But even then, none of the information I retrieved seemed legible

‘ “All of this. The houses, the decorations, this arrangement you have. The way you work like us, and pay for the data cables and repairs, and just…keep pushing on with existence and collect and collect like we might. Never understood why you would do it if you didn’t have to even bother.” He glanced at the son-body there, with its eyes shut, and then grinned behind the plasticine mask. “But kids always end up like their parents, I guess. Mindlessly repeat what comes before. Alabama Circus Punk, and all. You know.”

‘I didn’t know, again, what he meant, and I couldn’t refer to any live references since we were still isolated from the city feed. I used the mother-body to search through our memory storage for the term but only found a few results – secondary hits related to robotics, biomimesis, soft inheritance, Lamarck. But even then, none of the information I retrieved seemed legible.’

— Thomas Ha, ‘Alabama Circus Punk’