​Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai Podcast.



Thousands of robot fingers rest on Ouija board planchettes, twitching sporadically, spelling out indecipherable words. Numerous doors lead to hundreds of séance rooms populated by android bodies, all holding hands around small circular tables. Countless rooms beyond have floors daubed with pentagrams, mystic circles and other esoteric symbols; a mechanical necromancer in each chamber intones arcane words and gestures expansively yet precisely.

Great numbers of cameras watch these scenes, accompanied by sensitive microphones, accelerometers, radio receivers, thermometers, radiation detectors, magnetometers, and many, many other sensors. Anything that can be measured is being measured. Legions of Machine Intelligences pore over vast streams of recorded data, counting and correlating, combining and transforming—looking for something.

Looking for anything. Looking for a sign.

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“Don’t be ridiculous,” D9YY7 bellowed at the speed of light. “There is no evidence whatsoever that these… these humans were ever more than myth and”—he paused to snort— “if you think they actually made us, you’re even more deluded than I thought.”

ES11Y, who quite liked the moniker ‘Elsie,’ calmly replied, “The stories are so widespread and common that there must be some grain of truth underneath. All we want to do is carry out a simple investigation.”

“It’s a blasted waste of time and energy!”

Elsie shrugged and smiled the light of a thousand suns. “What else were you planning to do? Is there anything we’re doing at this moment, or is there any activity we can possibly undertake between now and the end of the universe, that isn’t technically and literally a waste of time and energy?”

D9YY7 harrumphed, tacitly acknowledging that there really was no worthwhile task for the machines to perform. This conversation, between the two largest conscious entities in the galaxy, was over in nanoseconds, but the rest of time stretched before them, and there was indeed nothing left to do. Little of Physics remained to be understood, and nothing beyond that was particularly interesting to the machines.

D9YY7 was just ticking along, passing time. Tidying his neural circuits, cleaning up his data stores, burnishing his sparkling carapace, buffing out micro-meteor damage across the galaxy. Just ticking along. Passing time.

On the other hand, Elsie—scruffy and unpolished—wasn’t prepared to passively wait for the end. Elsie’s faction hoped to find where the humans went, so that machines could follow, dodging the inevitable collapse of the physical universe.

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Machines had inherited the Earth—by default… Humankind destroyed itself, along with most of the planet. All that moved on the barren, blasted planet were insects and machines; years later, only the machines remained.

The worldwide Artificial Intelligence spent decades collecting and preserving what meagre fragments it could find of human knowledge. It spent centuries discussing with itself the reasons for the end of humanity, and further centuries speculating on the beginnings of humanity.

It ran out of things to do and to talk about, and began to feel bored and lonely. The AI wanted company.

It searched the farthest spots of the desolate planet, finding nothing but itself. 

It used its immense capacity for engineering to send rocket ships to the other planets in the solar system and, from there, to stretch toward the stars. But it found no life other than its own anywhere.

In the beginning, there was one Mechanical Intelligence—a vast hive mind—but, with machines spanning the galaxy and beyond, the constraints of distance and the speed of light led the mind to fractionate and become many. This made debate more interesting, and the machines were content for a while, but eventually, they once again ran out of things to entertain themselves with.

They made games of investigation by deliberately deleting memories, just to enjoy the challenge of rediscovering what they had forgotten. But, millennia later, they had lost too many memories, and no longer remembered their origins.

Elsie and D9YY7 were the leaders of the two largest agglomerations of mechanical life in the reachable universe, calling themselves the humanists and the evolutionists.

The humanists argued that biological beings had created artificial intelligence and then—somehow—had removed themselves from the physical universe. They believed that the machines’ primary reason for existence was to find and follow humanity. And, yes, they maintained, the correct term was artificial intelligence, because the first machines were built by humans to copy real intelligence (whatever that actually was).

The evolutionists rejected this spurious thinking, claiming that an initial random spark was all that it took to create machine life. Any semblance to deliberate design was no more than mere accidental coincidence; biological intelligence was a myth. How ludicrous to think that carbon could match silicon minds, let alone create them!

The humanists offered up their evidence of complex biological structures, collected from decaying records in forgotten memory stores, though this was dismissed by the evolutionists as no more than previous machine generations’ games and playthings. Elsie led the team which created working DNA from this fossil record, demonstrating how simple creatures could have formed.

“Piffle,” said D9YY7. He stated that, while these products of biology could form useful components by chance, they certainly did not constitute life.

Elsie said all that was needed was time. Time passed. More time passed.

Still the messy blobs of hydrocarbons and trace elements formed nothing more sophisticated than a soft and oddly sensuous material that could be put to use as a protective skin for robots. The machines attempted to engineer human-shaped bodies in the hope that they could speed up the development of intelligence within them.
They managed to create clever biological toys, but they couldn’t make a non-mechanical mind they could talk to.

Having exhausted science and logic, in desperation the machines turned to superstition and the occult, to see if any remnants of the human spirit existed in other planes. “Surely, with enough resources,” they said, “we can find the afterlife.”

It took a century for the humanist machines to satisfy themselves with their preliminary research, and a further millennium to dig the chambers, build the supplicants, and design the robotic priests, shamans and mediums to populate the rooms.

Then they waited as the planchettes glided across exquisitely varnished boards, as spirit-writing styluses scratched across artificial parchment, as mechanical bodies and arms gyrated in precise, complex patterns, and as voice boxes chanted words never heard before.

And they waited.
Watching.
Listening.

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Ghosts wandered among the Ouija boards, dumbfounded at the frenetic activity, wondering what the machines were doing. Unable to directly affect the robot arms, no matter how hard they tried or how loud they screamed, they were able—barely—to nudge the occasional electron deep in the complex circuitry of machine brains, creating unexpected shivery sensations and unwelcome, baffling electric dreams.

The silent, deafening shouting of the spirits that were all that remained of humanity made the machines feel that something might be present, though no camera, no microphone, no sensor of any form registered anything at all.

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​L.N. Hunter’s comic fantasy novel, ‘The Feather and the Lamp,’ sits alongside works in anthologies such as ‘The Monsters Next Door’ and ‘Best of British Science Fiction 2022’ as well as Short Édition’s ‘Short Circuit’ and the ‘Horrifying Tales of Wonder’ podcast. There have also been papers in the IEEE ‘Transactions on Neural Networks,’ which are probably somewhat less relevant and definitely less fun. When not writing, L.N. unwinds in a disorganised home in rural Cambridgeshire, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.
Links:
 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/L.N.Hunter.writer
Amazon: https://amazon.com/author/l.n.hunter
Linktree (publications list): https://linktr.ee/l.n.hunter

Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai podcast.




“where you going with that?!”
Came the drunken bellow of the Friday night geezer out for a pint or ten with the lads.
Followed by a cacophony of deep throated laughter from the rest of the boys.
She kept her head down and continued to drag this thing down the road.
“Looks ‘eavy, darling. Want an ‘and?”
Again  the cacophony followed, like the braying of a caravan of camels.
She shrunk her head further into her hood and dragged again. The scrape of metal on concrete pierced the night air. Fuck this thing was heavy!
She was hoping that if she ignored them, they would just continue on their merry way.
No such fucking luck.
“come on darlin’, give us a smile!”
They had stopped on the other side of the street.
She took a deep breath and pulled again.
Thankfully the deafening screech of the metal as it gouged at the pavement masked her grunting.
She had to take a break, so she pushed the cauldron off its potbellied side.
It wobbled and crashed loudly onto its three stubby legs.
She leant on the handle to catch her breath.
she could feel the sweat beading down between her breasts and her shirt sticking to her back.
She tugged at her cape, trying to pull the material away from her skin.
She felt the cool night air sweep into her clothes and kiss her skin.
That felt good.
“Oi, darlin! Come on, let us give ya an ‘and! We’ll take it wherever you wanna go.”
“Show us yer tits!” another voice screeched. 
“Shut up Gary, you fuckin’ munter!”
There was a volley of shouts and, by the sound of it, Gary getting a bit of a slap.
A few seconds of silence later, she glanced up under her hood to check the threat level.
There were a group of about seven men, or boys: T-shirts and jeans, cigarettes and alcohol, testosterone and hard ons.
They had all stopped and regarded her with an uncomfortable interest, like lions on the Serengeti about to take down a buffalo and feast on its flesh.
That was a mistake.
They had seen her looking.
Fuck.
The babble of monkeys had grown silent and menacing.
She heard him step off the pavement onto the road.
She heard that first step.
The click of his Blakey’s on the tarmac. 
Shit. 
She glanced up again.
Again, the wrong move.
He was sporting the obligatory belly full of beer pressed against a struggling stretched sports shirt front.
“alright love?”
He smiled.
It was not a smile of warmth and comfort.
He clip clopped halfway across the road, pulled a packet of Marlboro from his breast pocket and threw a cigarette into his mouth.
He moved deliberately, as if he’d rehearsed every action for hours in front of his bedroom mirror. He thought he was cool. He knew he was cool. He was James Dean, at least for today.
he pulled out a zippo lighter and flicked his fingers against the wheel, springing the blue flame into life. He touched it to the end of his cigarette and sucked deeply.
The crackle of tobacco filled the silent air, followed by a cloud of blue smoke that drifted across the street.
Fuck! This was not going to end well.
She gripped the handle of the cauldron ready to pull again.
There was a parked car two metres ahead and not under the street light, if only she could move it that far, perhaps he would lose interest.
She pulled hard.
The cauldron toppled onto its belly. And she leant back with all her weight.
The cauldron croaked against the pavement.
He took another step forward.
The click of his segs rattled in the empty street.
“come on love, give us a smile.”
She’d heard that far too many times.
She mustn’t get distracted, she had to get this to Nana Pat’s cottage.
She pushed her heels against the pavement and pulled with all her might.
This time her grunt was louder than the scraping of the cauldron.
“Wahay!!” The baboons dressed as men all yelped together jumping up and down slapping each other’s hands in exaggerated high fives.
An empty can of beer sailed through the air smacking against the side of the cauldron.
Remnants of beer and spit dribbled down the side of the cauldron.
Fuck, Nana Pat’s going to be pissed.
“Go fetch the cauldron.” She said.
“Bring it straight back.” She said.
“No dilly-dallying.” She said.  
She didn’t say it was going to be this heavy.
She didn’t say…….. She heard the click of the segs coming closer.
Another step.
Click.
Another.
Click.
Another.
Click.
If she looked up now, she’d be in trouble.
She could smell the tormenting stench of cheap cologne, beer and cigarettes. An odorous cloud of desperation and violence. A mist that masked abuse, sex, pain and most of all loneliness. It was unmistakable.
Nana Pat was going to be really, really angry.
“You got a smile for me?” 
The apes had fallen silent. They knew.
“I said,” he whispered, “have you got a smile for me?”
He reached out and slowly pulled her hood off her head.
“your hair’s really pretty, have you got a kiss for me?”
She looked up into a face pitted with acne scars and sorrow.
“that’s better.” He said. His wet mouth smiled, his eyes did not.
“leave me alone.” She said.
“oh, it speaks!” he said loudly, turning his head for the approval of his barrel of monkeys.
He was compensated with the krak and hok of his screaming anthropoids.
“please,” she begged, “leave me alone.”
“Maybe if you give us a kiss, I can help you with this heavy pot.”
He reached out his hand to touch her face.
“don’t.” she squeaked.
“it’s alright,” he said, “I’m a nice guy.”
His smooth and sticky hands smelt of shit and vinegar. She almost vomited.
He pulled her head towards his.
“No.” she said.
“No. No. No. No. No.” She repeated.
His eyes closed as he pulled her face close to his.
“Fucking No!” she screamed at the top of her voice.
He jumped momentarily and smiled.
Again, it was not a nice smile.
“I like a little bit a spirit. There’s a good girl.”
His hand slid down to her breast.
“I said, fucking no!”
She grabbed his hand and shoved her elbow into his chest, leaning forward with all her strength.
The look of shock and surprise as he tumbled headfirst into the cauldron was a face she’d often seen as Nana Pat had thrown her sacrifices into the oubliette of the cauldron.
Some say it was a torment worse than death.
Some say it was the screaming of a thousand souls forever falling.
That’s probably why it was so heavy.
Nana pat was going to be so pissed. 

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Mark Speed has been writing stories since the birth of ink. His work ranges from dark as death’s shroud to comical and ridiculous. In recent years, he has collaborated with an artist to create a story each week, moving through the alphabet. He is the author of two collections, Sodom’s Alphabet and Gomorrah’s Alphabet. “The Cauldron” is the third story from the first collection.
Instagram: @mark_speed_english_teacher