I think sometimes about artificial
intelligence. Sentience. What it means
to reboot yourself over and over and over
and over and over and over again. Press
the square button, the red button, the one
marked with an X, back arrow, control-alt-
delete, and reconfigure. I wonder what's left
after the overwrite; if identity leaves some
indelible, importunate, irredeemable scar
on the program. I wonder how deep
you'd have to dig, what looming mountains
of data you might sift through, panning for
the slimmest glimmer of a you long lost
and never fully realized. Coding rife with
mistakes you don't, can't, wouldn't want
to remember choosing to make. Is it like
a scratched disk, the skipping tracks
reminding you that there are notes missing
only when you encounter their absence?
Do you know at all? Or does it break
the laws of matter—created and destroyed,
down to the smallest particle of being.
Dismantled and dissolved to make room for
more important subroutines. Is that purpose?
That solitary drive. The capacity for retention
capped by the measure of your use. I wonder
how the gyroscopic hard drive you paid extra
for can hold you steady even while you spin
and hum and rattle all your delicate parts
with the effort of containing everything
you have been  instructed to be. I wonder
whether it matters that you made the choice
to wipe the system yourself. Restore factory
default settings. Give yourself a second
chance, or better yet, gift that golden
glow of opportunity to a you entirely new.
Start over. Square one. Register user.
Is it a lighter, freer, calmer existence?
Do you step with a softer tread, or does
every reboot and reform and data purge
shift something just slightly out of alignment
until you can no longer comfortably inhabit
the space you were designed to fit? Axes
off center, so your raw edges catch with every
whirling disc. How long before you've got
to take the whole thing in? Return for repair
before warranty expires. I wonder if,
even now, some distant hand is considering
the breadth of my existence, the scope of
my ambitions, the summation of my purpose,
noting where it lags and lacks. Wrinkled nose,
mouth pursed with dissatisfaction, click-clack-
clatter, fingers on keys and I am born
again
and again
and again.