Will we be surprised when it’s too late?

It is not impossible to imagine
that one day I will be asked a
question that won’t matter,
my answer will have no bearing
on the judgement of the machine.
My crime will be finding a gap in
the vigilance of the collection of
my life. Overcome by a momentary
lightness that was being free, I
walked with a joy unsupervised.

I will be forever found a malcontent,
my taste of separation from being
endlessly absorbed, a point of no return.
When we finally know everything about
everyone, no one will abide anything
unknown. Nature abhors a vacuum,
a man said. Data erases an anomaly,
a machine said. From here we will
do as we are programmed. No good
effort to live well outside the collection
will be allowed to go unpunished.

It is not impossible to be still free
to imagine that it is not too late.