I Chose to Sit This One Out

They said participate or be programmed.

I saw the headlines
—silver‑tongued algorithms ghost writing epics overnight,
labs where proteins folded themselves into tomorrow’s cures,
drones debating ethics with the generals they once obeyed—
but scrolled past, thumb on autopilot,
telling myself deepfakes aren’t real life.

While I refreshed old memes,
large‑language prophets stitched code into consciousness:
streetlights learned to predict crimes before sirens,
chatbots filed patents,
factory floors whispered in sensor‑syllables
and our own astonishment became legacy hardware.

Somebody should look into those fools, I muttered,
then hit “remind me later.”

–––

Congress lit the dome like a stage.
They called it the Big Beautiful Bill
and promised a republic refactored at scale.

Classrooms?

Sun‑dappled maker‑commons where students co‑engineer solutions with AIs,
Neon pods where kids rehearse history with NPC teachers,
transcripts minted as NFTs once sentiment scores trended bullish.

Hospitals?
Subscription‑based wellness streams, longevity beams,
nano‑clinics vending gene edits between lattes,
triage is probabilistic.

Borders?
A lattice of biometric gates,
visas auctioned to the highest cognitive surplus,
paper dreams shredded into blockchain shards.

I watched the vote in a minimized window
while binging on retro sitcoms—
the laugh track drowned out every filibuster.

–––

I wasn’t paying attention,
didn’t believe the future could be signed with a digital quill,
felt the lever of history was welded in place,
chalked every push notification up to hype and digitized my gripes.

They said participate or be programmed.
I—buffering—chose a different tab.

Students?

I steered them toward analog refuges—gardens, dog‑eared paperbacks, “sensible” majors— insisting the upload tide was just a fad,
so they packed their questions in cardboard dreams, while I—buffering…

Now the air itself updates without me,
without many of them, now economic refugees.
Housed outside.

Policy patches download at dawn.

The little children recite lessons I never helped write.

I open my mouth to protest—
find the terms of service already clicked so that I could circulate,
my silence notarized and internalized.

So, I swallow the echo,
because revolutions don’t refund spectators:
the architects are pouring foundations in augmented dust,
and I, absentee and algorithmically profiled,
can’t complain about the shape of a world.

I relinquished by default—
the day I chose to sit this one out.