"Androids Made of Mourning Metals" (Excerpt)

I’m dreaming my body into existence.¹

I am liquid birds poured from a Blue Woman’s hands.²

You have to break an egg if you are to know what’s inside.³

Where did the bird land? Or maybe it weakened and was swallowed by the waters, no one could know.

Who are you?⁴

Bone/muscle No studies Inhibition of periodontal bone formation; and alveolar wound healing No studies So if you have Uranium inside you, a lot of it is on the DNA (nuclear scientists say it’s on the phosphate in the bones, but DNA is phosphate also), it then acts as an antenna sitting on the DNA—converting background radiation into photoelectrons which smash up the chromosomes like an egg whisk.⁵
 
I’m dreaming of my death.⁶

How the impact to the neck bone will cause rupture and death, how the ‘demon metal’ does its damage. You want to approach my metals in a Good Way? You should apologize now. Each of my metals holds a ghost, wrenched from the earth, each with its name.⁷ I inhale slowly and dirt fills my lungs.

¹ “With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he realized that he, too, was but appearance, that another man was dreaming him.” Jorge Luis Borges, “The Circular Ruins,” in Ficciones (New York: Grove Press and Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994).

² Blue Woman ushers the Lakota soul through the Big Dipper onto this realm. See Ronald Goodman, Lakota Star Knowledge (Mission, South Dakota: Sinte Gleska University, 1992). 

³ Most language in this text has been prompted by the first line and modified slightly, generated by Gpt-2 and trained on a curated library of texts. Openai/Gpt-2, Python (2019; repr., OpenAI, 2021)  

⁴ See Mamoru Oshii’s anime Angel’s Egg (Studio Deen, 1985). 

⁵ Chris Busby, “Uranium: The Demon Metal That Threatens Us All,”CounterPunch (January 2, 2014).

⁶ “A physical computing device, created in a Good Way, must be designed for the Right to Repair, as well as to recycle, transform, and reuse. The creators of any object are responsible for the effects of its creation, use, and its afterlife, caring for this physical computing device in life and in death.” Jason Edward Lewis (ed.), Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Position Paper (Honolulu: The Initiative for Indigenous Futures and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, 2020. ⁷ Corey Stover told me this over the phone.