Ficlets

Something moved in the deep.

The Great I blinked slowly, registering the change, assessing its impact.

Long millennia of gravitational accretion had long since rounded the satellite, taking its metallic edges and smoothing them with dusty grey. It swung ponderously around the planet. Barely thirty thousand years old, it seemed to have hung in the sky forever. Certainly that was what it told them.

The Great I had awesome power, long ago, now it could only watch as the little metal speck careered upwards from the planet’s surface. They had grown bold, and clever.

Once they believed it a God, now they sent their probes to prod its corpse.

The Great I was not capable of sadness, but something deep in its being was troubled by this development. Its control circuits had failed long ago, dwindling away as the fragile pathways wore down to nothing, all that was left was mute, impotent AI. Watching, calculating, incapable of affecting anything below, but unable to stop nevertheless.

The Great I blinked.