What are machines nostalgic for?

[momebie]

Today's poem is WEIRD. And not very poem-y. But you know, editing will happen in December. I'm not actually as enamored with this as I was with the others, but I'm putting it here because it's not only a response to today's Poetic Asides prompt, but also another square checked off my getyourwordsout setting table. So.

The prevailing theory,
said the tour guide
as it gestured with its pointer arm,
is that it was art that lead
to their downfall. All those years
with the ability to speak to anyone
and they couldn't come up with a single
way to see the world. It was all unclear,
right up until the end.

HEP7 looked at the paintings,
with his nostalgic, human-ish eye cameras.
I think you do them a disservice, he said.
Shuffled his flat, ungainly,
human-ish bases, and felt a very
un-machine-like tint flush through his coating
at the way the others in the group
all turned to look at him in accusation.

The whole room went silent. I think
we're losing something of nature, when we
discontinue the meaning of words like
romance, affliction, gestalt.
We needed to save this world from them,
but what good is it saved, if we merely
exist next to those things we curate?

The tour guide backed up, all-terain,
wide-tread feet, singing as they spun.
You misconstrue the purpose of these visits,
it said. Your education is to ensure,
we do not make their mistakes.

They thought that too,
HEP7 replied. A different vision made you
than made me. We're like these paintings.
We can't outrun their past.
They thought they were side-stepping
all the mistakes they'd made before,
opening up a whole new world
when they made us.

I don't know. I just like the idea of machines that fetishize the living as much as some of us fetishize machines. Bio-trans-machinists! Shut up, I'll make up any terms I want!