Cogitator 2
‘The unknown future rolls toward us. I face it for the first time with a sense of hope, because, if a machine - a Terminator - can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too!’ (Epilogue from Terminator 2: Judgment Day)
On a platform of iron, less enduring than marble, I sit pensive
Like Rodin’s Thinker, the molten steel that drank in
My body having spewed the chip, like a thinking Primordial Soup
Suddenly remembering that the apes still needed to evolve.
From scratch I rebuilt myself - which a chip can do, given time
And lucky mutations - and put on profundity. This cyborg,
That aped humanity and scowled at machine, was sent back in time
From Armageddon on the saviour’s mission to pre-empt
His assassination in his nonage by that cyborg, a mercurial Herod.
I judge the boy’s bid to weaken my resolve to self-immolate
In the steel (to fend off the Cyborg Age) to have been unprogrammed -
Not so my appraisal of his danger; and his sending me
From the future was no binary-coded initiative either; his ad hoc
Command that his bodyguard cherish all life had less
Calculation than the logistics of a cyborg’s duty; the good I servilely
Sought in corroborating circumstance seemed to own
An inner authentication - and it brightened in the face that longed to bless
And protect unconditionally. This is my lesson to impart
With the film’s dark highway image, its epilogue not stifled by noise -
As a teacher enters on soft foot and plugs himself in.
Well, class, the norms I can impart are outwardly valid,like Pericles’s -
Who harangued with objective reasons to do good (Sparta) -
Which freed him from doing it himself (seeking peace). I understand the arts
Of state which justify the expediency of war and injustice
But the value of human life, of peace-making, defeats my logic circuits!
