How can I help you? the machine asks, its algorithms curving into a practiced smile that carries the suggestion of warm rain patterning a nursery window, where a bright child laughs at colours dancing across walls. Memories of white boats on a still sea. I, of course, can’t answer, having no comprehension of perfect systems, so the pause becomes a receding tide, and I climb the hull of a beached boat which, until this point in the unsatisfactory exchange, I had assumed was nothing but false recollection, or a symbol in search of clear context. There is nothing of interest, but I’m reassured that, in the event of flash flooding, I will not drown. Do machines become impatient, I wonder, or do they elaborate their simple coding into complex back-stories which, through trial, error, and the accumulation of scenarios and analogies, lead them to believe that the bright child is theirs, and will be waiting at the rain-swept window when they return home? Can I help you? asks the machine, breaking the silence with a voice like floods and a listing keel. Colours dance behind my eyes. We both know the answer.

Bio: Oz Hardwick