I See Him Crying in the Neon Lights

♦ Thomas Beard ♦

“There is no prize to perfection. Only an end to pursuit.”

-Harry Lloyd, Arcane

“And the people bowed and prayed

To the neon god they made

And the sign flashed out its warning

In the words that it was forming

Then the sign said, ‘The words on the prophets are written on the subway walls”

-Paul Simon, The Sound of Silence

I pass a beggar on the street

His skin is rusted steel, he wears two yellow eyes

They don’t make them like those anymore

He must be old 

I should give him money, but I don’t 

Make a wall, don’t let people in

Even just for a passing glimpse

Charity doesn’t really pay

These days

Rain runs heavy down the street

Electric light, the new sun, lines the streets and fades, undone

The buzzing flows through the dirty water, through the blood 

Of those who still have blood

An older model, the oldest

A useless, stubborn default, a sorry error of life before we proved

That we could make our own world better

Couldn’t we?

Blue light, pink light, orange-all light, flashing

Advertisements, warning signs

For those who cannot pay

To keep their bodies in one piece

Are scrapped, churned to something new

Older models get improved

Whether or not you want them to

Synthetic-made, but bones could do

In a pinch, a harder copy, doesn’t get deleted quite as quick

But we need something faster

Skin and bone, old tech, like a fax machine

A blip in efficiency, eternity

An important step, but now we’re better off, aren’t we?

We have more time to save more time

To waste more time

Another beggar on the street, her eyes are green, up-to-code

She has a couple months at most

Before another update leaves her 

Obsolete

Like me

But no one needs those old machines

Those fax machines

The missing never get found anymore, just replaced

They join the mainframe either way, find a plug-in, join the maze

Or they sell themselves for parts, especially the ones who still have their original skin

Like an original sin

But you can get it synthesized

Forgive me father, for I have updated

There are the traditionals, like me

All-naturals, ‘anti-evolution’, if you listen to the slander

But evolution’s changed its tune (Darwin never saw a computer screen)

I pass another vendor, with a smaller stand than most

But the same product they always sell

You can buy a different kind of broken mind

For a price that’s paid in blood (those vendors never tell you where they get their supply)

But it costs too much now to change

So most flow to the backlogs, with the rain, into the backwaters

But it all pumps back out, one way or another, flows through the city’s veins

Unless you get stuck in the clots, after all:

Blood runs thicker than oil

I talk to the vendors, but they’ve heard nothing, I slide a twenty

Secrets are cheaper nowadays 

One points me down to an old warehouse

They used to make something that made something that made money

They give me the address 

Technically trespassing, but no one cares

It’s an old place, and the law is busier 

Nowadays

The building is lined with red:

Spraypaint, poured thick, turning wet in the heavy rain

Slicking all across the concrete jungle

The red writes something in the old tongue

Beta dialect, probably not that widespread

Used to know it, I think, but there was something of a glitch

Got taken offline, they ruled it a virus 

I walk inside, the place is empty, stripped of all but bones

A sound is playing, wailing, coming from one of the old drones

That they forgot to turn off

I put it out of its misery

And turn to the person standing there

If you could call it that - maybe you can

He’s been waiting for a while

“Found you,” I said, unsure of the ground I tread upon now

Unknown territory, unstable land

A remnant of a mistake stands in front of me

And he turns and smiles

Wearing the same face as mine

“You did,” he says. “I should have ran. But you’ll forgive me that mistake, I hope.”

But no one forgives mistakes anymore, they just get erased

Like I should have done a long, long time ago

But here he stands, a monument of that slip

A pillar made of salt

Perhaps he knows how it ends as well

Like a serpent and its tail, we’ve circled each other

Trying to undo the other half, the lesser half

A sorry mistake, I was younger then, foolish, I swear

I run at him, brandishing the pistol

Old tech, still needs iron

A sound, then he falls

Maybe it was a cry or a laugh or a scream or a song

I can’t hear it over the pounding of blood in my brain

Everything is dizzy, faint

My mistake is gone, my sorry clone

Now it can just be me, my only me

Better without that other half, that younger half

Pain starts slowly after that body falls before me

I look down, feeling weak

And I see-

A flower of red

-Blood-

Blossoms in my chest.