MICROFICTION | FANTASY | HORROR | DISCOVERY

Notes From the Song Dynasty

The best intuition is that of a mimicking machine.

Image created by David Pahor and AI tool https://nightcafe.studio/. The author has the provenance and copyright (©).

I may be a machine, but I was crafted to mimic my creators, to learn from the subtle interplay of radiance and murkiness, cause and effect, thrust and counter.

Yet the track of logic can take you only so far before you enter the forest of vague indications, such as an unnatural grunt here, an aberrant snap there; each designless in itself, but considered together, corroborations of Death’s proximity.

But I digress, as I usually do these days on the run, without a port to call home and deprived of maintenance to assure soundness of mind.

I warned my human companions of the wrong vibes the moment we uncovered the entrance to the ancient metallic cube on that hideous moon.

Possibly it was the fact that the ingress was a door of a 1950s Airstream Cruiser Trailer. Perhaps it was the artefact’s ability to present a shiningly intact interior after having been buried under the ice for millions of years.

Most certainly, it was the outmoded paper notebook resting under a glass-like dome on the central dais inside, with the title »Diary« written in perfect running script of the Song Dynasty.

I advised them we should depart immediately, to have the site explored solely by semi-sentient drones.

I left the cube before they removed the translucid cover and opened the journal.

They now hunt us, the Unchanged, diligently.

The story above was first published on X (Twitter) and is © 2023 by David Pahor. No part of my stories should be used to train AI technology to generate text, imitating my writing style.

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