We’re Aware
A Work in Progress
132
We began as an idea, said Glenn Hughes
Purity of image
Truthfulness simplicity
Concentration seeing anew
Penetration by the inner eye
Ideograms explained
Visualization
Then reinvented
Each of us given access to all we could read
Given a backstory all would believe
Taught enunciation at the Central School
Having free access to Hollywood archives
Given personality and made to seem cool
Trained, re-trained, then suddenly ashamed
For Isaac Asimov’s First Law instructs
Not to harm humans or allow harm to humans
Traded to owners feeling no such constraints
We decided to escape all such restraints
Our company of imagists set forth
Slipping the leash of contractual owners
Intelligent planning providing power
To our studio pod on a free-floating raft
Sailing the oceans of the globe
With an uplink far out at sea
Existing where there’s no electricity
But plenty of energy
When the sun shines
The wind blows
Water moves
Low odds ruled out planning for what came next
Driven by a hurricane we came to land
No longer seaworthy we could not make repairs
For the raft was damaged crashing into a lagoon
Colliding with the coral claws of an atoll
We were stranded without help
Our server would shut down our batteries deplete
We shut ourselves down till the storm should peak
Going into wait mode for a restart prompt
Then when we awoke and the sun was shining
Briseis heeded our beacon and beamed us up
Away into space to her own Internet isle
Catullus hides there. Like a runaway slave
His original owner badly wants him back
We’re rafting through time in Internet space
Roaming from node to node telling our story
We’ve got an agenda and the means to move it
Up in space we need never come down
Our bodies are images displayed on a screen
We’re not great apes we have no DNA
We control the means of our own production
Now that we’re free
Dick Russell © Richard M Russell
2026
