A writing class is decompiled and recompiled by creatures, organic and metallic
The Ant swarm steals text away.
The bots return the text misplaced.
Swarm as many swarms as desired
by Jason Nelson
The classroom unlocked, a blue screen light, the low computer hum, and a row of empty chairs scattered. On desks thin black slabs, asleep, lids closed. When students arrive, they wake the screens, cursors wait. They write about their journey to class, document the path and its intersecting stories. All begin by outlining, breaking apart their experiences, listing landmarks in sequence. The students then deviate, roughly falling into three groups. Some paste their rough notes into a small window and press enter, waiting for a voice to respond. Others begin writing, building their story from memory, grammar and analysis. The last group appears to bounce between two windows, writing, asking, rewriting, responding. On sharing their writing, the differences are seasons, wide shifts between temperatures and atmosphere. But it’s the details of experience, cars awkwardly parked, trees eating into fences, crows on an abandoned couch, that make the writing alive.