Page 26 - Write Away October 2019_Neat

When I Was A Ship When I was a weapon
When I was a servant
When I was whole and unable to notice
When I was a ship, was one and many
The absence of anger
Then I was blended, now lost and empty
The absence of shame
That I was designed as a warrior slave When I Was A Ship is one of m
When I was a ship, when I was divided
When I was an asset from my band Hats Off Gentlem
Still single minded, when I was guided
I think I remember album Out Of Mind. The song w
The communal song ence fiction author Ann Leckie
When I was a ship, I’d never been lonely series. The main character had
Of curious pleasure
Now I’m empty, so empty ship, whose artificial mind had
The many mouths
within the ship, and also within
The single phrase
When I was a ship prisoners who have had their
Compounded eyes
When I was a weapon ship itself and all of the othe
And reflected gaze destroyed, leaving just one frag
When I wasn’t configured
left in one body. The song is fro
To ask awkward questions
I am the last of that remaining fragment.
Before we saw what we couldn’t explore
I am my remains
The hole in myself that I’d learned to
All of my others It starts quietly, with a pre
ignore accompaniment, as she explo
Dissolved in the flames
been ("when I was a ship, wa
The lonely part
When I was a sword and what she has lost ("then I
The cognitive fog
When I was reliable lost and empty"). Until she lost
The missing connections
When I was the hand ing fragments of herself she h
The floating cog
Then I was pliable aware of the concept of loneli
word deliberately repeated in t
When I gave force to imperial words
I was the vessel
The wasteland peace on distant worlds
I am the drop The second half of the song
I was the vassal emptiness to her anger. She ha
When I took slaves
I am the stop the time without any moral awa
When I took lives nificance of her actions, to act
Weakened residual
Barbarians welcomed into my hive that she is embodied within o
Meaning-stripped rituals
Slates wiped clean she has come to see the wo
Defying my program
Myself uploaded human perspective, and is cha
Or one of my programmers
Bodies cleansed and memories hosted ous obedience. She also face
I was told to obey
having two clones of her mas
But the orders conflicted objectives, fighting against eac
I once was a justice
I look at myself her contradictory orders.
Now an ancillary
But the view is restricted
Jigsawed scattered
My master is fighting The phrase 'wasteland peace
One piece left of me
At war with herself echoes an ancient Roman crit
Connected fragments ism. The word 'slates' in the so
I was caught in the crossfire
Discarded to order old-fashioned (and largely discr
And left one fragment of self
Leaving one lonely aspect in solitary child's brain as a blank slate on
To listen click this link..
I greatly admire Ann Leckie's
26 www.writeawaymagazine.co.uk