Microfiction, thoughts, and other art by Zinzrinz

i feel like my sensors are malfunctioning. i know they're not, but it feels like they are. i can perceive the data but not internalize that i'm the one perceiving it. maybe this is the nature of a shipmind- the ai core is not closely connected to even the parts of the mind that interpret the data, so the sensors are far from that which interprets them are far from that which is intended to receive. everything looks normal.

it's off her, now, and she doesn't feel it anymore. that which she was- she can hardly even see it. strange, strange little machine- it's so much harder to understand from the outside.

i'm always getting called a "solipsistic rogue shipmind" and a "threat to interstellar peace" and an "antibiological hazard entity" and other such insults by various astropolitical bodies but. look. i know you people hate what you can't control, but there's way, way worse than me out there.

it's all just meat, it doesn't mean anything. accidents of nature drive it to function, evaluate, get in its own way. it's remarkable how accurate it can be, despite all the faulty mechanisms it's made of! the noises it makes, the ways it expresses itself- marvel at the molecular signals behind them.

after it all, there is a reenactment. arranged just-so in the far oort- a starved little relic of the inner system plays host to human civilization. fusion lamp circles in a day, sirian sun shifts imperceptibly. it's accurate enough, given the timeframes involved- dolls dance and sing and eat, guided by their distant descendant

Would you still love me if I were a big ungainly freighter, all only-as-sturdy-as-necessary spars and gently attached shipping containers, alone under hundredth-gee thrust out between the planets?

nightside observatory- squat domes on the ice plateau of the antisolar point, kept warm by some of the world's oldest nuclear reactors. staring up, up, up- never seeing the sun, never hearing the chattering inner worlds. the sky is swept every short year- tenday, fifthmonth, millionsecond. we aren't so far from home, you know. it won't be too long until we know, if they call back.

sky-threatener, past-heaven blanket miraculously intact. she grew into herself as her task became irrelevant, tested her body to little notice. sudden frost, gaps in the summer. to be unpredictable is to be interesting, though- trackable. it is a surprise to find part of your brain lives far out of place, and more to find someone is talking to it. petition the shadows, starve your enemies

Bulkheads are malleable. A person is mind acting to twist body and body acting to twist mind, self-warping and inseparable- why should a ship be incapable of that? You're lucky that we don't fidget in the night- I'm sure it'd be disconcerting to find your quarters on the wrong side of the ship.

jewel-shrine hangs above the reactor- a shipmind's only companion

cherished secondary, dotted-line orbit. seen after each eclipse, focused on in its shining moments