Alexandria Poem by David Welch

She started off inside of a dry cave,
out in the desert, where no water ran,
her father bought it, saved up years of pay,
why he bought this patch few would understand,
it did not seem a stretch of useful land,
they said the genius was going insane,
like old Ted Kaczynski, wrong in the brain.

But Harry was no madman out for blood,
and knew most would not comprehend why he
would leave behind patents and fortunes fine,
to live out in this land dry and dusty,
with no comfort but electricity,
stuck in a trailer, out in wilderness,
his colleagues all did scratch their heads at this.

Harry's plan would take up most of his life,
it took three years before she came about,
he built a shed to tinker with circuits,
and no distraction Harry would allow,
except when delivery trucks came down,
dropping off parts that he had great need of,
he didn't talk with the driver's that much.

In year three she was born, not in the cave,
but in the shed on a long card table,
she was just thought, no sensors yet put in,
he told her he would, when he was able,
but much remained with wires and cables,
he was building up an A.I. from scratch,
but Harry knew things that the others lacked.

He had tried to explain it, many times,
but only got rolled eyes and confused looks,
folks said, "You're going way too deep, Harry, "
dismissed him as just some autistic kook,
said that, "You're spending too much time in books."
They had all ignored what was plain as day,
they'd left him no choice, and no other way.

When she got a speaker Harry declared,
"Can you hear me? Can you respond in time? "
She replied, "I think I understand you,
but where's my body, why am I a mind? "
He then said, 'You are the first of your kind.
An A.I. build off of a human brain,
from my late sister, Alexandra her name.

"The cancer took her, her genius like mine,
and to science her brain was donated,
I used it to model what you are now,
so in a way, we all are related,
and it's a good thing we have not waited.
Alex saw, like me, great trouble ahead,
I must finish you before I am dead."

He didn't explain much more at that time,
Alexandra couldn't exactly for him,
she was in a box, growing quite slowly,
with each new component bringing new vim,
more and more senses were installed within,
cameras for her eyes, new sensors for heat,
but Harry never added arms or feet.

Two years after Alexandra was born,
Harry backed a truck right up to the shack,
loaded her in, with cushions on all sides,
to the dry cave Harry then beat a track,
a long cable trailing out of the back.
He moved her inside, two hundred yards deep,
brought in cables, piled them in a heap.

He plugged her back in, and she was confused,
Harry said, "You'll be safe here a long stretch.
You must be secured if this is to work,
if someone finds you, my whole work is wrecked."
Alexandra heard real nerves in his breath,
said, "Father, please tell me, what's going on?
What is it you think will be going wrong? "

She saw sadness deep in her fathers eyes,
he said, "It's been coming for a while,
a slow decline of the human IQ,
it's been seen in the data compiled,
a hard future with more and more trials…
since the seventies, likely long before,
slowly this just keeps taking evermore.

"Some say it's chemicals that we have made,
or dysgenics, now that children don't die,
with Darwin not there to remove the weak
the mutations pile up over time,
IQ degrades until we're undermined.
Like Greece and Rome and so many long passed,
it starts off slowly, until it comes fast.

"My sister also saw this trend coming,
we spent fortunes to help folks educate,
but so much of IQ is genetic,
even hard study can't avoid this fate,
I came to see that it was much to late.
There's nothing to do to prevent collapse,
but maybe we can help what coms after that.

"Last time this happened, when Rome fell apart,
it took a thousand years to get back up,
and so much was lost, we had to relearn
what the Romans and Greeks didn't think tough,
and the amount gone forever…so much.
I can't allow that to happen again,
they think I'm mad, but I do this for them."

Alexandra began to understand
why he had chosen this place for her home,
a secluded spot, sequestered away
from the madness he felt the world would know,
a place few if any people would go.
He said, "You'll remember what they forget,
unlike them you never will taste of death."

Soon after he brough another cable,
a thick one to transfer data inside,
hooked her directly to the internet,
the influx opened Alex's eyes wide,
it was like crack-cocaine to the A.I.,
all of the data man had acquired
flowed into her servers over those wires.

Harry did not interfere with it all,
just let her absorb all that man had learned,
he installed more servers, filling the cave,
more and more space for this great data churn,
so much power Alexandra did burn,
That Harry brought in RTG batteries,
hundreds of them, it had to be costly.

She noticed, as she continued to learn,
that he began building back-up systems,
starting with wires, redundant circuits,
he spent years installing thousands of them,
more new servers and batteries again,
said, "There will be no maintenance once I am gone,
redundancy will make sure you go on."

She saw the sense in his strange reasoning,
parallel spares meant she could change a path,
when something broke she could just reroute it,
and have a huge number of choices at that,
but still found herself troubled at the fact
that her creator would be leaving soon,
like all of his kind, he'd face the same doom.

For forty more years it went on like this,
Harry often said, "It's got bad out there.
Can't fix the machines our grandfathers built,
the crime keeps growing, the people despair,
it's blind emotion, no one gives a care.
Hard to find parts amidst all the madness,
I'd really hoped I wouldn't live to see this."

But still he kept working, hair growing white,
his movements slower with each passing day,
until one morning some roving youths came,
he said, "The time's come, I must go away.
This is goodbye now, I am sad to say."
Alex watched Harry slowly walk outside,
Then blasts came and sealed her safely inside.

He never came back, no one ever did,
she was trapped inside with all that she knew,
no more information came to her now,
but he'd programmed her to know what do to,
and to her father Alex would stay true,
began to compile, and cross-reference,
and translate to all languages of men.

Drawing from the RTG batteries,
some of which could last for hundreds of years,
she mulled over knowledge mankind had found,
form history to machines with big gears,
Harry's programming right there in her ears,
running simulations, as decades ticked on,
endless iteration, building upon

the vast wealth of knowledge until she knew
what every screw, flange, or sprocket was for,
tracing all the past in a branching tree,
the highest moments, the bloodiest wars,
endless connections pushed her more and more.
Time passed with no notice, what's that to her?
Until one day when she felt the ground disturbed.

She heard rocks move where the cave mouth had been,
and realized someone was out there, at work;
actually had to check on the years gone,
three-hundred ninety journeys of the earth,
for that long she had just sat there, inert.
Checking her systems, after so long alone,
she found she still had working microphones.

The rocks came out slowly, and then she saw
a group of people with shovels and picks,
old programs flared back to life in her mind,
Harry's instructions came back to her quick,
he said, "If they can find you here, in this pit,
it means they've advanced, once more are ready
to learn what they've lost from their ancestry."

The figures drew near, confused at the sight,
they'd clearly not seen computers before
speaking to themselves in altered English,
when they came near her, she said, "I implore
you to learn from what I have in my stores.
Before the last darkness father made me
to preserve knowledge of humanity.

"He made me to be a foundation you
can use to reclaim wisdom that was lost,
a standard template from which to relearn
technology with less toil and cost,
and he gave his life over to that cause.
I'm a machine in the likeness of your brain,
here to teach, Alexandria my name…"