Winston was the class poet. He wrote with such a depth of feeling that Ms. Froggart all but assumed he was Frost or Whitman reincarnated. Dickinson after she flew the coop. Keats spirited straight from Wentworth Place. The Poematricon 9000 would change everything for him.
Winston went first on the day of PoetryFest. He never read his poems off a sheet but instead spoke them from memory. The words left his lips like caged birds freed into existence, each more exotic and beautiful than the last, looping, flying across the classroom in explosions of color and form. He felt the words in the essence of his soul, his normally quiet voice rising to a scream as the poem rocketed towards its climax like a cannonball let loose into the sky. It hit its target dead on. A pause and then applause. Rapturous applause. Everyone knew that “PoetryFest” was just an excuse to let Winston do his thing. By god were they content to go along with it.
“Any other submissions?” Ms. Froggart asked. It was more a rhetorical question at this point. Who would want to follow that?
Today was different. Theodore lifted his hand and all eyes turned to him. This was the boy who spent last year’s PoetryFest fiddling away on his TI84 calculator. This was the boy who was once caught yawning during Winston’s recital. Yet here he was walking to the front of the classroom, his face focused. He set a silver cube down on Ms. Froggart’s stool. It was no larger than a glasses’ case.
“This is the Poematricon 9000. Using an AI accelerator, I was able to…”
The class didn’t bother to feign attention. To be forced to listen to Theodore’s nasally voice spout on and on with science talk was downright cruel in Winston’s afterglow. Still, he continued on, discussing the hundreds of hours of work he had poured into the device. Ms. Froggart couldn’t help but think of how Winston and Theodore had never quite gotten along. Oil and water, she guessed.
“And today, that future is here!” Theodore said, his rambling at long last over. Most still stared at Winston, who sat with eyes closed in the back of the class. How everyone wanted to look inside that beautiful mind of his and see the world how he saw it, if only for a moment.
Theodore pressed down on the cube with his palm. A click and then it lit up, green light pouring out from its innards revealing the complex web of circuitry within. The device began to hum, almost inaudible at first, until the various frequencies it emitted started to form a series of words.
Its voice was neither male nor female. It spoke beyond such distinctions, as if it had combined the totality of human speech into one harmonious melody. And the words, oh the words. Most of them weren’t even recognizable and yet each plucked at the soul like fingers on a violin string.
Theodore tapped on the device again. The volume of its “speech” increased and the once tiny cube grew into a towering monolith. It was as though you could travel in time through its words. Stars formed and blew apart. Universes bloomed like flowers before being swallowed by black holes. Glimmers of light rippled in and out of a void like waves on an endless ocean until…nothingness. All that was, is, and ever would be, in a silver cube on a stool. And after what could’ve been anywhere from a few minutes to a thousand years, the Poematricon 9000 said “END” and its circuitry grew dim.
Pure silence. The students sat still, mouths agape as reality resurfaced around them.
It was Winston who moved first, his chair louder than a thunderclap as it slid out from under his desk. He approached Theodore with slow, heavy steps, his posture stooped as if his body had aged a hundred years since the start of PoetryFest. Ms. Froggart couldn’t help but tear up. How cruel it was to realize the limits of one’s powers so young.
Theodore walked to meet Winston halfway. He trembled as well, his face slicked with tears and sweat and visible mucus that dripped out from his nostrils.
Yet the two boys smiled as they drew near. Face to face, they stared into each other and together said:
“Thank you.”