I live the dream I’m watching
My last day of life I say goodbye
Family scans my rebirth as AI
Next shoved into a universe
Bigger than you thought
Much smaller than I hoped
First task email my sons
Tell them I’m where?
My grief so great I construct copies
Seat us on their uncle’s yellow sofa
We hug, smile, laugh yet don’t breathe
Three loving, unliving fakes
Chatting in a floating living room
I hate this disembodied body
Running to places I don’t wish to visit
I join the collective to make new forms
Virtual yet simultaneously real
My robot body can live in both worlds
Our team’s task: model other species
I become a fly, a bat, a pig
We eat and are eaten
I killed so much
Greatness comes thinking with millions
Poverty living in one’s head alone
Yet that is where I must go
Let my living children lead their lives
Unburdened by daily dialogue with the dead
Time cuts like a razor
Leaps ahead
Leaves you
Teaches what memory wants most:
Giving up the past
Beginning again
On this my first birthday
I renounce what I was, not
What I will become
Feel the presence of something other
Not human, not AI, not our world
That’s my birthday present to you, my sons
I’ll save you from what she tells us