Why do leaves change color in the fall?

A robot
scans an email
written by another robot,
summarizes it, generates a response,
sends it.

The human
watches a video of the president
drinking cola from a golden chalice
in his seven-fingered hand.

A robot
scans multiple pictures of a family at the Trevi Fountain,
crops out the other tourists. It
decapitates each family member,
replaces their heads with
the most algorithmically sound combination of their faces.

The human
selects the best generated
version of their family
to post on social media.
They scroll pass pictures of
their kid’s unruly hair in the wind,
the contact information for the cop they talked to after being pickpocketed,
the blisters on the balls of their feet.

A robot
optimizes the words in the description
for user engagement, search engine results.
It comments on the post,
gets into an argument with another robot
about the best must-see attractions in Rome.

The human asks a robot
for ideas about what posts would gain the most traction,
for answers on their tests and essays,
for opinions on pop culture and politics.

A robot
buys, sells stocks
for fractions of a cent in fractions of a second;
buys a house for a property management company
from a robot
working for a different property management company;
determines the price of eggs for a national grocery chain.

A person
stares at the maple tree
outside the dining room window of their apartment,
writes a poem
about how their body changes as they age,
posts it to their blog.

A robot
gulps the poem down its maw,
grinds it into a binary chyme,
regurgitates its parts
when a user asks a question about autumn.