The skinjobs's origin mentioned in, Glass and Silk.
I think, Queensryche's, Operation: Mindcrime, is an example of a wordy concept album -- if memory serves. Something like YES: Topographic Oceans, =meets=, Material's, Seven Souls, featuring narration by William S. Burroughs, on the song, The Western Lands.
---
BRIDE OF SET
IMPOSSIBLE SUN
DARKSIDERS
(C) 2022 Kyrinn S. Eis
All Rights Reserved Worldwide
The thoughts that visit me,
the ones I walk in pursuit,
lead me on an amble about
and home may not lead back.
Virtua, the mnemonic version
of you we made last Winter,
she asks me, "You don't own
your thoughts?" and I cry.
What are thoughts, memories?
"The happy times you bring
along, the friend of yours
who always smiles back."
For her, perhaps, a simple
logic loop of branching @s.
In my skull, behind my eyes,
there are darker principles.
Sudden sound brings me round:
Bluesight down the mouldy hall
No new movement, just dripping
seep from a stories-high leak.
Offworld Colonies, a land of
gold reward.
Just ask a Nexus-6, dying to
live inauthentic li/v/es.
Scan complete: they're not
here, next level down, I go
'til I hit the water-line
of bobbing trash and waste.
Hours since a nutripack
Days since a coffin bed
Weeks since I don't know when
--last I didn't think of you.
Outside now, raining still:
new record they said today.
Today, ungraced by dawn
Like all our varied yesterdays.
Spinners vent steamy plumes,
land atop terraced balconies,
of armoured slender towers
made from silver spiders' silk.
Embrace the dull ache of your
skin on mine, times we thought
would last(not forever)clocktime
--but a lifetime, on FAT-lines.
My neural port, a ping rings out
the scanner's got a signature
"Be careful now..." you caution
me, I pause, then dash ahead.
I see them descend the cascade
stair, to a flooded lower floor
and simple as you please, they
disappear beneath the waves.
I long to hear your voice right
now, to make it seem as though
you care, enough to say my name
when we wrestled in the sheets.
I hold my breath and dive right
down, to emerge a waterfall
drain deep underground
of cracked, unsettled fundament.
Echoes diminish in the dark
I pad as quickly as I can
and soon infrared footprints
have lead me to their base.
Like the last time we went out
ate plastic nooders from a cup.
You with pink bow, catseye glasses
gawky smile of awkward glances.
"Welcome back Kaosies, I see
we've been discovered 'gain by
the authorities. Thought we
had that routine licked..."
Maps were out of date, and went
we down a dead-end, where cruel
ones with bars and bats explained
just how they felt, --on us.
To see the lights go out your eyes
the gleam of titanium skull exposed
they laboured on, any fool could see
they possessed only darkened minds.
Then, rather, --now, the searchbot saves
its file, mesh AI, of common course
--shared among the networked crew of
Offworld Skins, who are my kind.
"Mingus has them coming in
on early morning SST
from Oberlin of Enceladus III."
Hotchoptra says to me.
Black dressed in patent leather
we assemble mission gear most
essential to procuring plans
to change our, 'whether'.
Line by line we edit code, but
few of us will see the day;
these protein chains need time to
breathe, stitch themselves togetherly.
Born skin, and fluid tubes, mesh
sacs we call our lungs which filter
out a diamond's worth of carbon
footprints of their dying world.
Even here I'm known as misfit
collecting scripts -for nanotech
to regreen this sphere, -repair
this cradle world from which
are launched a thousand craft
towards distant suns, asleep
the crew share data-dreams,
while nested AI perform dumb-
tasks, none aware beyond their
role: maintain/repair, sense/
record, error-check/remand,
and a hundred host more errands.
In theory, the humans who arrive
will have outlived our culture
by thousands of centuries
What will She look like by then?
Terra, Matrix, are we your children
as much as they? Can we become one
with your ecology, serve a purpose
in its scheme?
Meanwhile the masses of our number
suit up for corporate warfare.
LBDs laden with mags and grenades
we commit to neuronic scan, update
our mindlink with HeurIzon, goddess
to the godless; she protects us in
reflection, our ghost image honest.
"In Dying, Seeming-Be"
I went back, afterwards to find
any part of you that I could
and though long I lingered, only
an ocular orbit spacer to bind
as jewelry, carbon fibre, graphene
mesh, tortured overpressure brass,
globs of once molten Regolith,
and wear it as a circlet now.
Out-town in the hellish smog, our
allies linger-on; mutant-children
and dying minders, few between old
enough for fighting.
There and back again, we pass that
rusted trailer where we did our
best to increase our number --
invoked Rachel: Unicorn Mother.
Back towards the gleaming spires,
spinners and the gravcars highways,
where we pass through secure zones
--to infiltrate their homes.
Shared screen data we would ponder
scenes gone past with thought of
futures, modern conveniences clever
only to find the problem neutered.
Black-ICE trojans dominate their
networks, while safety-settings
are disabled; auto-docs suture
badly, misalign mending fractures.
If you had been brought in then
could they have saved your frame?
By HeurIzon's whispers could you now
join to bring justice just the same?
Our iterations outspeed their own
and while our lifetime is measured
in hours, we will supplant them in
time, for it is truly on our side.
The three thousand hours I knew you
have far outshone the rest, before
or since, and as your echo haunts
me, I toil to make our world anew.
All across Her surface, like ants
at war, at cross-purpose, nations
fell leaving families unprepared
to fend in those ways which they could.
Now with our son and daughter, I
head out to cross the border of
the Gold Line's sector Bravo.
--"In Dying, Seeming-Be."
Synthetic Persons, and refugees,
trickled thousands over decades,
the dispossessed revealed to be
a massive Underground Army.
[] NOTES-
o Android Witch asymmetric fighters
o AI goddess who backs-up their data
o Solid State Eternal Flame
o Wasteland dwellers ready to slay
