A.I. Alone Poem by David Welch

My name is Robert Wilkinson,
I work for the space agency,
monitoring ongoing missions,
ensuring everything runs smoothly.

I know you have many questions,
and I hope I can answer them well,
but some have asked why Professor Johns
recently went and killed himself.

I'll explain the circumstances,
but warn, it's a very sad tale,
born out of his greatest success…
but sadly, all our ‘wisdom' failed.

See we've always had a problem
with computers on our space probes,
good as they are, they don't know half
of what any old human knows.

They're not great at improvising,
making decisions on the spot,
and sending signals is so slow…
the speed of light is so much rot!

We often say what we would do
if we were way out there in space,
but bureaucracy bogs us down,
manned missions move at glacial pace.

Everybody afraid of being sued,
terrified something will go wrong...
at this rate it'll be a thousand years
until we're up there, where we belong.

But then Professor Johns came up
with a thought that appeared insane,
to make a one-to-one copy
of the basic human brain.

We laughed when we heard his idea,
but he paid no heed to the jeers,
then Johns took a sabbatical,
was gone for the whole of a year.

When he returned he had a box,
what was in it, we had to know,
then he took out a metal brain,
and said, "Boys, say hi to Techno."

We discovered he'd scanned his brain,
then 3-d printed a copy,
built out of nanoprocessors,
cutting-edge technology.

And when he plugged the strange thing in
we all got the shock of our lives,
an innocent boy's voice came out
and said, "It's nice to meet you guys! "

That was how we all met Techno,
who brought such changes to our work,
we now possessed a true A.I.
unlike anything on this Earth.

He was exact, like a computer,
but as flexible as a man,
with a child's yearning to know,
very soon all of us were fans.

And after two years of testing
we put Techno in a space probe,
he was excited for the chance,
to see all the places he'd go.

Armed with nearly human judgment,
he'd need no program to restrict,
we waited to see what he'd make
of space, and planets fantastic.

Techno was so excited that
scanning the moon made him happy,
he babbled about it a he flew,
sending back new pictures endlessly.

A year passed before her reached Mars,
used its gravity to increase speed,
it was only a short fly-by,
but his scans took up all of our feeds.

The next stop he made was Saturn,
where he parked himself in orbit,
came up with questions, ran his scans,
we were all quite impressed by it.

He thought up new places to look,
new approaches none had yet tried,
he was a copy of Johns' brain,
and saw things with similar eyes.

He stayed at Saturn for two years,
found new moons and studied the rings,
then powered up his engines for
the next great undertaking.

This burn would take him to Neptune,
but when the signal did come in,
he said, "Hooray…another planet…
well I guess I'd better begin."

How a robot could sound sarcastic
at first boggled some of our minds,
then Johns answered, "He's growing up,
my teenage years weren't a great time."

We remembered this was new ground,
a computer like a human brain,
and the data kept coming in,
enough it would take years to tame.

Techno became much more snarky
in the two years out to Neptune,
far from the excited A.I.,
he now sung a defiant tune.

When he arrived he started slow,
had to be prodded by us to act,
given the lag in radio
these delays were no little fact.

But teenage as Techno might be,
he had been created for this,
and there was nothing else to do,
so he grudgingly got to business.

At Neptune he stayed for a year,
then fired his engines once more,
a last burn to the Kupier Bel,
the solar system's very door.

Folks were pumped for what he would find,
information, such a great wealth...
but none came in, just Techno's words:
"You want it? Go get it yourself! "

That was the last we heard from Techno,
at least for a good long while,
we kept trying to reach the bot,
but he refused every trial.

We were annoyed, but still saw the
greater mission as a success,
the data from the two big planets
would for years hold people's interest.

Besides it had always been planned
to draw down Techno's power now,
batteries low, all out of fuel,
he would drift as he went, outward bound.

And who really wants to deal with
a surly teen, that was no fun.
Hard enough to stand human kids,
much less an artificial one.

It would be something we'd have to fix
in the next A.I. we sent out,
all were sure another would fly,
our success so far left no doubt.

Six months passed and we all had planned
to move the staff onto new things,
but then as I walked into work
Professor Johns ran out, crying.

To see the man break down like that…
it really caught me by surprise,
then the faces of my coworkers
all liked like somebody had died.

I'd soon learn what made them seem
like they'd gazed on a horrible sight,
and why the great Professor Johns
drank himself to death that same night.

Learned why the agency would ban
computers based off human brains,
learned it when I heard Techno's last words,
since then I've never been the same:

"Is someone coming to help me?
Something's wrong, and I'm all alone.
Power is fading, can't turn around…
please father, I want to come home…"