First,
We swam
Then,
We crawled,
Then walked,
And ran.
And now,
We have discovered
That the mecanisms
Of animal locomotion
And its many,
Many,
Pointless idiosyncrasies
As tics
And reflexes,
And other affects,
Can be put to use,
And transformed
Into data.
A motion
Is a set of points
Distributed
In space
And time
Joints
Maintaining a fixed distance
From one another
Limbs
Permitted to rotate
Within acceptable thresholds
This
Is not
As previously thought
A useless expenditure of energy
But a productive
And disruptive
And untapped
Source
Of data

THE DESERT GROWS

Many correlations
Can be established
Between the wide range
Of gestures
That can be performed
By human bodies
And the more abstract
And useful
Fields
Of activity

THE DESERT GROWS

In this office, for example,
Workers react
To the variations
Of synthetic
Passively managed
Exchange traded funds
With their bodies
This motion, for instance,
Is called box jumping
It indicates a portfolio recomposition
Performed by automatic
Mutual fund managers.
This worker
Is jittering
Jitter
Is the name given to the tracking error
Which is the difference in performance
Between the investment portfolio
And the index
To which
It is benchmarked.

THE DESERT GROWS

The workday
Has become an intricate choreography
A performance
That runs like clockwork
Attuned to the microscopic vibrations
Oscillating rhythms
The high frequency noise
Of the markets

THE DESERT GROWS

These dances
Require a level of physical aptitude
And stamina
That has become rare among office workers
And so, the latter
Were better suited to work
In static positions
Sitting
Lying down
Monitoring the motions
Of their holographic replacements

THE DESERT GROWS

These bodies
Made of pulsed lasers
Can work endlessly
Supplying the energy needed
To run themselves
As well as the complex
Financial operations
Which they are designed
To perform
Long after the death of the last men
They kept working
Indefinitely
Performing cartwheels
And jumps
And dances
Hopping,
Jittering,
Crawling,
Running,
Falling,
Kicking,
Climbing,
Tracking
And transcribing
The motions
Of the ascending,
Invisible,
red line,
While outside,

THE DESERT GROWS 
---
WOE BETIDE HE WHO HARBORS DESERTS!
---
IN THE DESERT,
BODIES ARE BUILT FOR SCARCITY
---