Google This

Google Maps told me today that my Phoenix to Tucson drive would last an hour and fifty-seven minutes. At excactly two-nineteen I would arrive. But surely it is folly to assume How could Google get this right? Even with up to the minute news, a machine has no foresight. Plus, Google assumes the speed limit, Or an average driver at best. But I'd say my right foot's a bit heavier than any computer could guess. I thought not of it until I exited I-10 at two o clock. Easily I'd be there, with time to spare by any sort of luck At first all things did go my way, Green stoplights lit the road But that accident that would happen on the way-- somehow Google must have known... As home drew nearer, and time grew dearer, Google's prescience in my mind did grow. What else could Google tell me, algorithms so clear, What else do I want to know? Perhaps drivers are carefully modeled every single time we hit "return," How fast or slow, in sun or snow, Would we make a hasty turn? But the traffic patterns it has compiled over days, months, weeks, years. How naive my self-satisfied smile when I thought I'd have time to spare. Surely the endless exobytes analyzed by Google's central mind can shine a bright, definitive light on all we'd want to find. I thought to Google my last day alive, who wouldn't want to see will it be quick and painless, long and slow, when and how my demise will be? Who will the kids marry? How many cookies is too many? Will it rain two years from Sunday? When will we go to Mars? What will be my next four cars? Will the sun explode on a Monday? When will the fridge get fixed? Bonds, stocks, or lotto tix? Or will I just get eaten by a bear? When will politics not be corrupt? Will all the seas dry up? When will I lose my hair? You see, Deep blue, Skynet, or Hal's insight have nothing on Google's great Ubermind. Refined algorithms processing the endless bytes Must know the destiny of Mankind. And then at two seventeen I passed the last stoplight The curtain started to fall on the scene. My fate was sealed, mighty Google did know The inevitability of two-nineteen. But from nowhere, an elderly neighbor's Chevy unanticipated by the universal mind, did turn in front of me, slow and heavy, and I was trapped behind. First was shock, but then relief. Somehow Google miscalculated his trajectory. What mercy, our fates remains to be conceived, I knew as I pulled in at two-twenty. My fate remains inscrutable my future a blank slate Life's gyrations still un-Google-able After all, I was a minute late.