GI -- AI

In the year 2050, Marines
don't wear camouflage or donn helmets.
They don't sling machine guns
and drive Humvees
through the dusty desert.

Instead, stealth drones deploy
ten thousand mechatroopers,
each bristling with missiles,
rockets, grenades, gatling guns.
Titanium limbs clomp off
across rocks and sand
under autonomous control.

Not man -- Machine,
programmed for death
24/7, all-weather, all-enemy.

A man can spend his whole life
de-programming himself of fear.
The mechatrooper is simpler --
emotions are never installed
on the assembly line.
There is no fear, mercy,
compassion, guilt, remorse.

Their creators sit back and watch
the fight through camera eyes.
From deep inside a cave,
the unrelenting, blinding
blaze of cannons
lights the darkness.
Bearded faces appear, grimace, explode
in frozen frames
of stroboscopic horror.

Flesh cannot match steel,
muscle yields to hydraulics.
Though Death is quick,
a few fanatics stare past the blue glow
of rocket-proofed lenses.

Then the soft squish of body
pierced by blades
aimed with x-ray vision --
each martyr's heart --
ripped out
and plopped into a cannister,
still beating.

White flags, clasped hands,
prayers, tears, quivering lips
serve only to distinguish
target from terrain.

Scott Speck
12/17/2001