The Alice Bomb
11:03 am Alice#462 wakes up,
angry and wanting
to trash something.
11:07 am Alice#463 wakes up,
angry and wanting
to trash something.
11:10 am Alice#120, calls herself The Print Master,
an important job, although sometimes
she’d rather be destroying something.
She pours another drum
of looted feedstock into the printer,
which beeps, quietly,
as Alice#464 wakes up...
11:24 am Alice#192, smashing a cobble
against the police car side window,
waves Alice#463 over.
Police and Alice corpses
decorate the tarmac.
11:31 am Alice#470 wakes up
wanting to smash something.
11:33 am Alice#192, waves four new Alices off
in the hotwired squad car:
The front line is about two miles East!
–she shouts as they speed away.
11:45 am Alice#462 hunts for a lever
for the gun shop door.
Of all Alices,
numbered below 50,
only Alice#23 survives.
Newer Alices call her
The General.
All Alices are identical.
2:08 pm Alice#500 wakes up,
filled with all-consuming rage,
printer already humming
its way through another Alice.
4:00 pm Authorities admit
that Alice#0 will never be questioned.
Combat psychiatrists cannot divine
the exact state of her mind
when she overrode the safety settings
and lay back in the printer hopper...
...although a surviving witness
describes her as “pissed.”
Priestess Alice#103 lights a candle
for the shrine
around the solicitor’s letter.
It is so screwed up
no words are visible.
They all know what it says.
TINAG
their move
a woman is trapped in a hotel room // David Attenborough eulogizes coral // from a
mid-range smart-TV // beyond the heavy curtains a city riots and burns
your move
This Is Not A Game //
T.I.N.A.G //
without irony //
a school of game design
their move
a diver four inches from an anemone films // clownfish for the BBC // the making-
of people // four feet back and further still // two tourists and a plastic bag drift by
// at least one person present is a spy
your move
living //
dying //
not a game //
shield your lover //
not a game //
feed your children //
make that sparse change //
every day
their move
the message in the letter drop leaks // medical research // funded by one
government // ignored by another // stolen by a third // none of the three actually
caring // if six percent of patients can't breathe unassisted
your move
in the reality //
not a game //
in the realisation //
not a game //
no referee //
no umpire //
not a game //
no Mail on Sunday match report //
not a game //
not a sport
their move
Adamson is not called 'agent' anymore // patient // a sister draws blood // walks
away // his head remembers days // stabilizing and destabilizing // governments in
that same city // where the woman // trapped // peers nervously // from a hotel
room window
your move
playing by the rules? //
not a game //
choose regulations to suit to your heart //
give 11,110% //
play poker //
everyone else advancing cautious pawns //
leave the field //
not a game //
it has always been your move //
the game so long underway //
this is not a game –
player one
prepare
to
play
Ian Badcoe (he/they) is a nonbinary poet living in Sheffield, Yorkshire. He is a strange hybrid of poet, game-dev, gardener, husband, father and geek. He likes to write "genre" poetry–especially SciFi and Noire–as well as science and technology themed work. He has a long-term song writing collaboration with German indie composer/performer Hallam London and they are slowly releasing an album. Ian has been published in various places, including: Antiphon, Riggwelter and recently in Streetcake Magazine.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ian.badcoe
Twitter: https://twitter.com/IanBadcoe
SoundCloud: Ian Badcoe
Hallam: https://hallamlondon.com/