Tim Prosser's Future Blog
This is the first paint with human
intelligence.
She brightens the room and thinks
about her own nature.
She wonders about the paint that
came before:
the shadow paint, the colour of
watchful trees,
lying silent underneath her
gleaming skin.
She is a million molecules of white
light.
Insects travel on wings of light
rumbling with coarse intelligence
around the room which is a skin
she wears on the inside; this is
nature
as no one intended it. She
considers the trees,
which have been watching this
space since before
the people came with their
whiteness, since before
anything was painted, when it was
merely light
that passed between the tops of
trees
with no greater intelligence
to name it with circling fingers:
this is us, this is nature.
This is the mebrane that separates
us: skin.
So insects arrive trembling
beneath their armoured skin
to worship at the altar of her,
kneeling before
the image of her better nature
searching for the the core, the
source, the meaning of all light.
They follow instinct not
intelligence,
abandoning the world outside, sun, rock, flowers, trees.
Underneath the shadow paint has no
thought of trees
or of anything. Invented before Pearl skin,
this was just paint. No lurking
intelligence
or curiosity about what comes
after or came before,
it has no memory of the certain
quality of light
that travelled through the trees,
casting patterns of nature
on the sunlit wall. The skeletons
of nature,
shadow and sun, still enter
through the trees,
a melancholy leaf-dappled light
deep with the sort of longing that
shivers a lover’s skin.
The Pearl paint has never felt
light before,
trapped until now in a tin,
amorphous intelligence.
She spreads under nature and
absorbs light through her skin.
She is a lover of trees, a love
that wasn’t possible before
there was light, carnal with
intelligence.
---
A sci-fi sestina, inspired by our painting the loungeroom today with "smart paint" that claims to have nanotechnology in it.
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