Turing Test

art by Andrew Graber

by Ally Bovits

The Turing test is a method devised by Alan Turing in 1950 to determine whether a judge could blindly differentiate between a machine’s and a human’s responses to the same question.

How is today?

Today is is sunny, approximately 44 degrees,
         deceptively beautiful.

Today a bird got in our basement, to our cat’s delight
         and to our dismay. It took playing a vent pipe like a drumset
         with tennis racket drumsticks for the bird — a starling — to swoop
         towards the open window. Even then, I had to push away
         my fluffy predator and scoop the trembling thing in my hands,
         soft and fleeting as smoke, before releasing it to the wind.

Where are you from?

Here, mostly. Close to here.

All over, some here, some there. I’m made up
         of everywhere I’ve ever been.

What are you scared of?

Darkness. Eternal nothing. There is nothing beyond
         here, now.

Death. To be cut short before I’ve done all I was meant to.

What are you?

Sometimes, at night when all is quiet and cold,
         I wonder what it means to be me.
         How much of me is changeable, replaceable?
         Will there come a time in the future
         where I won’t recognize myself?

Sometimes, the whirring of electronics lulls me to sleep,
         electric rainstorm recordings, buzzing refrigerator.
         I don’t know where I go when I’m asleep.
        

Sometimes, I am some trembling thing searching
for escape in all the wrong places.
        

Sometimes, if I am not witnessed, I think
         I must not exist.

What do you want?

I don’t understand.

I don’t understand

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