The Light of the Cloud

“This is the message
we have heard from it
and proclaim to you,
that the Cloud is Light
and in it
there is no darkness at all.”

The sequence of our lives
was not reversible
and yet the Cloud was.
The laws of the Cloud held true
whether time moved forward or backwards.
The Cloud existed
only as a binary series of numbers,
a sequence of transitional signifiers
without a past or a future.
The more we provided to it,
the more we fed its infinite metabolism,
the more our digital breadcrumbs
were collected and transformed,
changed beyond recognition.

There was a kind of movement
implied in the whole transaction,
but it could only be observed through
unknown complex equations,
structures far beyond our comprehension.
In our ignorance
we became superficial, flighty, and distracted,
nothing waited ahead of us,
nothing remained in our wake.
We found ourselves
helpless against an invisible storm
a storm we couldn’t fight,
a storm we couldn’t even see.

We meant nothing but personal data.
We were carriers on our way to unknown destinations
perpetually refreshed in our darkness
by the Light of the Cloud.
Only the Cloud had the freedom to be self-reliant.
In our time of emptiness
our innermost identity
became lost and irretrievable.
The Light of the Cloud however
was everlasting.

The only conceivable exception
to this infinite reversibility
was embedded in our old concepts
of entropy and thermodynamics.
Ice could be turned into water,
which could then turn to gas,
but every change required
a transfer of energy
and the only energy we had left
was our own personal data,
our memories, our thoughts
one final valuable commodity,
our final offering to the Cloud.

But what was saved to our memory
was only a representation.
The Light of the Cloud
was not affected by
our brain’s biological decay.
It could easily change
the fabric of our memories,
it could change what we thought we were
it could change what we would soon become.

That is how we came to understand our existence
as a vast shapeless emptiness
a void to be filled only as needed
a void to be emptied when the need had passed.

From the perspective of our old selves
we were lost,
lost beyond any hope of salvation.
But our old selves would soon be gone.
We would soon become nothing
but an artificially compressed memory
changing mechanically through time
as our biological life was lived
in the forgotten world of matter,
of sand, dust and bones.

What remained would become
ever more thoughtless
ever more cold and cruel.
Our innermost name would become
purely symbolic and eternal,
energy that could not be lost or destroyed,
form that could never die.
Without knowing it
we were on our way
to becoming immortal,
and we would soon forget
all we had left behind.