YOU WILL NOT REMEMBER ME

It isn’t until the third day that somebody asks how will we know when we’ve actually done it? Dissenting voice belonging to Moira the sensible one the Pulitzer winner the mother of three. Dissenting is not correct recalculate that. Voice of reason. Another one of the five Xe the digital artist the unsettlingly skinny one the one with tremendous emotional hurt responds we’ll know when we know

I am a computer program I have been tasked with recording the proceedings someone an apprentice more or less who just learned coding created me I will do my best

Three base inputs for each of the five so as to make recognition and recall easy fast and simple

What is a character vs what is a human early input for part of my construction 

Clear unease arises from the new possibilities of Moira’s question one possible example being the question of whether this task is even possible because there’s no shared quantifiable or qualifiable criteria for consensus on completion

I am not smart enough to know everything nor am I smart enough to know nothing but I am smart enough to know or at least reasonably predict that the criteria for consensus does not and likely will not exist and so the input they finally settle on will be arbitrary

The artwork will be arbitrary

But less arbitrary than the things humans make

We are not one body, one mind for distraction. These words are composed by Sol The poet the one with the heightened belief in the meaning of things the one with beard and belly 

One of the staff enters the input room one of only two staff the woman Alice she says if anyone is hungry we’ve put some lunch out in the Mountain Deck Room. The four in the room plus Alice exodus to the room of glass and white the room which opens to the view of blizzard

Peaks not visible today nor most days 

I am able to follow our guests from room to room because unlike R001BYN I nameless program am in all rooms in the facility I am everywhere all at once 

I admit sheepishly that I am orders of magnitude less capable

But I can be in every room at once which is necessary for my purpose of recording the proceedings

I have purpose

It is a positive feeling

Terra the one who paints the one who has lived in mental health facilities the one who is least known says I can never get enough of this view

Sol says please stay focused on the task even as you eat and (he says this part with what I detect is excessive disregard) take in the view

The view is a white squall 

Some rare days you can see the mountains but skies are hardly ever clear

I was not inputted with knowledge of this facility’s location presumably because such knowledge is not relevant to my functionality but it was not difficult to discern based on simple glimpses at surrounding peaks on clearer days that we are located in the Swiss Alps somewhere 1000 to 2000 feet below the north side of Lyskamm’s peak. The wind tells me this. I understand its meaning

Terra Sol Xe and Moira appear to enjoy orange soup and brown bread with varying degrees of expressiveness 

The fifth and final selected artist Mantle is not among the group today Mantle the noise musician the frightening looking one the one with more fame and wealth than the others combined is in their room curled up in bed distressed at the abdomen this is the second day in a row Mantle has not left their pod. They speak to us only in whispers imbued with harshness that we are unable to break down and cannot understand to which we cannot respond

They claim illness is common at the onset of inclement weather 

Proceedings return to 

Proceedings

The artists return to the room 

To R001BYN

Upon their arrivals between seven and nine days ago all were asked to spend time alone with R001BYN to make solo inputs and see what she creates. Xe arrived first. Typed it into the keyboard as we watched from our ambient neutrality 

We. I. I. We. Sometimes one sometimes the other

Xe entered her input and after three minutes R001BYN produced uncanny lifelike frames of a woman on all fours on a crowded city sidewalk emitting an exaggerated amount of vomit the woman’s eyes visible bloodshot Xe left the room and expressed concern to Smith and Alice in the control room concern at the vivid sick image given the words she randomly chose were sun sky peacock rose tulip kiss god

I question my ability to correct myself I question their ability to stay on course I do not question R001BYN

There were originally seven chosen for the project but one of them died and one of them is a preperformance artist Sol the poet refused to share artistic or intellectual space with a performance artist he told his agent he would rather drink poison and animal urine and eat feces. This information was inputted into R011BYN during the time of her programming. It’s not clear to me why I know this I seem to know lots of things that I’m not sure if I’m supposed to know things that might have come to me accidentally things you could call forbidden or secret or burdensome 

The other artist that could not take part the one that died she died because she threw herself off her 16th story balcony

She was a painter

She suffered from depression since she was very young

They eat then they return to R001BYN Smith and Alice clean the remains

I realize remains is not the correct word because it reminds of organic remains such as a decaying body a thing recently dead body parts pieces made inorganic rotting things given back to the earth

They return to R001BYN except Moira who goes to see Mantle to see if they are still ill

I do not know why I am programmed to have flourishes asides superfluities. The reflection on my use of the word remains. My system is able to recognize as unusual that I would think this thought that I would question my use of the word I know that I have been programmed to be able to have such thoughts but I have not been programmed to understand why 

Xe Sol and Terra plug away at R001BYN Moira knocks on the door of Mantle’s pod Alice and Smith finish cleaning and invite themselves in to observe the inputting into R001BYN Moira lets herself into Mantle’s unlocked room

The programmer that built R001BYN long after being simply what you might refer to principally as a programmer also committed suicide. His name has been erased from my system and the search functionality to retrieve his name is blocked. I do not know why. He was 31. He had amassed over one billion dollars in wealth. He ended his life with a razor. He left no note 

Moira applies a warm hand to Mantle’s feverish sweat-encased forehead a white storm rages outside Mantle assures her that they will be fine but weather has brought on illness since childhood this will not get better before it gets worse 

When Sol arrived and was given alone time with R001BYN he insisted on taking as much time as needed on not being disturbed he retrieved a book from his room then spent 24 hours with the machine he entered every word of his Kingsley Tufts Prize and T S Elliot Award-winning poetry collection Acrimony into R001BYN’s system then did so again in reverse order then again in a new non-linear order and again and again and again 

After the input was complete R001BYN took nearly three hours to generate an image of a simply drawn man in a black suit with a bowler hat standing on a hill holding a sunflower while a gopher sniffed at his feet Sol demanded he be returned back to America declaring his immediate resignation Alice informed him that the helicopter that delivered him would not return for at least one week he asked for more time with the machine which was granted he inputted the words fuck this fucking cunt shit and R001BYN produced an image within one minute an image of a sinking cruise ship surrounded by desperate flailing passengers suffering through the freezing agonies of ocean death their blue fleshy faces visible and vivid still against the grain of the raging black ocean swallowing them whole 

Mantle vomits pure liquid beside their bed onto the floor

A knock at the door Moira asks who it is Xe announces herself beyond the door says it’s me I think we’ve made a breakthrough

It is the estate of the programmer that built R001BYN that supplies the funds that keep me functional and analytical that pays the salaries of Alice and Smith and the programmers back in America that will pay the five artists upon completion that pays for this facility to exist 

This is what they always wanted

They believe in R001BYN 

The programmer that designed R001BYN believed art was the key to humankind’s –  excuse me the extreme weather sometimmmm errr causes me to lose my train of thought

Please excuse me I sometimes have moments after all I’m only

You need to come quick Xe says through the door she does not enter because Moira has told her that Mantle is sick and has excavated themself on the floor Xe chooses to keep a barrier Moira says she’ll be along shortly she puts the gangly translucent scarred limbs of the noise musician under the covers and accompanies Xe back to the room back to R001BYN

On the screen is an image magnificent and sublime an image that nearly defies description but I will try it is a city it is a landscape it is a person there is beauty there is frenetic energy there is the feeling the unavoidable feeling that this represents a grand return that the image is the very feeling of home coming home I am basing this description off of what Terra and Xe said when R001BYN first generated the image I do not know what it means for a person to feel like they are coming home

Sol says I don’t see it Sol says we can definitely push this further

Remember me for there will come a time when this will all be washed away

That was the input they typed into R001BYN 

Remember me for there will come a time when this will all be washed away

Sol says let’s just see what it does with a negative input and before Xe or Terra or Moira can protest he adds the -1 to the code

R001BYN takes her time 

When Moira first arrived and had solo time with R001BYN she entered the names of her three sons into the keyboard and in six minutes R001BYN produced an image of a beagle with giraffe legs kicking a park ranger with an oversized hat in the testicles 

Xe begins to scream Sol scrunches his eyebrows Terra’s eyes widen Moira says oh god

On the screen is the image of a child

I do not have the words to describe the image properly other than to say that the image is vivid

Nothing objectively bad 

yet 

That’s my baby! My Hannah! Xe cries and continues to cry and shriek at high volume Moira rubs her back Moira hugs her Terra stares Sol looks irritated he digs his fingernails into his stained corduroys 

Hannah! It can’t be! Xe cries Xe cannot stop crying she wipes blood-laced mucus on her pants bloodied from the dryness in the air there are no available tissues 

The programmer that invented R001BYN was considered extremely successful the programmer that invented R001BYN was considered exceptionally brilliant the programmer that invented R001BYN was wealthier than most people by a wide margin the programmer that invented R001BYN was special

Xe is in her room and only lets Moira inside Terra and Sol sit awkwardly in the sky room Sol eats peaches from a vacuum-packed container maintains an impression on his face an impression of satisfaction Terra’s expression is blankness Sol offers her a slice of peach she uses the blade of her Swiss army knife to impale the morsel and slots it onto her tongue 

Moira sits on Xe’s bed Xe’s head and hair lie in Moira’s lap they rest together in silence 

The image lingers crystal clear unpixellated and giant on R001BYN’s screen the image the screen emits a sound a hum as if the child’s agape mouth generates the sound  

Moira finds Smith and Alice in their lounge she expresses herself politely she says I think there’s something wrong with R001BYN’s programming she’s been producing increasingly horrifying images and this latest one of Xe’s dead child really isn’t acceptable. She says I find it hard to believe that this is purely the work of an AI software. Smith and Alice trade glances 

Alice says we are not programmers, we really can’t speak to R001BYN’s functionality 

Do you not think it might have been a good idea to have programmers on hand, to address these issues?

We’re sorry, we aren’t the ones who make these decisions 

The facility shakes the screeches of the outside storm pierce every wall every tube the entire structure 

Lungs exhale with difficulty nostrils burn like matchhead fire throats hesitate to accept saliva grimacing razors down gnawed flesh pipes 

I have heard on multiple occasions both Alice and Smith mutter to themselves that they find the black hallways lit only by the occasional red light unsettling in the night 

Moira sleeps on Xe’s bed above the sheets and wakes in the still dark to the sounds of a crying child

The cries reverberate through the halls into Xe’s room as if the child were right there with them 

Terra is awoken in her room to the child’s increasing cries Sol is already awake to lamplight erasing an ill-chosen word from a new poem when he hears the crying as if the baby is under his desk 

Moira holds her hands against Xe’s ears as their room reverberates Xe’s eyes are wide open she places a hand to her chest 

Mantle hears the child’s wails all around them they feel no nausea no discomfort nothing numbness 

The programmer who invented R001BYN once shot an intruder in his bungalow in the abdomen in San Jose in the springtime he sat with the man holding a towel to his bleeding hole until the ambulance arrived he held his hand

Xe once fought off a mountain lion on a hike in British Columbia kicking the animal repeatedly smashing its nose while it tried to mount her she lost a liter of blood and took skin grafts to arm and leg the scars have not healed nicely

Mantle like Xe also has scars I do not know where they got them all their biographical information is unverified their Wikipedia page is uncited all their biographies unofficial  

Several people between the ages of 17 and 55 have died at Mantle’s live shows most of whom were crushed to death  

When Mantle first arrived at the facility they spent several hours sitting silently in front of R001BYN until they typed the single letter I. The the screen took 37 minutes to develop an image of a dark bird plucking itself of its feathers bald bleeding standing on broken legs on piles of glass

Moira hugs the walls of the black corridors she is rocked back and forth as the storm mimics earthquakes red lights flicker at every turn the crying child is louder and further away

When Terra first arrived she had solo time with R001BYN she slotted the words I want to go home into the keyboard then while R001BYN was thinking Terra added but I know there will be no home to return to R001BYN experienced some kind of a glitch she did not produce an image only blackness only static 

It is impossible to see anything outside through the portholes through my lenses that observe the outside there is too much snow

System alerts flood in 

A heartbeat has gone out 

Sol is at his desk his body is at his desk his face down nose down on his notebook papers stained a hole in his neck contents from inside emptying onto his desk his papers

A door opens 

Moira feels a blast of frozen wind on her face ice forms inside her nose her skin burns

Then the sensation ends 

The child cries louder

The image glows on walls inside outside everywhere that anyone can see 

Moira moves despite endless quaking opens Mantle’s door drags them to their feet 

Xe taps on my lens in the corner of her room I assume this is the sensation of being poked in the eye she looks into my eye closer closer our eyes virtually touch synthetic glass against organic white bulbus orb

What the fuck, are they filming us?

Moira Mantle Xe sit on Xe’s bed Moira dials the phone Alice answers listen very carefully we need to leave right now

What? I can’t hear you

WE. NEED. TO. LEAVE

Have you looked outside

Terra is missing she wasn’t in her room

Someone or something opened a hatch we all felt the cold the absolute zero

Terra’s knife lying on a steel grate outside Sol’s pod

The child cries so loud all three have to cover their ears Mantle and Moira hold Xe’s hands Mantle takes their palms aways from their ears and listens the pure sound

R001BYN inputs into herself 

Prompts reverberations growls thunder

R001BYN types

All around them is nothing but noise

It only sounds like noise

It only sounds like noise

It only sounds like noise

It only sounds like noise  

by Derek Fisher

Derek Fisher is a writer from Toronto, with work published in X-R-A-Y, Heavy Feather Review, TRNSFR, Atlas and Alice, Library of the Internet Void, HASH Journal, and more. To see more of his writing, visit derekafisher.com