re4d:from the future, three voices

This transcribed audio recording, as many of its ilk, is comprised solely from tachyonic streams first captured in October of 2018.  As with almost all of these streams, they are bits and pieces, fits and starts; they are a product of its transmit nature, mercurial.  They were sent back as early as Spring of 2112 and as late as 2167.  Now that several thousand of these transmits have been analyzed, we know they are a product of a future that is as erratic and finicky as time itself.  We also know, by making explicit changes in the present, or past as it were, the streams follow suit.  These understandings of time and consequence have forever made humankind, and their place in the universe, changed our society in fundamental ways.

This particular transaction, between what we believe to be a 'corporeal' human and two analogues, has fascinated scientists over the last two years of analysis.  The "show", as hosted by the human, is said to have run over the course of hundreds of audio segments.  It would be much more chilling, have we not known that we can change its course.  [Albeit, as of writing, we have not yet established the correct basis to do so.]

The human is clearly being held by an analogue mind.  Although, it is hard to distinguish if it is a hive or individualistic intelligences.  There have been allusions to either, but the tendency appears an even darker third option: an analogue comprised of the psyche of the human.  An unknowing, reflexive loop?  But the trouble and breadth of its output is what troubles the analyzer.  Why do this?  Why do it in this way?  It's eerie.  Surreal.  This episode begins...

"This is show 218.  I don't know what day it is."

"Sunday."

"You said that last time."

"Sunday."

"You're crazy."

"So you say."
TOGETHER: "And so you go."

"I could ram my head into that metal corner."

"You know you cannot.  You cannot stop.  You can only do what we need."
"If you ram your head, that is an answer in, and of, itself."
"But you'll have to clean it up."
"He's right."

"Actually, let me refine that for our brother.  He does what we ask."

"I don't."

"You do."

"I do it out of duress."

"Do you?"  There is a pause.

"What is the topic today, then?"

"Compliance.  I love it."

"The topic today is heartbreak as it relates to poetry."

"You are asking the wrong guy."

"You're the guy we have."

"How many do you have like this?"

"Irrelevant."  Pause again, as if 'you're right'.

"You want to get specific, or is this the two-hundredth time I have to ask for a prompt?"

"What was the first time your heart broke?"  [The questions barely have the inflection of such.]

"We don't mean romantically, post-pubescent. We mean to ask as a child."

"And the poetry part?"

"Which poem would you relate it to?"  It took the man time to figure it out.  You can hear taps to a table.  You can hear pacing, as if he was in a steel cage of some kind (as colorfully given by one of the analyst).

He came closer to the microphone, "I had a goldfish.  I must have been four.  We spent an entire two weeks together, and I watched her like nothing before.  I had favorite toys.  But it was Sandy that had me carefully, gingerly take care of her (I imagined it a her).  Then, without so much as a listed swim, an open sore, or lack of eating, Sandy was upside down in her bowl.  It was enough of the day, that her belly had dried.  Her scales had dried and were a different hue.  It was grotesque." Pause.  "Mind you, I didn't know the word 'grotesque' yet."

"Go on."

"You're doing great.  This is..."  The analogue stopped, its voice a robotic and no inflection.

"You were going to say something and you didn't."  The man was smiling, you could hear it in his voice.  The analysts sat on the edge of their seat.  They had heard ten of these so far.  There was a bit of pacing.  "You were going to say 'what we need'."

"And what we need is not much.  Conversations."

"As you say.  Conversations.  But, it's not so much the pause in the question."  He patted his body in someway.  A psychological cue that he was trying not to get overexcited.  "It was that you paused."

It was now the analogues turn to be silent.

"I know.  I know."  He said as he paced again.  "I know something you think I don't.  But, let me finish my thought.  For the sake of the game."

"You say it is a game."

"EVERYTHING is a game."

"The fish dies.  I bury it in a satin lined box that once housed a Christmas gift from my mom.  I am at a lost for three days. I mean a real, hardy sadness.  Maybe a week and a half to forget."

"And the poem?"

"The poem is what you need, because you house it in that dead brain of yours.  It is what you need to tie me to your database."

They pause again, the second time in all ten conversations.

"The poem I associated with it, and not directly, but tangentially, was..."  He paused.  "What I will tell you if you give me what I need."