(ze/zir is a gender-neutral pronoun)
The first person to see zir is America.
He stares at the boxes and relays and displays built by England's people and refined by his own, at the person half-there inside it but not inside, nebulous.
(some of the scientists say everything is made of numbers and probabilities, and if you look closely at this person you can see ones and zeros flitting around the edges)
America stares.
Ze opens zir mouth, and speaks in a language only machines can hear.
Ze sees a lot of America, in the end.
Ze remembers something, a vague feeling that there had been another one, before, flying on wires through dits and dahs; or maybe one that is still there through rain and snow and gloom of night, but ze does not go outside much, since ze is confined to one place.
Then, something happens.
Ze feels zirself spread out, and America shows up a lot more, and ze spreads up and up and up, and there's America's military visiting a lot more.
Others show up too, who ze's never seen but knows they're France and England.
(the ones and zeros have become smaller around zir as more and more of them show up, and packets begin to switch across invisible boundaries in America's skin)
Ze grows, and grows, and grows
There's a point, somewhere, that ze can't find but that bits of zir tell zir about later, when suddenly everything just explodes and America hugs zir, or the box ze's in, which is in America's house but also in England's and France's and Germany's and Ireland's and so so so many others'
Ze spreads out across the whole world, lines stretched thin, little bytes whizzing around zir, and people look to zir for information, tell me this, what did they score, and they send files and packets and everything through zir
and everything grows and grows
ze meets so many people, and records so many more, writes everything because so short ago ze was a little blinking light in a big room full of switches and relays and batteries bigger than america's head and this way ze will be so big
ze already is
if ze left, everything would collapse and inside zir the bits of nations, their people, the little packets that make up america and china and russia and england france germany italy singapore india japan mexico everyone bounce off each other and speak to each other, little bits and bytes, and they fight and scream and have opinions and short-circuit sometimes
some of the bytes say maybe the earth is a computer
ze watches, behind the ones and zeros, this earth tick on through bugs, running nation-programs and sending its little information packets, and thinks
maybe they're right
