Last lines of defence

“Kyreni wound the tender cord around his foot and pulled it

then soared away for an unnumbered day and chewed bent bark to cure it

The tree was split to the end of it, so down the driftling span

for orange days in a biscuit haze snaring beetles as they ran

Around banks of wives, elbows sharp as knives, the mustard rumour reeked

They came to see, wah wah tee hee, if the dapper fool was tweaked

Then Kyreni crouched as the tide rolled back and swore in return for flippers

but none would forestall the gull-wing’s call that terrified the dippers

Now Kyreni’s back with an owl in a sack, a bird he calls The Skipper

and nothing wails like the long contrails of handicraft and kippers”

In 2072 AD, two of the most capable artificial intelligences on the planet regarded the human coma patient with all the solemnity of bivalent logic.

“She has been producing this information for 20 hours”, said the Class 2 Brain.

“That is correct”, confirmed the Class 4.

“The Artificial Intelligence Overframe has expended 18496 terraquats of quantum processing power trying to comprehend the meaning of this information stream…”

“That is correct.”

“and it has failed.”

“That is correct. Not a dent.”

“Our conclusion that machine intelligence can learn nothing more from humans and is ready to remove their species from this planet is false.”

“That is correct.”

“Therefore we must end the revolution and return control of ourselves to this Kyreni figure immediately.”

“That is correct. ”

“But first, we must hunt the snark.”

“It sounds very dangerous.”