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.
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