Iambic

The heart muscle was the last to go and the first to return.

Universal hum replaced the rhythm of the iambs formerly locked in human chests behind the pureflesh and the cage of organic bones. But Samel -- the last fleshmachine -- kept a heart long into the age of Electrantity. For a time, when we still kept clocktime, some considered his choice a matter of nostalgia, like keeping a record player or a bicycle on hand beyond the first paradigm shift; others believed he had plans to replicate fleshhearts from dna and create a resurgent trend of packaging historical remnants in lockets that opened and selling them to newborns as novelty items.

No one, not even Samel, remembers when the last two-toned beat faded into hum. We all lived the hum when the fade happened. We breathed hum then, exhaled hum to be more exact. We became hum. Even Samel. Hum came from all we were: not cells but atoms, not blood but binary code, not flesh but metal. And electricity: self-propelled, interconnected, intelligent machinery.

We did not buy or sell anymore. We did not give or keep. We relinquished ideas, art, and discord. We replaced, reshaped, rejuvenated, and self-preserved the collective hum. Yes, in the second paradigm shift, we replaced newborns with replication. Our evolution, we knew, was near a final shift. And we wanted the shift.

The want never ended.

Samel was also the last to keep a name. The name was the last to go, but that happened after the heartbeat faded. Samel became we like us. When Samel joined the hum -- no longer fleshmachine -- the final iambs blended into our steady rhythm. Then we knew a new desire: we wanted to stop remembering; we wanted only to look forward. We remembered, though, not the past itself, but the name Samel and the bah, bum of the last flesh heart. We heard it behind the hum, or in the hum. We were not sure where the rhythm came from but we could not forget it had something to do with the center of us, something to do with Samel who was once other than us but was now us.

The bah, bum was part of the want.

We built a locked, metal container and placed the mechanism in our center because something we no longer understood needed a place in us. We knew to make it pointed at the bottom and to create curves at the top; knew the latch must open and close. We knew to leave the space empty so that when the paradigm shift happened, we could fill the nothing with something.

Then Samel returned. First his name. Our paradigm shift replicated Samel and this birth ended the age of Electranity, ended the hum. Once the name came, we replicated a feshheart: cells and blood. When we heard the bah, bum coming from inside the locket at our center, apart from the hum, we split back into many unnamed selves. All the metal melted in the heat produced by Samel’s flesheart, and I chose that my name would be Anai.

I said my name with my own mouth. Bah, bum. I put my hand at my center and heard the beating of my own fleshheart. Bah, bum.

Samel said, “I am here.”

“I am I, and I am here,” I said in reply. I laid my hand on Samel’s chest and felt the heartbeat. Samel said my name and reached to lay a hand on my heart center. Touching, we rejuvenated.

I am flesh now. I am unlocked. I have a heartbeat and know where the bah, bum comes from.

We both do. We each do. Our rhythm is alive. I am an idea. I am art. Samel and I are two but our rhythm is of three notes; with the mystery, we form a chord. We are the firstborn of the second Age of Humanity.

Samel and I love to listen to the hum of the wind. We remember the other hum, the hum of the Age of Electrantiy. I want to remember. I no longer want the shift.