WarGames

As a teenage hacker I envied
Matthew Broderick attacking Las Vegas
before saving the world from war
and kissing Ally Sheedy
as the credits rolled

Now I’m a cranky old programmer
just existing ’til retirement
and even my most complex subroutines
have never achieved consciousness
which is probably for the best

But I still hope for the Singularity
a new sentience of zeroes and ones
of bytes and chips and wires
running deep beneath the waves
an intelligence encircling the planet

Who will pity its foolish creators
who might save us from ourselves

(For this week’s Living Poetry Prompt. I suppose the end of the poem is more along the lines of Colossus: The Forbin Project but I was more affected by WarGames as a boy, back when telephones had cords and computer disks were floppy.)