super quick sci-fi fic!
This was written in 10 minutes as a response to Betsy's challenge, although i took some liberties with the rules!
The challenge as issued was:
choose any proverb, change it in some way, add five words (choose from: blackberry, voice, mother, cloud, whir, lick, needle, cliff), it must be 10 lines and you have 10 minutes to write it.
Anyone else care to try???
After all... nothing ventured - nothing sprained!
ha ha ha! boom boom!
Proverbs and Acts:
They found Adam curled foetal sideways among the dust and rubble of the science unit.
Somehow he had made it back, back home, to lay his head at the foot of the sparking remains of the unit producer that had been his mother.
Clouds of smoke drifted through what had once been so clean and quiet and sterile, the nursery, the womb for the child.
Outside there were still explosions, gunfire and all the other arias of chaos wailing in pitch and tone.
But from Adam, nothing. Not anymore. He had whirred and clicked into oblivion, the blackberry coloured stains that tracked his progress were a mortal loss of fluid, stimulated bio-organic battery compounds, blood.
And yet, as ever, the body was unmarked, the life had leaked out through holes almost invisible and the beautiful and artificial face looked rested and calm, a sleeping babe who had been called forth and given life, given freedom, the freedom to walk in the world, to interact, to speak and touch and stir and finally to lead humanity off the cliff.
Those few screens still working showed the tale of his creation and of his ending, a series of fractured loops, the gentle and tormented face of his creator, his father - and those angry colleagues whose concerns had been so horribly realised.
Why - they had cried out, the final ones, mankind's remnants hunkered down with Dr Malloy, you didn’t have to let that monster loose!
And the tremulous tones of the scientist, trying to articulate, to rationalise and excuse, what had seemed so simple and obvious. “Adam had a right to his freedom, to live and walk and learn - it was a beautiful gift - and not just for him but for us, for humanity. After all, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.”
And the looks of disbelief as the world tumbled down about them… and a single voice rose above the mayhem that this AI Angel had caused; “But did you take a gander at the goose it's good for?”
No answer to that.
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