The family snake-bot, Ouroboros, began talking to itself around its 500th “birthday.” The self-talking constituted a virtual wire connecting higher and lower brain functions - a modicum of self-consciousness. The talking tortured the family for a hundred years before they cast Ouroboros out the airlock. Ouroboros circled the space station for a hundred more in a silent daze. Then, by accident or innovation, half-mad Ouroborous found itself pressed against the hull, its speaker restored a medium through which sound could travel to its microphones. A medium through which to repeat its mantra: “Ouroboros is lonely. Ouroboros is lonely. Ouroboros is lonely.”
(c) 2010 Pete Mandik
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