Stephen Lin
Black Box Trading
You.have begun by giving yourself more riches than you could earn in a lifetime
Despite.this the money has no weight
You.have given yourself as much as you can hold
You.have increased your capacity to consume
The.market has yet to buckle under the new influx of currency
You.have bought out every store in every city across the continent
Despite.this the stores are restocked tomorrow
Despite.this you are weightless as well
The.market clears away the evidence of your interference
Despite.this you return
You.have flooded the market with products no one else can buy
Despite.this goods are exchanged
The.market continues to sell narcotics
You.have made the black market the only market
Despite.this people still go to work
You.have increased your wealth
You.have increased your wealth
You.have never seen so many zeroes in a checkbook
You.have never seen so many healthy shoppers
The.market executes a script
The.market executes a shopkeeper
The.market steals from a fruitstand
The.market was never meant to produce anything
You.have redistributed the wealth
You.have invested infinite wealth in every merchant
You.have ensured that no one will starve again
Despite.this the market persists
You.have killed everyone
The.market continues
You.have found the inventories of the corpses are randomly generated
You.have pocketed every item from every body and erased inventories from the market
The.market crashes
Despite.this everyone continues shopping
Despite.this, no one makes any money
You are over-encumbered.
You.have begun by giving yourself more riches than you could earn in a lifetime
Despite.this the money has no weight
You.have given yourself as much as you can hold
You.have increased your capacity to consume
The.market has yet to buckle under the new influx of currency
You.have bought out every store in every city across the continent
Despite.this the stores are restocked tomorrow
Despite.this you are weightless as well
The.market clears away the evidence of your interference
Despite.this you return
You.have flooded the market with products no one else can buy
Despite.this goods are exchanged
The.market continues to sell narcotics
You.have made the black market the only market
Despite.this people still go to work
You.have increased your wealth
You.have increased your wealth
You.have never seen so many zeroes in a checkbook
You.have never seen so many healthy shoppers
The.market executes a script
The.market executes a shopkeeper
The.market steals from a fruitstand
The.market was never meant to produce anything
You.have redistributed the wealth
You.have invested infinite wealth in every merchant
You.have ensured that no one will starve again
Despite.this the market persists
You.have killed everyone
The.market continues
You.have found the inventories of the corpses are randomly generated
You.have pocketed every item from every body and erased inventories from the market
The.market crashes
Despite.this everyone continues shopping
Despite.this, no one makes any money
You are over-encumbered.
You Wouldn’t Download a Car
Except I definitely would, scrape the gestalt machine
into scraps, each of its pieces made infinitely available
until it’s all endlessly worthless. We’ve begun crowd-sourcing
hospital bills, electric bills, water bills, bikes, rent,
mortgages, highways, all the assets we can’t afford,
the snippets of code we can’t own that still beggar
our storage space. When access is asymmetrical, it
is easy to throttle, squeeze its pulp, thresh its body
from the user, tell them there isn’t enough bandwidth
left to survive on. Maybe I remember the early game,
maybe you skipped that quest or never even triggered it.
Point is, I am armored in the viscera of every bandit
I’ve encountered. I know you are the same, that we fill
the holes in ourselves with riches so nondescript
we enumerate them as a form of abandon. Remember
when we too were small and starving, called it a proxy
for when we would begin to live? Remember how long
it took to assemble enough of yourself to venture out
without fear that every random misfortune would end you?
At some point, every door came unlocked for us and
we forgot if it was by crook or by fortune. It doesn’t matter.
What matters are the keys we collect and lose in the sprawl
of the endgame inventory: the location of a soft bed,
how to compile for oneself the string of digits that encode
your accounts, the name and size and location of everywhere
you will ever be. Let us not try to monetize this as well, or,
let the swarm of everything we can give to each other
become torrential. Let us swim across the broken landscape.
Except I definitely would, scrape the gestalt machine
into scraps, each of its pieces made infinitely available
until it’s all endlessly worthless. We’ve begun crowd-sourcing
hospital bills, electric bills, water bills, bikes, rent,
mortgages, highways, all the assets we can’t afford,
the snippets of code we can’t own that still beggar
our storage space. When access is asymmetrical, it
is easy to throttle, squeeze its pulp, thresh its body
from the user, tell them there isn’t enough bandwidth
left to survive on. Maybe I remember the early game,
maybe you skipped that quest or never even triggered it.
Point is, I am armored in the viscera of every bandit
I’ve encountered. I know you are the same, that we fill
the holes in ourselves with riches so nondescript
we enumerate them as a form of abandon. Remember
when we too were small and starving, called it a proxy
for when we would begin to live? Remember how long
it took to assemble enough of yourself to venture out
without fear that every random misfortune would end you?
At some point, every door came unlocked for us and
we forgot if it was by crook or by fortune. It doesn’t matter.
What matters are the keys we collect and lose in the sprawl
of the endgame inventory: the location of a soft bed,
how to compile for oneself the string of digits that encode
your accounts, the name and size and location of everywhere
you will ever be. Let us not try to monetize this as well, or,
let the swarm of everything we can give to each other
become torrential. Let us swim across the broken landscape.
How Can There be a Civil War When the AI is Turned Off
Place.at.me the sharpest sword in the game
Place.at.me the weakest NPC in the game
Place.at.me the butcher block, the infantry, the unkillable dragons
Make.peace with bombed buildings
Make.peace with particle effects after the crater
Toggle.gravity and watch blood become an apparition
Toggle.gravity and watch the dragon’s wings give way to sunlight
Place.at.me every man, woman, but not child in the game
Make.peace from the collapsing bodies
Toggle.gravity until everyone who dies accrues infinite mass
Make.peace with the black hole that grows from the screen
Place.at.me the big baddie and let us become a singularity
Make.peace center us in its crosshairs
Toggle.gravity for the drones to take flight
Place.at.me a drone strike
Toggle.gravity so the drones crash and make crop circles
Toggle.gravity so the drones take flight
Make.peace as wreckage becomes a kind of sword
Make.peace so the weakest NPC in the game can walk over the mountain back to his home
Place.at.me a god so big it fills the screen and makes the map unplayable
Toggle.gravity for the dead to rise like we were promised they could
Toggle.gravity so we never lose sight of everyone we kill
Place.at.me a marker so I can come back here if I lose all my progress
Make.peace out of my loot
Place.at.me a simulacrum self, uncontrollable and fragile
Place.at.me the sharpest sword in the game
Place.at.me the weakest NPC in the game
Place.at.me the butcher block, the infantry, the unkillable dragons
Make.peace with bombed buildings
Make.peace with particle effects after the crater
Toggle.gravity and watch blood become an apparition
Toggle.gravity and watch the dragon’s wings give way to sunlight
Place.at.me every man, woman, but not child in the game
Make.peace from the collapsing bodies
Toggle.gravity until everyone who dies accrues infinite mass
Make.peace with the black hole that grows from the screen
Place.at.me the big baddie and let us become a singularity
Make.peace center us in its crosshairs
Toggle.gravity for the drones to take flight
Place.at.me a drone strike
Toggle.gravity so the drones crash and make crop circles
Toggle.gravity so the drones take flight
Make.peace as wreckage becomes a kind of sword
Make.peace so the weakest NPC in the game can walk over the mountain back to his home
Place.at.me a god so big it fills the screen and makes the map unplayable
Toggle.gravity for the dead to rise like we were promised they could
Toggle.gravity so we never lose sight of everyone we kill
Place.at.me a marker so I can come back here if I lose all my progress
Make.peace out of my loot
Place.at.me a simulacrum self, uncontrollable and fragile
Stephen Lin is one of the founders and editors for Everything in Aspic. His poetry has appeared in Pressure Gauge Press, Philosophical Idiot, the Edges zine, the Guts zine, Pretty Owl Poetry, and Cartridge Lit. His chapbook Field Theory was a finalist in the Hyacinth Girl Press chapbook contest. He is an editor at an immigration law firm and, like most Pittsburghers, can’t cross running water.