The Wave Hennets: Computer
WORD-PROCESSOR
It goes chee-gock and chee-gock, chee-gock, the word-
processor, flicking the letters into place.
Doesn't matter at all if it's quite absurd:
obeying fingers, clumsy or clever or
wise or ignorant, order the circuits' trace,
quite irrespective of sense. It will print for
you two S's instead of one if your hand
dithered an instant — recording dithers seems
what it's set up to do. It won't understand
errors like that. But just consider: it deems
either S is the one that fits in the phrase,
leaves to you the decision which to erase.
YOU SEE WHAT YOU SEE
Say you type a mistake. The word-processor
shows on the screen a double-N where there should
have been one. Delete this, or its successor?
They are no more than traces. One is as good,
viewed as a light, as the other. Specimens
of no type whatsoever. Where the time-base
passes by thousands per second, and the coils
have been twitching with current, why should you chase
entity nowhere? Why get into the toils
of reality? Do agree to agree.
It's much simpler to say you see what you see.
SIMULATION
The computer, for game, gives you a roadway
twisting across a landscape. Simulation
makes the fields and the houses and trees okay,
but you can see that they're like a child's picture
in a Noddy book — model Dublo station,
tree made of sponge, grass of baize. Why this failure?
In the future, when rams get mega-K size,
trees will have leaves (and you'll set the wind to blow
them at Beaufort Scale 9); it can be sunrise
(windows will mirror it); add your own rainbow
(way up high) — but by then, so far from the book,
why, you needn't switch on — just go out and look.
SCREEN-SAVER
On the screen is a screen-saver: a ribbon
made out of coloured lines is twisting over
in a space of its own, a restless icon
searching and never finding, making moiré
from its black intersections with self, rover
turning away and returning, in survey
of its nowhere confinement, some kind of fish
endlessly nosing for freedom in a blank
exploration, drawn on by a robot wish
matched with a robot frustration, like a crank
that draws pistons down, lifting them. Isn't so —
Here is nothing that moves, only lights that glow.
COMPUTER-GAME
Was called Lemmings. Computer-game for the fan.
Army of marching, obedient helots,
in a maze full of dangers, who, to a man,
couldn't refrain from marching to death in fire
or in water. The player it is who spots
what must be done and orders at his desire
that one lemming must freeze and be 'Barrier',
saving the others, or must mine without pause,
or build steps across traps, or become 'Basher',
knocking down walls. Best of all were 'Bombs', because
they exploded in bits and broke through the floor.
Was a pity their death, though, lowered the score.
COMPUTER GAMES
The Nintendo game trains anticipation:
after you've suffered the red burst, the drop down,
to the tune of expiring tops, frustration
fixes the memory — now you will recall,
as the nasty sea-urchin ball, like a clown
bounces along, to leap up in time, then fall
so the next one goes over you, your little
legs flailing round like crazy windmills. Monsters
out of comics will treat you as a skittle
save when you've saved up nine lives. Young travellers
on to princess and wealth without fail explode
every rival, long as they keep to the road.
THE DEVIL IN THE GAME
In the game was a nasty Red Devil, who
ate up your Treasure-Hunter, but at Grade 1
he was easy to miss. But at Grade 2,
so as to win, you had to tempt him to go
down the wrong cavern-openings, but you'd gone
out of his way in good time. Wasn't so slow
in Grade 3: in the maze farther in you had
to turn so quickly and turn again so that
you were running away from his back. Got bad
soon as you switched to Grade 4: then, like a cat
he would wait by the Treasure. With four levels
now of strategy, fortune was the Devil's.
COMPUTER-GRAPHICS
This computer-screen showed a strange crustacean
whiskered and clawed, segmented in gold and green,
but evolving in a slow twangling rotation
spawning by outspinning rings that were studded
with accretions that glowed from within, chlorine-
livid and bromine-intense. This crab budded
with obsessive pursuance of escaping
shape that could never be seized, an infinite
kneading, shedding of dead selves, an undraping,
endlessly desperate, to clothe separate
sure identity, never reaching its aim
as it burgeoned, abandoned, all it became.