BORIS WILLIS & VIVEK NARAYANAN

Encounters [metahumans, poetry]

Through the combination of vignettes, characters and unreal worlds, "Encounters" uses the constructs of modern games and animation to point to something real.

Encounters works with a “metahuman creator” and Replica, a software that uses artificial intelligence to generate vocal performances, to fashion a series of nameless, interchangeable and technically imaginary but still compelling faces and voices that narrate a series of texts. The texts, all under the heading of “Encounters”, have been written by Willis and Narayanan—apart from the two epigraphs; each text has been recorded in at least two versions by different AI voice actors. 

It began to seem that one would have to hold in the mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first idea was acceptance, the acceptance, totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are: in the light of this idea, it goes without saying that injustice is a commonplace.  But this did not mean that one could be complacent, for the second idea was of equal power: that one must never, in one’s own life, accept these injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all one's strength. This fight begins, however, in the heart and it now had been laid to my charge to keep my own heart free of hatred and despair. This intimation made my heart heavy and, now that my father was irrecoverable, I wished that he had been beside me so that I could have searched his face for the answers which only the future would give me now.

—James Baldwin, “Notes of a Native Son”

To leave this keen encounter of our wits. Isn’t the causer of timeless deaths as blameful as the executioner?  You are the cause, and most accursed effect. Your beauty was the cause of that effect; your beauty, which haunted me in my sleep. To undertake the death of all the world, these nails should rend that beauty from my cheeks. These eyes could never endure sweet beauty’s wreck; you should not blemish it, if I stood by: as all the world is cheered by the sun, so I by that; it is my day, my life. Black night overshade your day, and death your life. Don’t curse yourself, creature; you are both.  I would I were, to be revenged on you. It’s a quarrel most unnatural, to be revenged on the one that loves you.

—Shakespeare, Richard III, Act 1 Scene 2  

Slowly it happens that people know you from your walks.  A bond, a double-check, a fist willfully uncurled.  In our frailties we like the same things.  You too join the order.  Proclivities rescind to bygone nothingnesses.  The world turns again and this time you are needed.  Only I had seen what it had meant to move from that order to this one, to move between orders and carry my privilege with me.  How the cop turned from angry to placating once he’d heard me speak.  To enter the new order is to be bombarded with its images.  Only force of being might keep me from hating myself.  One year later, the face in the window terrified him.  All through it all what mattered was balance: a vast guilt-cathedral on the tip of the nose.

*

When they walked by, it was said. Anyone can have status. It is never guaranteed. It is at times expected. There are those who feel entitled to have it. Everyone can have status but there are those who feel entitled to have it. Everyone does not get status. Everyone can have status. There are those who prefer status to health, comfort and opportunity. They will pay with their lives for status. Everyone does not get status. Anyone can have status. They stopped walking, destroyed the place and went home. 

*

There are names we try to leave behind and those that follow us on our journeys.  I mistook you for another.  Or I mistook you for you, and the other was just a name that had arrived on the wind.  The name had arrived as if by its own energies, a name I had wanted to say and so had come to me.  But the name was not yours, even as I hadn’t mistaken you for another.  The name was my own paltry shame in my mouth until a quiet had descended between us.  We were strange but bound falsely by a name just as years earlier a group of giggling tourists had pointed to me until it was revealed I looked exactly like one of them.  And I did.  It was so eerie.  The name was not yours then because you were a stranger.  The name was not yours even if you were not mine.  The name had been a way of unhappening between us, an unplanned intimacy.  The name that might have been ours was no longer yours or mine.  There by the bending light of evening, as the tram pulled to a stop, the doors opened and the conductor roamed about inside.  The name like all uninvited refused to leave.   

*

Not before the world. That thing has vocational substance on the roadway. Never before Zion did geometrics converse into baggets and bows. My sense of euphoric commitment dwindles into fathomable onus. Sweet sweet sweet, hunger roars. The circus shakes the Tavern, no mole on the cow. It affects the flavor, the Seldom Scene wanders into nothingness while my pen desires more than it can handle. Blues, you recycle giraffes, but forget about baseball, no, but it can be fixed, if you have a pencil, so cute, so wonderful, I miss you. When it shows, I don't know. I really, don't know who you were. I can't dance today, my thumb hurts, or at least I never know what to feel. Hey, who's wearing a fishbowl? I thought I took it off. Those acid-washed jeans go well with reggae. Love. Be. Experience love.

*

How amazing that they sleep so happily in a foreign bed, said she.  I heard that later but at the time could only doze in the boredom of waiting for the ritual, its long preparations and slowly arriving guests.  That I didn’t know anyone was its own safety.  Mill of voices.  The bedroom was the center of operations.  The sacrifice would happen in the garage.  The neighborhood came for the food and to pay respects.  In a place the sameness of it coexisted with the image of it in the unvisited eye. There are the statistics and there’s the default of paranoia.  Now that was gone and in its place a knowing, probably false.  I ate of the cut with such sublimity because I had been with the animal, with the others, in its calmest hour.  Night and I wished I could stay on for good, for good because of the idea of order and a harmony with the dead still among us had been given to me.  I, who did not belong there obviously enough to be much-loved curio.  I, who they called to from the other side of the street.  I’ll never forget the freely given love of strangers, just as I had been in this priestess’ home because all would be received there.  It was rare that she spoke but when she did it was with urgency or with simple advice. 

*

Razmatazz is the feature, a medium-bodied lush with a distinctive and spritzy finish used for ocean racing. Chasm teeth. Name of the same unconscious. Something going on here. He listens to you, one woman's husband. Mountain surrounded by nutty women. I don't know interesting; the facts, facts are important. Accept brats. Have you seen this condom. Don't encourage anybody. They might take you literally. Dyslexics unite or untie. Not responsible for action. Apple juice acts as a servicing agent, computerized for your enjoyment. And your protection is welcome, select to prevent warning. Robin. Customer parking only. Now renting instructions. Place loosely in the cavity. Be sure the tub has completely stopped before reaching in. Laboratory: glass, yogurt. Cycled transit comic coupons. The joker can't smoke. Promptly sneezes. Sneeze sneeze sneeze. Oh God. Cheer the security observation system. Do not start after 10 PM

*

Some days I even made them believe that I was one of them­—one of their own blood, which I was by phenotype.  I had come in after their strange pain of being told their place and then their bitterly claiming it.  (Never the front door, always the side and the back.)  Other days it was the simple joy of being listened to.  We were in the new world where all would now be allowed to mingle, and to encounter yourself, or a version of yourself was just a reminder of its existence, its persistence through the many sides.  And much that I and they had in common: the language we spoke reminded us we were the losers.  Now our scraps could become whole.  But little flashes happened, little pockets of time in which people died.  The one charging rides for the taxi grabbed my arm and held it for too long. When I returned years later to the beach where I had made the offering, the first thing was to kiss the ground.

*

Regal is the palace that I live in. Cocktails for jewelry in a vegan golden pond separated by orange slices. Closed colonial pizza and emerald gardens bring elegance to rice on a pole. Bags of sprouts carried by fashion trucking. Joe's Peking duck house not to be confused by a shaftway of medicated plaster that has an authentic wing. Wah the streets are dirty. The lions shine, they glow. They save you 10% at over 200 locations. The chill in the air checks out by 3 PM. A master craft of spring cleaning. Could you move the chair after you wet the floor? The carnations of red and white. Ideal tools from Bahli. Usually mainly for pest control. Moe wants to eat a chocolate roll. She already has coffee unlimited are the impressions in my mind. Religion is the key.

*

Enter the labyrinth. Transatlantic psychoanalysis: a poem by Cacalano. Tiger skin feeds me like an apricot dried in the shallow cools in the backyard able ing me to smile. If the pod breaks parallel, passé, that's all, forgive me if I stare at the wall, I heard you coming. Drinking cups are permitted if guitars have no strings. Toasted cats and single-serving cans. I tried to explain balsamic but wok would have to do always, breathe when smoking, especially if you drive the car of the future. Remember back in the paleozoic time, tadpoles crawling on some Indian shore? Thank you for being a part of my life, he said. Sure, she replied, I'll see you there.

*

I have already told you more than you expected to hear.  Calamities fell in the place I came from but yours was left untouched.  Those hills scorched my skin but I loved them for it.  “Your ancestor has come for you,” he said.  “I have seen them.  High on on the plateau among the dancers you’ll make your visit.”  And now these dancers I don’t know coming up and over, first seen by their wings about them, haloes among the red bands of approaching sunrise, haloes on the red land.  Later at the feast he arrived with his makeup still on.  O families come close in the peace of this vision, and may the visitors know they are loved, their space is guarded.