The Heart is a Void: Ashes to Ashes

Fahiz rummaged through a small file next to Ibis, and pulled out a couple of pieces of paper.

"Ibis' poems are quite strange, in fact its first poem just consisted of the phrase 'How dare you!' along with the stage direction 'screeched incoherently.' The title was 'Hypocrite Lecteur.'"

"It used stage directions in a poem?" Crucis asked.

"Yes, when it writes poems it often switches haphazardly between poetry, play, and novel. Among other things. While it can write at greater length now than before, it's still a bit crazy — though also endearing. To preserve your sanity, I've picked out one of its more, ahem, conventional poems."

"Sanity? There is nothing you could take from me with which I would more easily part."

Howl

How does the chicken-that-is-not-a-chicken contemplate?—

given that it does not exist,

it cannot conclude that it thinks,

for then it would also exist.

It is lost forever in deep philosophical reverie,

entering a realm of depths and subtleties

untamed by orderly discourse,

it flies in isolation, an owl of Minerva

subsisting upon the inchoate wisdom of

its mystical introspection.

How does the leprechaun hoard gold?—

for he should never have the time,

busied as he is with following the rainbow's edge

perpetually like an earnest pilgrim's voyage.

He must borrow it, I am assured, from some goblin,

for goblins have gold in abundance —

but why would the miserly goblin loan it out?

It must be, for usury! And thus we see

how enlightening fantasy can be

when we overanalyse it through pedantry.

How does an orc become pacifist?—

for it is against his nature, and would

lead to a lack of moral clarity,

which would dilute the pacifism with ambiguity.

But perhaps the pacifist orc is the true pacifist,

for many a pacifist will hem and haw, cutting

pacifism to a shape that seems more practical,

but the pacifist orc, in his mostly peaceful wars,

does not experience any doubt at all.

O, orc centurion of Capernaum! His pacifism is so strong

that it will go on unchanged even if he is violent.

It is pacifism in its most immaculate form.

Still, perhaps some will disagree, as do I,

but I am not writing for me, but for you,

and I see that you look like a pacifist orc,

so this is your wish-fulfillment panegyric.

How does the canker-worm find the young flower?—

for surely now most flowers wilt in the bud,

and leave modern art's garden barren, thus

the canker-worm must have some list to find them

for it reaches each one before it can bloom.

Although the gates are thrown open, even to

the four corners of the world and hidden floral

gems, yet the canker-worm visits each flower of promise,

and either harangues continually, or rants till it wilts

in the bud. What hope is there for flowers, but the worm

lying dead in its grotesque parchment, the only verse

it shall ever write? And so now, I spend my time

in these light verses,

because the mediocrity all around —

a product not of bad artists, but of cankerworms —

assures me that no more is needed, or would be appreciated.

"A charming poem, all the same," Crucis said. "And it reminds me of something. This chicken-that-is-not-a-chicken is West of Kruxol, yes?"

"Yes," Fahiz replied. "I have heard many tales of it, apparently it preys on livestock. Indeed, some say that it was created by a demon. Well, I daresay this demon can't have met many chickens."

"I think we fought that early on," Akshel said. "It was pretty rough, we had to hold it in place to get any hits in. That's what inspired me to choose the [Snake] sub-class, honestly."

"Yeah, it's a pain to fight," Crucis said. "As far as the demon not meeting chickens, are there no chickens in Hell any more? I had a near-death experience once where I wound up in Hell. It was very lonely, because there were no humans left after the advent of liberal Christian universalism. I quite enjoyed having the place to myself, to be honest. Though I can't say if there were chickens or not."

"You should have checked. But did this actually happen?" Fahiz asked.

"Well, it's about as true as Alex Malarkey's story, to be honest. That is as true as it sounds. But it's a nice tale."

"To be honest, I'm always sceptical about these long accounts of near-death experiences, but it's an interesting literary source. I've trained the automatons on a few. The imaginative nature of it is, I think, often more free-flowing than in even the 'fantasy' genre, and it easily contains impressive images."

"Yeah, without plot's trammels it freely drifts between powerful, mysterious images and phenomena. I think it often gets bogged down in popular doctrine, though, or in trying to draw some sort of moral for viewers. Perhaps the automatons could adapt it without these shackles, however."

"Certainly, and as our automatons develop they shall be better placed to do that. And several other things."

Fahiz looked down with interest at Ibis, as its motion loudly ground to a halt. The players nearby stepped back suddenly, surprised by the loud noise after they had become habituated to the low, metallic hum of the working automatons. Fahiz leaned down, and gathered a few papers from beneath the automaton's pen, folding them carefully.

"It looks like it's finished the piece on DeathGang," he said. "But we should wait for your leader to return before looking at that. I can hear him still at the typewriter, he must still be struggling to wield that contraption."

Listening carefully, Crucis could hear a light tapping noise from another room at the back and left of this building, occasionally growing louder and more emphatic. It was quite a faint sound, especially given the background noise of the automatons, and he figured that Fahiz must have adapted to this building until he could expertly distinguish such sounds and their source.

Crucis looked back at Ibis, gazing more closely at its surroundings. He saw that a few pieces of blank paper were still left under the beaked automaton's quill pen.

"Would you mind if I gave it something to write?" he asked Fahiz. "After all, you did ask for my backstory a short while ago, and on reflection it was rude of me to dismiss this request. So perhaps the automaton can make up a backstory for me."

"That sounds reasonable. Is this poetry, or prose?"

"Prose would be more natural, but since you kept hyping it up I'd rather it try poetry. After all, I'm curious what bizarre poesy it can conjure, if the poem you just showed it is accounted 'conventional.'"

"Alright." Fahiz drew out a mostly-blank piece of paper from the file, which displayed a simple template. "So here's the general format for prompts. Write the title in capital letters, then pencil in an asterisk on each side. That marks it as a title or subtitle. Under that, you can also add in an author's name, or a title, synopsis, introduction, etc. Use asterisks for this too, since it's treated as a discrete element, a sort of sub-heading. For the poem itself, you could write a few lines so that it knows that you want a poem of a certain kind. You can also use a sub-heading between two hashes to describe your poem, which the automaton will take as an instruction and will omit from the final text. But this is Ibis, so it might just ignore all of this well-meaning advice to go on a wild tangent."

"Ha! Alright, understood."

Crucis quickly drew out a piece of paper from beneath Ibis' raised pen, and began to write on it. He translated from memory a Russian poem, though he didn't recall the author. Soon, he had put together a basic prompt for the automaton.

*CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT*

The sad strain of Orpheus plows on

not caring for the grief it scatters...

O, daylight! what were you but a scarcity of miracles?

And so the singer plucks his lyre by night.

On the Appian Way, he trudges tiredly back to Rome,

across the winding, dark road, and his shadow wakes

by night, and follows him —

a child of night.

*THE GENESIS OF COUNT DRACULA*

#(a poem about COUNT DRACULA, in the style of a Nativity scene)#

"This should be fine," Fahiz observed, reading over this. "Just note that Ibis' response will probably be quite different from the tone of the first poem. But if you're willing to put up with its madness, then go ahead."

Fahiz placed the prompt paper onto the book-stand in front of Ibis. Reaching into the sleeve of Ibis' left hand, he drew out a small metallic cylinder and extended this until it slotted into a hole on the side of the book-stand. He then carefully folded a flap on the book-stand, until the automaton began to hum once again and straightened in its chair.

"Looks like it's ready," he said.

He unfolded the book-stand, then let the cylinder contract back into Ibis' sleeve. As he pressed lightly on the name 'Ibis,' which was written on the automaton's back collar, the automaton began to write.

To make sure that Crucis' prompt worked, Fahiz kept a close watch on the automaton's writing. However, his focus evaporated in seconds as he heard footsteps entering the room, and he effortlessly turned towards the entrance with a courteous bow.

DicingDevil and Sharak returned to the room in the middle of a conversation.

"Thanks for the help," DicingDevil said. "But I'm still not sure if we should pursue the fake heckler approach. Darys is in favour, but I'm concerned that it could make a scene or distract from the speech."

"Don't lose confidence," Sharak said. "This speech is a good way to subvert expectations, your opponents want to make a story by opposing you, and you can circumvent this by reducing it to controlled theatre. As soon as they pipe up, you treat your mole as their representative and use it to discredit them. Even if they find it suspicious, it still disrupts them."

"Sure, but I just find it to be difficult — it's like they're trying to reignite the war by heckling or disrupting us. If they manage, they'll count it as a win and boast about it for weeks, even though the scene of the speech was our win. That's not the game, it's just a new war-game that they've invented. And I have no idea if we can beat them at their own rules."

"Well, yes, it's not the game — but many a 'game,' as you call it, would be based on giving players the impression of a personal or communal story, to hide the flaws of the game," Sharak said. "So this could be rigged up by story-tellers. Now, there is nowhere in nature a story, there are only coincidences that people string together superstitiously. But in the game, you'd be playing with made-up 'stories' baked into the design, and would be trapped in them. You do not want to vault right into them, and be wafted away helplessly on sludgy rivers of plot. So you must first master these stories, enslave or enchain them, and then you can do what you want to them — or at least attempt it. In this case, you're trying to instantly intercept their story of resistance with another one, in order to subvert it."

"They do seem to have a good scheme," Fahiz said to Sharak. "It's like in Hamlet, where Claudius begins by 'staging' this artificially harmonious court, and chides Hamlet for interrupting the scenery. He is then caught out by Hamlet's own Gonzago play, which disrupts the orderly court as Claudius flees. So go ahead, force the issue, because for now you still can. Pick your battles, and leave nothing to chance in this still-dreaming world."