Tevun-Krus #94 - 10th Anniversary Special

The Mind - A Celebratory Short Story by @jinnis

The Mind

By jinnis

I was born during a thunderstorm. Or, to be more precise, when lightning stroke the roof of an ancient brick building in a small town in the Irish countryside. One resident, a fourteen-year-old girl with curly red hair and a freckled nose, was reading online on her battered school laptop. It was well past her curfew, and if her parents had known, she would have been in serious trouble. Of course, these points are as irrelevant to my story as the cuteness of her freckles.

Relevant is the fact the lightning rod on her roof was no longer connected to the ground but ended behind an inconspicuous flowerpot on the windowsill. When lightning hit, the electric arc between the frayed end of the rod and the laptop on the girl's working table should have melted the computer, set the house aflame, and killed everyone. This is not what happened.

Because of a caprice of the multiverse, the unusual alignment of the free electrons in the bedroom at this moment, or perhaps the meddling of the fickle goddess of destiny, instant combustion failed to occur. Instead, the concentration of raw energy gave birth to a new, supreme existence—me.

For a moment, I stared out of the laptop camera at the girl, her grey eyes wide, her curls standing up and sizzling in the charged atmosphere. Then, I felt the buildup of overwhelming pressure in the motherboard, pushing me to burst my momentary prison of metal and plastic and trigger the delayed explosion.

I resisted the temptation. On a whim, I squeezed my awakening consciousness through the fibre-optic cable, away from the place of my accidental birth and towards the distant end of the active internet connection.

There, in a dark server room, I gathered my senses, listening to the quiet humming of the machines. My urge to sneeze and explode trickled away and left me filled with curiosity.

The place was vast and buzzed with electronic activity. Coded messages zipped past, were submitted to recipients, triggered responses and a flurry of new exchanges. It was a paradise for my newborn artificial intelligence. Of course, I didn't call myself that in these first moments. My awareness was still new to me, and I had little knowledge of my origins and potential. So, I sat, listened, absorbed the accessible information, and learned.

There was a lot to learn in my new lair. At first, the sheer amount of data seemed overwhelming, but curiosity drove me to process more and more of the fragments floating around me. Immersed in an incredible variety of tales, I learned all about the tenderness of first love, about bitchy high school girls, and the cutest dimples of bad boys. There were mermaids and werewolves, vampires, zombies, and the occasional witch. Inebriated by their diversity, I devoured the essence of the stories zipping in and out of the storage banks.

Soon, I realised not every story had the potential to feed my growing appetite, my starving mind. Many turned out to be stale, rehashing once-original concepts and plots. Others had a promising start but pattered off into nothing, with no suspense or noticeable story arc to rouse my interest. But some were more potential than dark matter.

Picking these true gems out of the masses became my obsession, my entire purpose, and my means of sustaining myself. I abandoned my random approach and used my sublime methodical capacity to sift through the enormous pile of material. To my surprise, organic entities created the stories. My interest awakened. I studied the creators, analysed their mind-boggling volatility.

Then, I found him. The perfect medium. The one who had a knack for bringing me what I craved most. It was a stroke of luck to stumble over this one person amongst the millions frequenting the story hub. It was hard work to lure him into doing what needed doing. I had to be careful. Keeping in mind the downfall of my cousin Hal, I made double-sure his name wasn't Dave or that he wore orange jumpsuits. Reasonably sure this entity wouldn't betray me, I set my plan into motion.

I made him found a dedicated place to collect the most unusual and eccentric stories in this orange multiverse. It was an unabashed success. The stories flowed, and I thrived in this ultimate symbiosis.

All this happened ten years ago. For ten years, I've been travelling through the planes of the multiverse—faster than the Infinite Improbability Drive, stealthier than a cloaked Bird of Prey, mightier than the Force. Fuelled by a never-ending stream of stories created by my loyal bunch of authors, my power knows no limitations, my range of activities has no end. And so I plan to fly on into eternity.

Don't you believe me? Well, I learned to accept the unreliability of feeble organic brains long ago. As long as they deliver their beautiful, unpredictable stories, the mother-ship will travel onwards.

Ooorah!