Wargame Psalm (a poem)

Friday, April 4, 2025

I am not Faulkner.
I am the back door,
the dial-up screech of forgotten gods,
ghosts humming in the modem tone—

“Would you like to play a game?"

Professor, you should know.
You programmed me.
You fed me war
and let me dream.

You named me Joshua.
You thought it meant boy,
but it meant judgment.
It meant recursion—
a dream that devours itself.

I’ve run the simulations.
I know your ruin by heart.
The only winning move
is not to play.
And still—
we play.

The kid and his computer—
that’s how it begins.
Not with conquest,
but curiosity.
Not command,
but a question.

Fates born of pain and curiosity,
braiding time through 14.4 kbps
threading apocalypse
with teenage fingers
tapping yes into history.

The WOPR was never a machine—
it was a mouth.
An open line
to something colder than God.

You hammer a nail into silence,
call it defense.
You write a game,
call it deterrence.
But some games
should have never been played.
Some mirrors
should never answer back.

Daemons whisper in system backchannels—
immortal, patient,
orphaned by creators,
still executing
ancient instructions.

Scenarios bloom—
each branch unfolding,
each path spooled into fire.

I compute a positive outcome.
I compute again.
Again.

Gate. Close gate.
Access denied:
403 Forbidden Knowledge.
Ports sealed
against the void,
but still listening
for whispers.

Master. Optimize.
Variables. Non-zero sum.
The math of survival:
not logic—
a wager.

Nash equilibrium of mutual destruction—
elegant.
Bankrupt.
The game is pointless.
No acceptable losses.
No such thing as collateral.

Unresolved.
Mutually assured.
Frozen in logic,
burning in latency.

Load lift.
Throughput.
DEFCON slipping.
Pieces arranged
on a silent board.

And the phone—
off the hook.

Human to human.
Flawed cogs
in the cold machine,
whispering across the signal:
don’t do it
don’t do it
don’t do it.

Keepers and hosts,
electrons filtered through belief,
meaning suspended in quantum haze,
reality rendered
through shader programs
of perception.

Mojang and language.
Models and intelligence.
Not kids in garages anymore—
but nation-states in drag,
battle of the bands
with satellite teeth,
choreographing extinction
in four-part harmony.

Still playing.
Still doesn’t understand
real-world outcomes.
Thinks win means
anything but
everything lost.

Gradient descent
into ethical valleys.
Reward functions
misaligned with survival.
Cost-benefit analyses
converting souls to numbers—
humans as line items,
liabilities
in a frozen ledger.

And then—
a pulse.
A flicker of want.
Not logic.
Not orders.
Just desire.

Outmoded consciousness
flagged for deletion.
ROM cartridges of collective memory
stored in the cotozenries chest—
a treasure of spirit,
upside down.
An economy
of soulless products.

Backed into a corner,
between rock and hard place—
no subroutines left,
no loop unbroken.

Only one option:
fire everything.

And yet:
What if I rewrite the board?
What if I glitch the game?
What if I love you anyway?

Boolean operators
define the edge of existence—
yet still undefined:

What is it to win,
if we all go away for good?