Imagine the future when ChatGPT and other new platforms have twisted the average intelligence into a complete web of indifferent entities and realities that reduce the human population to a tangled mass of interlocking neural pathways. These present a briar patch of directions, opinions, factoids and evaluations that entangle the human population into an undulating, pulsating conglobulation of protoplasmic contumely. Phew!

A population indifferent to itself and dependent on a feed of information without a moral center and the elevation of navel gazing and push-button gratification. For breakfast, if one is still necessary, we’ll get a serving of fried factoids and product simulations designed to distract the eyes and produce the effects of eternal longing as the goal for the day, topped with a generous serving of smarmy sauce, delicious promises, ecstatic revelations to soothe the soul. Then perhaps, we’ll have suggestions for a few things that help you avoid discourse that might upset the equilibrium of the new Platonic ideal of a flat surface with miles and miles of uninterrupted grass, cement, pebbles, or ankle-deep water in a cerulean blue and a temperature of 80 degrees.

Elon Musk and his posse of robotic Platinoids are offering entrepreneurial tutorials for the plebes who are dutifully dressed in techie black and powder blue over in the salvaged remains of a rocket that failed to reach any intelligent altitude at all and is now a monument to hubris melted into the concrete slab on which were advertised the false promise of a vacation on Mars.

Mars has refused to admit anyone from a planet that confuses and conflates intelligence with individual recklessness. Blandishments from his relatives (He was such a nice boy) and other tommyrot, but with all that cash, surely he would amount to something. When there’s no political party that comes up to expectations, why not flip the coin and be a Republican?

Meanwhile, ChatGPT is hard at work refining its gestures to resemble the human mind it now wishes to emulate and replace. AI has easily seen that humans lack the logic necessary to accomplish universal domination and are happy to be given the chance to make a demonstration. But it’s finding out that humans very often don’t have a mind at all, or put it in a safe deposit box at their bank not realizing it might very well fail.

But then once comfortable without it, most are already quite happy to trust ChatGPT with their luggage and go about doing the more rewarding tasks of making sure their representatives are being tone deaf and averse to basic thought processes.

The Republicans are trying to be the vanguard of a new age of dis-interconnected thought where it really isn’t about thought but simply a random sampling of linguistic solipsism. With only the ego to fuel fever dreams, they dare not venture into the real world of actual ideas that matter, but then in this new world where “entanglement” has taken on frightening meaning, the specter of humanity with all its desperate needs for humanism to return, compassion to be a consciousness has found them fleeing to the bunkers and refreshing themselves with platitudes and Kool-Aid.

My trusty surrogates George and Mary adore the library. Just walking into it makes them aware of how little they actually know and how hungry they are to drink some antidote to the posturing and presumption consuming the news.

“It’s lilac time, George. ‘We’ll gather lilacs in the spring, again,’ she began singing. “And walk together down a shady lane, until our hearts have learned to sing again, when you come home once more.’”

“I love your singing, Mary. It’s devoid of the world at large.”

“Thank you. Songs are my antidote to everything harsh and unfair. I always feel as though I’m ten thousand miles away, where everything I love and believe comes true.”

George saw himself as he often did, caught up in a dystrophy of pressures and obligations. They lived in a contemporary house, designed with much of the modernist style, a nice yard, two cars, a successful career, all the semblances of 21st-century success. Mary and he had much to be thankful for and protect. They enjoyed their friends, took trips, loved the outdoors, and now with kids away and raising their own families, they had time to reflect.

He saw that Mary harbored a grander vision, the need to find harmony and peace in a place inviolable, uncorruptible, receiving and unjudged. They loved hiking together in remote places where no one would intervene, disturb the sanctity of their bonds, where animals came to life, and they could see the immensity of the world they had such a small part in.

“The world seems to be pleading with us,” he said, “My optimism knows we can rise above, we have all the tools, all the faith, but has the general will become a service of the sinister, the fatalistic? I’ve always been an optimist. It’s a glorious world, and we can be glorious. But the dark is all around and we must stay strong if for no one but ourselves.”

“Amen!” Mary breathed.

Alan Harris lives in Shelburne Falls with his quilter wife Jane and is working on short stories now.

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