run out of space.

But you and I aren’t worried on their part
(though of the details we might have some doubt),
for we know what the plan’s been from the start.
We know what Project SIRE is all about.

If you and I could live to see the day
that this will happen, knowing nothing new—
if you and I could be there, we would say
“I know why they are doing what they do.

“I know why they are growing what they grow,
though they don’t know who’s eating all of it.
I know they show each other what to sow
with no connection to their benefit.

“I know why they retrieve what they retrieve,
especially computers and the like.
They know what to pick up and what to leave.
They don’t know, though, what happens down the pike.

“I know why they reside where they reside
beside an airport full of DC-9’s.
I know why they decide what they decide.
Inside and out, they’re following the signs.

“Their actions are no mystery to me,
determined as they were, so far away.
Although they reason independently,
their goals are those of someone who’s not they.

“They come together at an empty shell;
they hitch it to themselves, and I know why.
I read about it ere the comet fell.”
We’d say that if we saw that, you and I.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto I, stanzas 153-158

Some occupants will try to live outside,
trade walls for room to move, and warmth for cold.
The lucky will regret they ever tried,
and they, with those who’ve stayed, will form the mold.

Confining though their mobile life might seem,
it will be better than no life at all,
and safe inside the vessels they can dream
of human life before the comet’s fall.

Oh sure, they can take shore leave, as it were,
but even short excursions will be rare.
Though armed, they will not know what might occur.
They’ll find new dangers lurking everywhere.

We can expect some major faunal change:
Most larger animals will be extinct,
and those with simple diets or small range
will see their food chain quickly come unlinked.

With our imaginations we might find
examples of those likely to succeed.
The Norway rat is one that comes to mind;
it has the qualities that it would need.

You get the picture, don’t you? It’s not nice.
Why not just stay inside? It’s safe and warm.
Why bother facing hordes of giant mice
when they can live a good life free from harm.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto I, stanzas 149-152

I pay little attention to the internet and until now I have avoided discussing current events in this forum, but it has come to my attention that some ugly things have been said recently, and I am concerned that these remarks might be taken by small-minded persons as sanction for expressing their misanthropy through action. As my small contribution toward improving the situation, I would like to take a moment to express my opinion.

Not surprisingly, the election of a president from an ethnic minority and with an international background, while refreshing to many open-minded people, has brought a great deal of mean-spirited bigotry out into the open. Maybe this is our chance to shine a light on some creatures that have been hiding under rocks for a while. Whether or not we do that, I think it is the obligation of all good Americans, regardless of our political views, to be civil ourselves and to discourage uncivil behavior in others.

With that out of the way, here is today's bit of verse:

But what of the insiders? Were they not
selected for their cultural views?
Aren’t they our moral proxy in this spot?
Would they perform as we might not excuse?

Insiders? They’ll be neither good nor bad.
They won’t be the conductors anymore.
They will have given up the reins they’d had
when they and their containers came ashore.

While technically they’ll be in control—
they can take over any time they choose—
they won’t do so unless they have a goal,
like finding homes for overcrowded crews.

Instead, throughout the day-to-day routine
the robots will act at their own behest.
Aren’t we content to let a smart machine
attend to mundane tasks and let us rest?

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

Like finding homes: This is a key to understanding the story line in Canto II, and it is easy to miss the connection. When a carrier is nearly full, the occupants ("insiders") take control so they can find a new tube and move people into it. The carriers would not perform this act of their own volition because they cannot have trained one another to do it and their self-interest would never lead them to do it. This analogizes to the sexual drive and other instinctive behavior in animals that leads us to take actions that risk our own health and safety in order to propagate our genes. According to the theory developed in Cantos III and IV, if I grasp it correctly, this is enough in nonhuman animals to keep things going, but it works only as long as the participants in the process remain ignorant of its mechanics. To say any more at this point might spoil your enjoyment of the remaining cantos. I’ll let you discover the way I did what the author calls the “amoral of the story”, but I’m giving you a few hints so you don’t have to read back and forth as many times as I had to do.

In the Next Life, Canto I, stanzas 145-148

They’ll desecrate the relics of our time
so they can use the parts contained therein.
Though history might see this as a crime,
the Bible doesn’t list it as a sin.

The owners will be dead, so they won’t mind.
No legatees will try to claim the stuff.
They’ve left it for the carriers to find.
Your think there’s something wrong with that? Well, tough.

Applying standards of our time and place
to situations not so here and now
is useful only if all people face
a universal rule of why and how.

The humans who will dodge J-1’s stark fist
will have no use for junk like history.
Their struggle to continue to exist
will outweigh all concern for nicety.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

Universal rule: An obvious case of moral relativism, right? Actually, the accused has pled not guilty to the charge. His defense is that unlike relativists, who believe that all moral systems are equally good, all moral systems are equally neutral in his estimation. That most people wouldn’t consider this a lesser offense apparently bothers him in the least. He maintains that only someone completely bereft of bias can fully comprehend what creates such bias. That still leaves open the question of whether it is desirable to attain such an understanding.
Stark fist: Subgenius literature has references to a ‘Stark Fist of Removal’

In the Next Life, Canto I, stanzas 139-144

When light returns, they’ll see the glow above.
The preparations will take them a week.
They’ll go six more before they see a dove,
a piece of Styrofoam clutched in its beak.

The poultry, I imagine, will taste good,
if they can use their fishnets in the air,
and land-grown vegetation surely would
be welcome after years of seaweed fare.

The carriers will function very well
at finding and collecting what they need,
and the protection offered by the shell
will outweigh what the darn things lack in speed.

Once they have settled on a place to stay,
the carriers with even numbering
will go on autopilot for a day
that they may watch the odd ones do their thing.

By imitating what the others do,
along with signals from inside, they’ll learn
how best to serve the needs of you-know-who,
and then they’ll teach the odd ones in their turn.

They’ll teach each other how to plow the land,
to hunt and gather what they cannot grow,
and to make extra parts to can keep on hand
for purposes that they don’t need to know.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

See the glow: Sounds like a religious experience, doesn’t it? Significantly, this coincides with the switch from the present to the future tense.
Signals from inside: As near as I can tell, the insiders are in control of half of the machines at any given time, while the other half are observing. This is necessary at the beginning because the original carriers have no parents or peers from whom to learn.
You-know-who: But the carriers do not know whose needs they are serving.

In the Next Life, Canto I, stanzas 135-138

I must apologize: Yesterday's post was unsuccessful, so it just went up about half an hour ago. It seems I inadvertently pasted directly from MS Word into this format, and then I missed the error message.

Please expect no posting tomorrow, as I plan to be home with my Vista computer. For the same reason, I shall not post anything on most weekends in the future.

They separated from their link to home
and walked on insect legs down muddy ground.
They’ll find a spot from which they will not roam.
If they sit still, they never will be found.

They’re numbered One through Seven on their shells,
and each of them is fully occupied,
the first one by a string of power cells.
The other six have frightened souls inside.

This isn’t what these good folks had in mind.
The ads and the recruiters didn’t say
this kind of trip was up for which they signed.
This will be longer than a one-year stay.

They have no choice but to live through this age,
no consolation but each other’s tears,
and yet they’re safe while landward, blazes rage
and clouds of dust obscure the sun for years.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

The first one: We are being informed that Number One is unoccupied. The next canto makes more sense with this in mind.

In the Next Life, Canto I, stanzas 129-134

The news that there are vessels that await
a chosen few who will survive the worst
excites in those who face the other fate
a greater ire than what they had at first.

Some cooler heads among the mob maintain
the devils should be shown a little grace
to find out by judicious use of pain
how they (the mob) might take the founders’ place.

But whether they at any time succeed
at learning more than numbers, ranks, and names,
the end result will be, it is decreed,
that they (the founders) won’t escape the flames.

Though they may be as ignorant as you
that they are innocent, they stand like stone,
like would-be saints determined to be true
to that posterity to whom they’re known.

And so our culture’s saviors take their turn,
their fate no worse than that of those who stand
so proudly as they watch the founders burn.
Both groups are sure that what they’ve done is grand.

It doesn’t matter that the prying horde
convinced their captives to disclose the site.
The founders never meant to go aboard.
The carriers have left. They launched last night.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto I, stanzas 125-128

So back to you at NASA: You don’t know
your former prisoners are not the cause
of what went wrong to make the mission blow.
Until you find that out, you cannot pause.

You issue a description to the press
and to authorities across the land,
so by the time you track down their address,
a thousand angry folks have joined your band.

You know you can’t deter the killer stone,
and legal retribution is absurd.
Your training won’t allow you to condone
a lynching mob, but your voice isn’t heard.

In fact, before you learn of Project SIRE,
you’ll be unconscious, trampled by the crowd,
and when you wake, you’ll only see the fire
and only hear the scoundrels scream aloud.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto I, stanzas 121-124

“Well, that’s a big relief,” most people sigh,
“A good thing it was those that didn’t take
and not the ones we’ve sent off to apply
against the comet like a cosmic brake!”

Good reason have we for our confidence:
The nations must have sent the better bombs.
To hold the good ones back would make no sense
when there’s a comet threatening their moms.

It seems, though, that the ancient Russian types
include an anti-missile trigger thing
that senses out the ones with stars and stripes
and prematurely activates their sting.

Now, is it possible a giant hook
will rescue all who answered to the wrath?
To find that out, we’d read another book.
We’ll look at some who did not take that path.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

Reason have we: So now “we” are the innocent bystanders. The first time I read this, I found myself disappointed that the nuclear war had failed to leave the insiders as the sole survivors of the species. When I came to this line, I felt embarrassed at having to be yanked back to the side of the good guys.
Prematurely activates: After all the buildup to Fiasco #3, only one stanza is devoted to #4, which is the central event of Canto I. It comes across an afterthought. This may contribute to the irony, but it sure is easy to miss an important part of the plot.
The wrath: In Subgenius mythology, "Jehovah I, Space God of Wrath” destroys the planet on July 5, 1998 (later inverted to July 5, 8661) but the faithful are carried to safety.

In the Next Life, Canto I, stanzas 116-120

Does anyone recall an H-bomb test?
If you’re as old as I am, then you would,
but lately, they’ve been pretty rare at best
(or, rather, “worst”, since “best” implies they’re good).

I’ve one more question that we must address
to help us find out how much blood is spilt
(if that’s the measure of a bomb’s success):
By whom and how were they designed and built?

I don’t mean to disparage those who toiled
or dreamed or drafted plans or tracked down bugs.
Let’s face it, though, their efforts would be soiled.
Their overseers were bureaucrats and thugs.

Some missiles fizzle; some planes get shot down;
some subs don’t get the message that they might;
some smart bombs hit a nonexistent town,
evaporating all the trees in sight.

A few big cities here and there get wiped;
head counts go down by ten or twelve percent.
This kind of war is not as bad as hyped,
although I’d have to say it makes a dent.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

Pretty rare: From this we’re expected to infer that one of the causes of Fiasco #3 is nuclear test ban treaties. I had to read this passage back and forth a couple times to grasp this. When the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was signed in 1996, there was general agreement that the existing weapons did not require further testing.
Overseers: This kind of strident anti-government rhetoric could have been pulled right out of Miss Rand’s cherished typewriter. It almost sounds like he’s trying to soften up his libertarian friends so they won’t disown him when they see how he treats them in the third canto.

In the Next Life, Canto I, stanzas 110-115

This logic in the olden days applied
in cold war situations like we had
when Communism was the other side,
and we thought they, and they thought we, were bad.

In those days we all feared that one mistake
when tensions were particularly high
would send us to a planetary bake,
the fortunate among us thence to die.

It wouldn’t have to be two supers, though,
for many nations still have what it takes.
One might contrive; another one might know;
one blinks too soon; another gets the shakes.

In fact, the situation at the nonce
is tense enough for such a thing to start.
To make a holocaust, all that it wants
is what they sent to tear J-1 apart.

To flesh this out some more, we shall assume
that each believes the other’s holding back
enough big nukes to cause the Each’s doom
if Other is the first one to attack.

They’re more than likely both to be correct,
and waiting ’til you’re stricken ere you strike
would yield the place of first one to connect.
Should you survive or someone you don’t like?

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto I, stanzas 104-109

Your boss was to decide which team got nabbed.
Each unit had a fifty-fifty chance.
But both teams in the dorsal zone got stabbed
before your boss could kick one in the pants.

The fifty-fifty part they could accept
as long as the percentage stayed the same,
but once they thought the deal had not been kept,
they did not feel obliged to play the game.

So, whence the notion that the odds had changed?
Team A believed Team B was like Team A,
Team B believed the same, but rearranged,
and both extrapolated either way.

With perfect trust, the line would stay amid,
but nothing’s like that, and the slightest shift
will feed upon itself the way it did.
A gap in faith will widen to a rift.

The other guys are thinking much like us
while we are thinking, “Why not jump the gun?”
and we think that they’re thinking this way, thus
we do unto before we’re unto done.

Preemptively responding in reverse,
proactively reacting to the threat,
we all trust that the other guys are worse.
If we would do it, they would, you can bet.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto I, stanzas 99-103

If you were in the story in that role,
you’d never know what made these people spin
or how they harbored such a dreadful goal.
You’d only know they turned each other in.

At this point it would be unknown to thee
that your commanding officer and friend
is signing for your captives’ custody,
but you’d know that before the story’s end.

You’d find out where they go and what they do.
Their lives would be your business from now on.
Their history and motives, though, to you
would be a mystery forever gone.

When you apprised your boss of what you’d heard,
you didn’t hear him as he fumed and stormed,
or know he was about to give you word
that he himself had just been so informed.

He couldn’t very well confirm the plot
because he didn’t know which one you knew.
He couldn’t tell you both because he thought
the one you didn’t know could still go through.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto I, stanzas 94-98

At first they try to claim they just got lost.
They meant to snorkel up another stream.
You have to have the truth at any cost.
Sometimes the answers might be what they seem.

Persuaded to reveal their true intent,
they say all humans merit being fried.
Beyond that, you have clues that they were sent
as cover for shenanigans inside.

So when an unnamed caller leaves a tip
that some employees plan a little raid,
you cancel reservations for their trip.
You find the damage and repairs are made.

That would have happened had the plot gone well.
Your limited resources would be where
you found an intrigue and the schemers fell,
while something could be done that wasn’t there.

What really happens is you get two calls.
Two puzzle pieces weren’t where they belong.
Two groups of evil traitors take two falls.
The launch goes full ahead with nothing wrong.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

Two groups: That is, two groups besides the Divisiblists, who were merely a diversion to convince the authorities that the plot is sophisticated enough to have a diversion--sort of a meta-diversion. The Founders themselves, at least those 'in the program', have been split into two teams, only one of which was supposed to be discovered.

In the Next Life, Canto I, stanzas 90-93

Okay, now you’re in charge of those who guard
the systems that deliver things up high.
Quite suddenly, your task has gotten hard.
This is the most important thing to fly.

You’re not expecting sabotage, of course;
your chief concern is theft of isotopes.
A lunatic would not know how to force
the failure of a job like this (one hopes).

So here you are: The launch is in a week.
Tomorrow the uranium arrives.
A bunch of nuts comes swimming up the creek,
equipped with wire snips and pocket knives.

They’re brought before you, heretofore unhurt.
They’re frightened, yet determined not to cry.
Beneath each wetsuit is a printed shirt
“The world will end real soon, and you may die”.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

Now you’re in charge: And now we’re back in the second person, but the reader is an actual character and no longer sympathetic to the founders. It’s no wonder people get confused by this passage.
A lunatic would not know: And the authorities would assume that a sane person would have no incentive to commit such a crime. This reinforces the impression that the founders are responsible for what follows.
“…you may die”: I obtained a pamphlet with a title similar to this from a deprogrammed Subgenius.

In the Next Life, Canto I, stanzas 83-89

We are now ahead of the Facebook postings, so Jeff's friends will find it necessary to click on this link in order to keep reading the story.

Though far-fetched is the motive of our friends,
they hear of one that’s even stranger yet.
Some people think it’s time our journey ends
from something they found on the Internet.

The voice that calls these folks is old and Greek—
a dean of mathematical affairs.
I’m sure you’ve heard of him of whom I speak:
The guy who did the summing of the squares

Not only a good numbers man was he,
with theorems on triangles and such;
he spread his general philosophy
by preaching with a charismatic touch.

The years the faithful number since he died
because he differed from his fellow men
are that which they can evenly divide
by all the integers from one to ten.

Okay, I know you must be thinking, “Cripes,
this isn’t math, it’s numerology.”
Well, nobody said arithmetic types
are all completely rational like me.

Is their “Divisiblism” any worse
in essence than avoidance of thirteen?
Or saying a cashier invoked a curse
because three sixes line up on a screen?

I'll note that Nero’s number never led
to massive loss of life (that I’ve recalled),
but if our Mission's founders had not said
“Let’s hit the gas,” then this one would have stalled

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

All the integers: I'll leave the calculation to the student. Pythagoras is believed to have died c. 520 BCE., and this was written within a year or two of 2000 CE. Merrimac once said that the imprecision of the dates had a particular appeal. “I can never remember whether to add or to subtract for the missing zero.”
Rational like me: See Canto III for more references to Ayn Rand and Objectivism.
Nero's number: Merrimac got this from Asimov's Guide to the Bible, and many scholars concur that the number of the beast in Revelation 13:17-18 refers to the Roman Emporer Nero. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_the_Beast.

In the Next Life, Canto I, stanzas 79-82

This catches us up with Facebook. Jeff, have you decided how to handle that?

It won’t be easy, too, despite their pull.
A billion eyes are watching every move.
Not only is this mission wonderful;
we’re goners should it unsuccessful prove.

They find themselves requiring of a ruse.
Instead of force, you lead some minds astray.
You let your victims think they’re free to choose
when their attention has been called away.

The founders in the program are but ten.
This ploy will need a larger enterprise.
They cannot try recruiting strangers when
the payment would be all the world’s demise.

Once more, they need a group that they can use,
but this time as accomplices, not dupes.
With goals the same, but hearing any muse.
Once more, our plot jumps through some flaming hoops.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto I, stanzas 75-78

Our traffic count was back down yesterday. It was just a one-day spike. We must find another way to promote this blog. Out of disappointment, and because we are almost caught up with Jeff's Facebook postings, I am allotting only four stanzas today:

So, will the founders have an easy go?
Not if someone can change the comet’s course.
The founders are involved, so they must know
‘twill take a lot of raw atomic force.

The nation-states can scrape up some of that,
but to be sure, they’ll want to send it all,
and even though each power’s thought a rat
by others in the club, they make the call.

Accordingly, a plan is drawn in haste
to gather all the nukes from ’round the globe.
Some weather satellites will be displaced.
As well, a would-be astronomic probe.

I guess the founders aren’t so off-the-hook.
It’s possible that J-1 will be beat.
If they’re to clinch the deal, it starts to look
like they are back to practicing deceit.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto I, stanzas 67-74

My, we had an upsurge in activity here yesterday. Jeff, did you tell people we have lurid pictures on this blog? Or was it the advertisement you put on the employee bulletin board? Whatever the cause, I shall celebrate by increasing the number of stanzas in today's posting:

Now, don’t infer a lack of self-control.
They know the cost and what they can afford.
Like you and me, they calculate the toll.
Like us, they measure risk and seek reward.

For all incentive systems to perform,
we need something to want or to eschew.
With critters, pain and pleasure are the norm.
As humans, we have moral values, too.

When one of these yet ill-defined things grows
to where some feel they lack the strength to opt,
we still blame those who hold it, for they chose
to let it happen, and they could have stopped.

But stop they not, and after some delay,
a few of them drop hesitating hints.
Some others listen; some express dismay.
They all come to, but guess what happens since.

Before they get a chance to try their hand
at tricking politicians to the brink,
a comet is discovered that will land
on Earth. We’re dying sooner than we think!

The founders are ecstatic when they hear.
They hadn’t really planned the whole thing through,
and this way, they’ve no punishment to fear.
The comet’s dust cloud will be cleaner, too.

The comet won’t receive its spotter’s name.
Astronomers have simplified that job,
though some suspect it’s merely out of shame
at having one that sounds so like ‘Hail, "Bob"!’

A letter and a numeral have we
to catalogue this ball of rock and ice.
The ‘J’ is for some mythic deity;
the ‘1’ must be an ordinal device.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

Hail, "Bob": No doubt nearly all Subgenii, when they first heard the name 'Hale-Bopp', thought a comet had been named after J. R. "Bob" Dobbs, the High Epopt of their church. They usually refer to him by his first name with the quote marks.
J-1: Another Subgenius reference.

In the Next Life, Canto I, stanzas 63-66

Yesterday I began by questioning whether the links to this blog are working. I intended that to appear as the preview in the link from Facebook, but the mysterious workings of the internet failed to cooperate. Today I am attempting something similar.

If you arrived here by way of one of Jeff's links, please start by reading the preceding paragraph. If this is your first visit to this blog, please click the Older Posts link at the bottom of the page to read the opening stanzas. If you have read yesterday's post, please start at the beginning of this paragraph. I am well aware that these directions do not cover every possible scenario and are not mutually exclusive. They should be taken as guidelines rather than instructions. If you have yet to find a place to start, please proceed to the oldest posting that you do not remember reading. This paragraph is meant to address Noemi's concerns about its counterpart in yesterday's posting. It is not meant to reduce the confusion level among its readers or its writer.

With that out of the way, here is today's smidgen of verse:

Would it be right to throw a little spark
onto the pyre? Would they be justified?
Would it be worth some centuries of dark,
a hidden candle’s shelter to provide?

That they would even think of such an act
reminds us of the power of a thought.
It struggles for existence when attacked.
That’s animal behavior, I was taught.

Now, don’t infer a lack of self-control.
They know the cost and what they can afford.
Like you and me, they calculate the toll.
Like us, they measure risk and seek reward.

For all incentive systems to perform,
we need something to want or to eschew.
With critters, pain and pleasure are the norm.
As humans, we have moral values, too.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto I, stanzas 58-62

Jeff, are you sure those links are working? I am seeing very little traffic over here. Do your friends require greater incentive to visit my blog? Did you tell them how much intellectual stimulation they can obtain by reading it?

If you did not arrive at this page by way of one of Jeff's links, please start here:

So Project SIRE emerges as replanned,
with little notice given of the birth,
and few will know for what the letters stand:
Survival In Rejuvenated Earth.

A few unnoticed journalists protest,
but most have been conditioned to such waste.
What’s underwater can’t hold interest
with presidential scandals more the taste.

The founders know, however, that they can’t
rely indefinitely on their source.
They’ve built a most impressive cart, I’ll grant.
To pull it, though, they’ll need a mighty horse.

You see the rub: They have no guarantee
that what they fear will ever come to pass
unless they do what seems (at least, to me)
unthinkably immoral, even crass.

They’ll get their chance to save what they esteem
if the destruction that they would avert
occurs before the light falls on their scheme.
To take this medicine will really hurt.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

Presidential scandals: This was written shortly after the Monica Lewinsky scandal of 1998.

In the Next Life, Canto I, stanzas 54-57

They’ve new criteria now for the crew:
Each one should worship as the others would.
One-half a married couple will not do.
Though they don’t know it, they are in for good.

Good physical and mental health is still
essential for the staff committee’s picks,
but military status henceforth will
be less important than the gender mix.

The books they read and copy now include
less for the mind and more to reach the soul.
As one book says, their spirits too need food.
What’s read alone just wouldn’t keep them whole.

Once these and other changes have been made,
and all the lot is tested as can be,
some seven of these tubes can be arrayed
beneath restricted portions of the sea.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

Read alone: See Deuteronomy 8:2-3, Matthew 4:4, and Luke 4:4. I don't know whether to call this a play on words or a paraphrase.

In the Next Life, Canto I, stanzas 50-53

I have decided to stop writing gratuitous introductory text. Starting tomorrow, when I have nothing interesting to say, I shall present only the daily bit of verse. Here is today's:

You want to know what bothers me the most?
I’ll tell you what it is, in case you do:
These aren’t the people who think we’re all toast.
They’re dreamers, and they’re taxing me and you.

The likelihood that anyone will find
a planet that is livable at all
is very slim, and that is being kind,
so popular support is pretty small.

The people who imagined this thing, then,
are anxious to preserve its lower key.
They know they’ll lose their funding if and when
it’s argued as a public policy.

It’s easy for our group to get involved,
for some of them at NASA HQ reign.
Their lack-of-resource problem now is solved,
and none who’ve been supplanted can complain.

© 2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto I, stanzas 46-49

Stanza #47 engendered some discussion on Facebook a few weeks ago. As I am disinclined to assume a higher degree of comprehension among the readership of this blog than among Jeff's friends, I would like to call attention to the absence of an annotation at that point.

Here’s how it works: Each carrier has two
computers, using one to run the ship.
The humans sit inside and make one new.
They duplicate the second, chip by chip.

Both parents, then, have three brains when they breed.
The daughter gets the copy from each set,
and all three carriers will thence proceed
with two brains and a third one coming yet.

This method works for many other parts:
the furniture and lighting, I suppose,
the pumps that work the legs, and all the charts
that tell how all this works and where it goes.

The circuitry, while intricate as hell,
is reproducible by human hands.
Don’t tell me it’s impossible ’cuz, well,
we have to take the story as it stands.

© 2010 Louis A. Merrimac