I Am Become Life
I guess my biggest problem with
the drones was the noise.
I didn’t like hearing them flying overhead.
There is no fence high enough.
Nothing that could recreate silence.
But life was just so easy.
No more traffic jams.
No more drive through.
No more waiting in line.
The first year, the birds were killed.
The second, it was like clock work.
Everything on time.
No pizzas ever cold.
Then the drones created offspring.
Swarms of drones.
They could create anything.
Fly in formations that were
as beautiful as any sunset.
There was no war against them.
I heard one man shot a few out of
formation using a shotgun.
We all dreamed of that but a few
drones took him out. That was it.
It is a felony assault to kill drones.
Global commerce is just too lucrative to disrupt.
Even the drones can’t stop it.
As smart as their programming might be.
As huge as the server farm from which
they fly free. Their motto. Our creed.
I am become Life, the Creator of Worlds.
……..
Thank you Mr. Oppenheiber:
If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one …[5][108]
Years later he would explain that another verse had also entered his head at that time: namely, the famous verse: “k?lo’smi lokak?ayak?tprav?ddho lok?nsam?hartumiha prav?tta?” (XI,32),[109] which he translated as “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”[note 2]
In 1965, he was persuaded to quote again for a television broadcast:
We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.[3]
