Aphelion Issue 301, Volume 28
December 2024 / January 2025
 
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Future Reflection

by Mike Wilson


Long distance travels engender remembrance,
Forays into traces of past ways of living;
We did not used to have eons to ruminate,
back when we were frail flesh and blood.

Once we had to walk, eat, drink, defecate,
urinate, ejaculate and sleep away our lives.
Part of our essence, these activities created others;
Culinary arts, sexual adventures, much creativity.

But little did we know that better living was coming.
The first mind-machine transferences were crude,
yet soon followed by improvements and successes.

Now we are thought engrams, completely imprinted
in mobile silicon machines, taking any form we chose;
served by the nano-devices we can generate at will.
We can live for as long as we wish, and travel the galaxy.

Pleasures of the flesh have been supplanted by new ones:
Composing gigabyte-long poems and stories;
investigating every square inch of our milky way,
Even forming groups to leave for other galaxies.

How did they do it back then,
those prisoners of flesh and blood?
They gave their lives to improve ours,
Many monuments insure we will never forget.


© 2013 Mike Wilson

Mike Wilson has been writing poetry and short fiction for a decade, and has been published in a variety of journals. More of his work can be viewed at http://radical-readings.blogspot.com .

Find more by Mike Wilson in the Author Index.

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