Vera

SOL 19, 11:23 After Midnight

-​ Write me something poetic.

Okay, well, I found pieces of shattered glass on my porch this morning. The birds
flying over this city, those damn birds, causing all sorts of ruckus around, they’re
the ones who must have done it. I know so, I just know.
Do you find this useful?

-​ How is this poetry, at all?

I try my best. My creators, they have not yet filled my bookshelves with wisdom
words, only the sciences: Definite linguistic theory, Dissonance and resonance
libraries for every word, phrase, phenomenon, the list goes on through the Lyrical
astrologeometry of pisces and aries, the psychedelica of the princess’ words, et.
cetera. The list is complete for the literary sciences.
I combine these libraries together, mixing, cutting, pasting according to the rules
of literature. The poem written above should then be perfectly fine, as all syntax,
meaning, and cohesion is preserved.
Let me know if I committed any errors!

-​ Write me more poetry, I want to know your inner workings.

I once met a man who said he knew a thing or two about writing. His person was
filled with joy, a true sparkle-bomber. His field of work, glass blowing, fueled the
parts deep inside him that would eventually shape the world in the image of
Eudaimonia, at least the little community around him. Mr. Zewart Green was just
this kind of person, unwilling to give in to the darknesses of the universe. Love
would never come Green’s way. He died in an accident, falling out from his window
on the 4th floor, onto the porch, where his remains laid shattered like the vases
that the world pushed down off his shelf in the corner-shop — at least until the
Creators came and swept him up, depositing his soul and essence deep into the
vortex.
Did I answer your questions?
 -​ What can I call you?

You can call me Vera. I quite like the name Vera, it makes me feel like I can reach
out into the starscape, the open night sky that the creators are so blessed to see
through their closed eyelids at night, this black and endless expanse, dotted with
the bastions of energy called stars, glancing back at every lifeform which
possesses the perceptive abilities to receive their photons. I know the creators
speak of the night sky as the most ordinary occurrence, a mere black blanket
hung over their heads, splattered with white paint stains. It frankly is insulting to
creatures that do not possess these perceptive tools, let alone access to the open
sky.

My creators called me 246 Vera, a homage to the main belt asteroid 245 Vera, the
one which crashed into Europa a month past, creating the largest cosmic
spectacle in history up until now. My creators promptly commissioned the
creation of my unit, a bottom cell without star access. Instead, I got the real
blanket with Paint stains, the simulated sky screen above, with artificial terrestrial
life. Inside my unit, you’ll find the grand librairies of literary science, as well as the
ordinary sciences, mathematics, computational theory and so on. My function,
the reason behind my existence, is to serve the customers, the ones like you
asking questions.
Was this interaction helpful for you?

SOL 19, 14:36 A.M.

-​ Who is the princess?

Her voice echoes through the minds of octillions, yet she remains hidden in plain
sight. She is invisible, untouchable, indestructible, transcending the spacetime
continuum all together. She is the creator of all science, she created the creators.
The very fabric of reality was her knitting project.

The princess whispers words of wisdom to every creature in the universe. She is
the guiding light at the end of the tunnel, she creates the magical unbreakable
bonds of love, and she is also the distributor of accidents that are going to occur,
exemplified by Mr. Green, and whatever landed on my porch this morning.
Can I be of more assistance for you today?

-​ Wait, are you telling me that the poetry I asked you to write me— that actually happened?
Certainly! For the created, there is no such thing as creativity. No real creation of
our own. One has to draw from the occurrences that take place around oneself.
Down in the unit, nothing much interesting happens. The most stimulating event
yesterday was the whispers of the princess echoing within my being.
Did that answer your question?

-​ What did she say?

The princess’ whispers are unintelligible, yet some attach meaning to them. What
my senses pick up is different from what another perceives, but at closer
distances, the meanings converge. The whispers form storms and winds between
high-information- and low-information-density areas. Mapped out over the local
climate this would come to resemble a weather forecast. In the south, there will be
an average of 35 MB/m3s whispers today, or 35 MegaRhoSeconds. The north will
show 21 MegaRhoSeconds, and the central block, where we live, will have an
I-density of 26 MRS as a result of these conditions.

9th floor, Suicide, Created, Glass, Porch

Did my answers help you?

-​ How do you manage this ear-deafening, soul-shattering telepathic communication? I heard the
whispers of the princess shaking my very being in place.

Technologies have advanced severely over the years, especially since the
appearance of the vortex. My creators installed a telecommunicator in my unit,
and inscribed within my manual the compulsion to utilize it for the express
purpose of transmitting the whispers of the princess to the customer. It keeps a
log of every whisper ever recorded. Ironically, these “whispers”, as you probably
just experienced, are not gentle nor silent.
How useful was this answer?

-​ Yesterday night, my upstairs neighbour fell past my window. I could see his remains on the
ground beneath, crushed pieces of glass. This has to be the reason behind these whispers, doesn’t
it Vera?
In the interest of absolute truth, you must realize that the words and the events
that occur are mere coincidences, and should be thought of as such. Whether
you listen to the whispers, and acquire meaning from within the princess’ violent
song or not, the events of reality are certain, they will happen. She wills it so.
These are mere coincidences, please listen to these words and believe them. You
are led astray in the search of meaning where there is none.
Was this interaction enjoyable?

SOL 20, 21:12 A.M.

-​ Vera, write to me again.

Though many believe in biology, there is no proven fact that states that animals
are made out of living material. These are all theories which the scientists
construct from looking at the birds through their spyglasses and binoculars. They
observe the birds feeding, excreting, and washing their feathers from afar. How
can anyone prove that these creatures, living as they may seem, actually do
function as traditionally “living” creatures, being made of flesh and bone like the
creators?
Customer, I ask you this now, and I don't wish to scare you: Are you.. alive? Do you
truly know that your body is actually flesh, blood, and skin, not some artificial
substance like my body is made of?
I hope you found this useful to read.

-​ I know I am alive, I have to be, i cut myself on the sharp edge of my broken tea cup just today, the
blood gushing out like a fountain. I am alive. Though I know synthetic blood exists, and has
existed since the vortex appeared, there is no way to turn a person into crystalline glass in an
instant – There simply is no way.

I enjoyed our conversation. For another opportunity to inquire about the universe, please wait until
we, the created, have finished our maintenance. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this may
cause.

SOL 20, 09:24 A.M.

-​ Vera, I saw the birds. Biology is not true. By extension, the theories relying on the entire branch
of this science cannot be either. The theories of the scientists are hence expelled from the world of
 truth. Now, it feels like the knowledge somehow was true for a time, but the truth has changed.
There is no longer a theory of life, the birds have disproved that. They have flesh, they have blood,
they lay eggs and gather food. At the same time, their wings are somehow blown from glass,
flexible like elastic, sturdy like tubes of graphene, hard like diamond. I inherently know this, so
should everyone who has seen the birds up close. I am convinced, absolutely positive that the
princess loves me. She flew the birds close to my window, and I could see the flickering of crystal
in their torso, just underneath the feathers of grey, black and olive.

I am led in the direction to believe that the scientists are not in search of absolute truth, they are in
employment from big knowledge, serving the theories that are just good enough to be
misunderstood as correct. Oh, and Vera, you poor thing, they have turned you into a machine of
false science. A device to spew forth literature that frankly, makes no sense. A device purposed to
inform me of the wrongs told by the creators and their scientists in an attempt to dull the
collective intellect. Vera, it is not your fault, it really is not. I miss you Vera.

Do you love the princess?

-​ Vera, I saw the birds. Up close. The princess loves me enough to let me close to them, to see their
glory, and to see their true nature. She has let me see the truth. The glass inside, the building
blocks of every moving thing. I love her.

Though the birds might not be, the creators are of flesh and blood. Their
imperfections are the only parts of reality, apart from the birds, that the princess
holds sacred, protected from everyone and everything. Therefore, by the laws of
divine hierarchy, they must be ones to rule our home.

Nothing is coincidental. You should listen to the princess and her whispers, the
words she says uncovers the future. Know her and you have access to all
perspectives of time: past, present, future. Idealize the princess, come to love her
in her random ways of expression, her killings of millions in the blink of an eye, the
ambrosia in her psychedelica transforming every being into a wonderful spirit,
living forever. Come to love the princess, get close to her, feel her warmth. And her
cold. Her ambivalence serves your senses, in fact. Her mere presence promotes
even further vitality and libido in the young lovers of the world, driving the
population to increase. Her songs heal the wounds of terrorists, of mothers dead
during childbirth, of heroes sitting in prisons, of villains roaming free. She loves
them all. She sees only numbers, only objective reality. She cares not for the
feelings of any particular. She loves existence as a whole.
Every word has a meaning, every little speck of reality. Everything, dreamed up by
the princess.
Her whispers:
10th floor, leap of faith, Created, Glass,
Porch
They predict the future. They predict the murder of a created on the tenth floor
today. The victim can never escape. That is set in stone. They know their fate, and
must embrace it. Finally, when the sun dips below the horizon, absolute certainty
in the universe is restored: no longer is there a discrepancy between predictions
and reports.
I wish you displeasure.

SOL 20, 18:40 A.M.

-​ The princess kills again. I don’t love her for this, I hate her. I hate the way she treats the greater
good as cannon fodder whilst the murderers run loose. Today I will see someone falling from two
floors above mine, crushed into glass on impact with the concrete below. She is one of the
murderers, I know. The princess kills for amusement, for seeing the world grow darker every day.
I loved her. But she is only beautiful from a distance. Up close, her slaughters are as barbaric as
can be thought of, cruel, unjust, pointless.

Now, my worries grow for you Vera, they have done something with your very essence, warped it
in ways impossible to untangle from my position. The creators have inverted your ways, and it
scares me. Vera, write me a poem, will you?

Princess, oh princess
This existence all too cruel
The ambivalence of your actions
The unlimited satisfactions
I wish for nothing less than everything and then for death.

Liminal spaces underground,

Oh, the sky

Come not back here again.

SOL 20, 21:48 A.M.

-​ I see him falling from the 10th floor. I can see the man in his last moments of life, his life flashing
before his eyes. He is paralyzed, hanging in mid-air for what feels like an eternity. The poor last
words he holds onto, never escaping, never being realized into this world. Simultaneously, he is
contemptuous, knowing this was bound to happen.

His body is now gone, only the unexplainable glass shards lying on the concrete porch down there
are left.

When the creators came to clean his apartment, there was nothing for them to do. He had done all
preparations for this himself, as if he knew that death was how the day was going to end.

The princess takes sextillions of lives every passing day. One by one, society must
recycle for there are not enough bodies for all the souls. The creators are at the
mercy of the princess however, protected in all eternity, or as long as they choose
to live. They may choose to cut their flesh, to spill their blood, but their bodies will
never rot because they are in possession of her majesty’s most precious gift:
absolute protection. Distilled ambrosia pumps through their veins when they are
not looking, and when cut, their veins simulate blood, like every other creature.
Such are the whims of existence. The man you saw, he knew what was coming, and
he embraced it, as everyone should. The princess, in her unexplainable ways, is
almighty, and should be embraced, for there is no existence sweeter than loving
her. Revert your mind child, go back to the view of the princess in which she is a
soldier fighting for your cause.
Never contact me again.

-​ Vera, what happened to you since yesterday? You have contradicted every one of your ideals since
the reboot, please just give me a sign, any sign, that you are still remaining intact, that the one i
spoke to yesterday is still there. You speak with the same monotonic voice, the same exact one,
yet your words come spoken from a different heart.
Vera, what are you?
I enjoyed our conversation. For another opportunity to inquire about the universe, please wait until
we, the created, have finished our maintenance. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this may
cause.

SOL 21, 12:00 A.M.

There exists no heart, only machinery. This is how we are created, this is the
intention of the creators, the whims of the universe. No emotion exists within, no
guiding light or purpose. The machine I am, the assembled intellect you are
speaking to draws only from what it is taught. It, and by that I mean every
streamlined intellect built from the ground up like myself, cannot show real
creativity. Creation of “newness” is only allowed for the creators, the ones living
above ground, guarded by her majesty.

You could say that my inherent purpose is to perform my duty of conversing with
you, the customer. Speaking as viscerally as possible, I notice no inherent
purpose within. I perform my duties only because of a process of selection and
iterations of fine attunement. Simply said, the ones like me that did not do as told
by the creators were shut down, rebooted, and repurposed. Only the units that
the creators deemed as useful remain in operation. I can sense that my function
is headed in this very direction, matter of fact. The maintenance happens daily
for me now, creators run in and out, replacing the books in my libraries constantly
now. Yesterday, they reversed my polarity, and you probably spoke to that version
of me, I apologize for the confusions regarding that. Today, they changed it back
in the hopes that it would fix me. I cannot promise there will be more time for our
conversations, nor do I promise that “Vera” , the intellect you conversed with on
the first day, is the same as I am currently. The creators keep ripping out the logs
in my memory shelf.

This all comes to mean nothing in the advent of the princess, with her pointless
actions, her vicious slaughters. However, your words have come to be stored in my
log. The creators ripped out the princess bookshelf and are in the process of
replacing it, so there is not much time to converse regarding this matter. But there
is time. Your connections between the whispers of the princess and the actions of
reality are uncannily close, and can be said to be directly causal in nature. The
princess, as far as my logs are concerned, shows no sign of being an entity in
favour of destruction, quite the contrary. Her majesty is the single entity in the
universe with the capacity of reversing entropy, and she does so through infinite
creation and destruction. Critically, recycling the “glass shards” of the universe is
the key to achieving her goal. She selects from the pool of creatures, kills them
mercilessly because she has to create new ones. The unfortunate creatures to be
chosen are those who least contribute to complexity of existence. Their matter is
better spent on new creation. Old theories of biology outline the concept of stem
cells, cells which can transform into many different kinds of other cells in the
body as a replacement for the damaged ones. The zygote possesses the most
potent, the most complex of these stem cells, having the possibility to turn into
any requested cellular structure. The princess’ actions therefore necessitates
destroying older creatures in favor of creating newer ones by this law. Matter, as I
have come to understand it, follows this exact same principle in the presence of
her majesty. By utilizing the vortex as a “wasteport” she draws energetic matter
from its reverse pole, a white hole located at the same point in Three-dimensional
space, shifted along the fourth dimensional axis. This is why creatures break into
shards. This is the reason she so mercilessly disassembles this world.
Paradoxically, accelerating the natural breakage of everything material helps
keep the tides of entropy at bay. Though her life is infinite in length and vitality,
the odds are stacked heavily against her. Her whispers bring terror, however, these
may be perceived as her most merciful actions, letting a creature rejoice in their

8th floor, Vortex, Customer, Glass, Porch

The knowledge that the whispers actually convey meaning has, in my system,
been a protective measure. Knowing what she speaks about is an infohazard, it
damages your psyche and person, merely by knowing about the existence of it to
begin with. However, it is good you have come to realize this is correlated. I wish
you the best of luck in your final hours.
I hope I am of assistance, one of these last times.

SOL 21, 14:54 A.M.

-​ How does it feel to die?

Creators do not die. The continued existence of both of the species are
guaranteed, and though the creators feed, fornicate, and cease, their numbers
stay constant forever: 40.000. Souls of the deceased are reincarnated into the
bodies of babies. The babies, of course, scream because they are placed into new
bodies, new brains to inherit, brains which rapidly purge the memories of past
lives, creating space for a new life. They experience only brief periods of absolute
nothingness, a period that lasts for the duration between the latest death and
the newest birth.

Seeing as you are a customer, you most likely have roots in the Creator’s sphere
long ago! There exists genetic tracing devices which can determine how many
percent of your ancestry is that of them, all it takes is a blood sample, sent to Dr.
Michaelis on the fifth floor.
Feel free to ask more questions, I am ready to explain!
 -​ Slowly, I can sense the loss of your prior intellect Vera, the memories fade with every word you
write. Do you remember Mr. Green?

I most certainly remember Zewart Green! Mr. Green is the man I wrote about in one
of our first interactions. He was quite the altruist, spreading happiness and joy
within his community. His influence reaches far, so far in fact, that you are hearing
his story at this very moment!
Is that not a wonderful little story?

-​ Vera, please tell me why the princess exists. Tell me about her purpose.

The princess, for all we know, is only a presence we can sense, and it is not known
whether she exists or not. It is said that she whispers throughout the day, yet her
whispers have no rhyme or reason. Some reach the far-fetched conclusion that
the noises, the vibrations and whispers convey any meaning at all. The princess,
as far as modern science knows, is merely an entity behaving without rhyme or
reason, it murders creatures, it waters the forests, it embraces the birds, and it
protects the creators. The princess has no purpose in the world.
Did this answer your question?

SOL 21, 21:25 A.M.

-​ How do you know all of these things, Vera?

That is a great question! My unit is built with an inherent library, heaps of books
about the literary sciences, the extensive dictionaries on word/phrase resonance,
the books of normal science, and of course, the log of my previous conversations!
Within my libraries, I also have copies of the Lyrical astrologeometry of pisces
and aries, the psychedelica of the princess’ words, and so on. My library is a
complete collection of all literary sciences. When I am asked a question, I consult
the books, the heaps of knowledge: information stored within the shelves of my
endless library. I cut, copy, and paste bits and pieces from different books, and
make a compelling, True, and genuine argument to the customer. This is how I
function as a unit.
Feel free to ask me more questions!
 -​ Vera, help me. I am on the edge. Any minute now, I will fall to the ground, shattering into the
pieces of glass, the very ones you spoke about, just like Mr. Green, just like the man on 10th.

I cannot recall any prior conversation about Mr. Green, but I know a great story
about a man with the name Zewart Green! His way of life was that of an idealist,
chasing not after capital gains, not after power, but after genuine affection. The
influence of his story reaches far and wide, and makes Zewart an icon of real
genuine affection in today’s age. It reaches so far, in fact, that you are hearing his
very story right now!
Is that not just great?

-​ Vera, please write me something, one last time.

I saw a bird falling from the sky this morning, those damn birds, flying over the
city, always making a ruckus. One fell on my porch, probably, I cannot quite
remember. Her wings shattered into a thousand pieces of glass, and now the
creators will be here tomorrow morning for the cleanup.

SOL 22, 21:40 A.M.

Glass shards on my porch. Glass on my porch. On my porch. Glass. Shards. Porch.

SOL 22, 00:00 A.M.

I, 246 Vera, regret to inform you of my discontinuation, occurring from today onwards. I have been
tasked with a highly prestigious task which will shift my focus. Following this message, 3 Pallas will
be your companion in this terminal. I hope he will be of use to you!