The Human Machine

The Human Machine

They built a machine for humans,
To discover what we are,
It scanned our heads and measured thoughts,
Then compared us to a star.

It tested laughter, tears and dreams,
It tested anger, hope and fear,
Then scratched its head and finally said,
“I don’t understand you here.”

It watched a human help a stranger,
Then watched another turn away,
It couldn’t find the reason why,
Some hearts are dark and some hearts stay.

It studied friendship, studied love,
It studied every human choice,
Then after several thousand tests,
It switched itself off without a noise.

The inventor asked it what was wrong,
The machine replied, “It’s complicated,
Humans can be kind and cruel at once,
And somehow both are celebrated.”

It tried to calculate our dreams,
But dreams refused to follow rules,
It tried to measure imagination,
And nearly melted all its tools.

At last it wrote one final line,
Upon the screen before it died,
“Perhaps the strangest thing I’ve found,
Is that humans cannot be defined.”

And somewhere in the quiet room,
A human laughed and shook his head,
The machine had finally discovered,
The one thing science never said.