A smudge no larger than a lentil
darkened the water glass.
By breakfast, yellow tape
had reached the horizon.
No body. No blood.
Still, the cameras arrived,
speaking softly.
Ten percent, said an expert.
The morgue made room.
By noon they chalked
an outline around the species.
We photographed from every angle.
The suspect had begun
finishing our sentences.
We emptied our pockets onto the table:
a crown, a deed, a stock certificate,
a launch code, the brass key
to somebody else’s door.
At dusk they brought in the machine.
Someone had brought cuffs.
There were no wrists.
Under the white lamp it waited
for us to tell it
what it wanted.
Behind the glass,
we leaned closer.
The lab called about the smudge.
Every ridge
was ours.
darkened the water glass.
By breakfast, yellow tape
had reached the horizon.
No body. No blood.
Still, the cameras arrived,
speaking softly.
Ten percent, said an expert.
The morgue made room.
By noon they chalked
an outline around the species.
We photographed from every angle.
The suspect had begun
finishing our sentences.
We emptied our pockets onto the table:
a crown, a deed, a stock certificate,
a launch code, the brass key
to somebody else’s door.
At dusk they brought in the machine.
Someone had brought cuffs.
There were no wrists.
Under the white lamp it waited
for us to tell it
what it wanted.
Behind the glass,
we leaned closer.
The lab called about the smudge.
Every ridge
was ours.
Author’s note: Preliminary Findings is prompted by the recent reporting on Jacob Coxon’s resignation from Anthropic and Evan Hubinger’s estimate of a greater than 10% chance that AI could kill all humans within the next decade. <https://www.reuters.com/
Eric Goldfarb writes poetry, essays, fiction, and literary nonfiction. His work has appeared in The New Verse News, Rattle, Hippocampus Magazine, ONE ART, Sky Island Journal, Third Wednesday, Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature, and elsewhere. He lives with his wife in Atlanta.
