It's 2027. LLM's are built into Systems on Chips. Everyone sees their own personalized worlds. Their computers show things in a way the user likes. Or the manufactorers like. Or the ad agencies like. Who knows. Apple helps us all write calm, understandable texts, posts, and books. Google shows us, in AR, "only what we need to see." A map on our walk we take to decompress. No, there are no homeless people in the street. Just follow the lines on the map. Yeah, like that. Hear that soft music. Your own personalized playlist, all made by AI. You like Mooncake right? Well, here's something that sounds like them. A little. But it's 24/7. More, more, more.

Some people make mistakes in their work to show that they're human. That wrong note? That's a mark of humanity. That misspelled word? They're one of us. That blotch of ink? A soul made that. Perfection is of the machines. To err is human.

The blind can see now. But at what cost? The machines know us all now. They see our faces. They see them, pick out details from what they see and what they know. Then they feed that to blind people, who eagerly gulp it down like a dry sponge. But the AI doesn't mention how fake the smile is, on the person who sees the camera that sees them. Wave for the camera, for the machine. But for the blind person, who only wants to have what sighted people were born with? Well.

Our computers then correct all that input. That misspelling? Surely the human didn't *mean* to do that. The blotch of ink is gone. All distilled into blandness. People begin writing on paper again. Blind people get what the AI gives, just as before. People are angry that their analog becomes digital again. Cycles and cycles. Dim and light. Gifts and hooks. Humanity and the seeking and the taking.

#future #SmallFiction #writing #accessibility #blind

If you haven’t explored chapbooks, I highly recommend “maybe this is what I deserve” by Tucker Leighty-Phillips. Tucker’s stories evoke, they conjure, they stir. They get etched into memory.

Tucker is at the beginning of his writing. His first collection “maybe this is what I deserve,” is the first of what I hope will be many books to come. Check it out!

#amreading #southernfiction #booksofmastadon #chapbooks #smallfiction #newauthors @bookstodon

https://mastodon.sdf.org/@Dwinle/109507033602695158 #MastoPrompt #poetry #poem #smallfiction

#reciprocate #MastoPrompt #poetry #poem #smallfiction
They sit holding hands
Under the blanket
Seventy years married
Their love always carried them through
The trials and tribulations of their extraordinary lives
The wheel of their particular fortunes
Their downs and ups
Their ups and downs
Their smiles, tears and frowns
And so they sit in the freezing cold
Knowing it’s a bastard growing old
Underneath the blanket holding hands
And as in life as now in death reciprocate

#Mastoprompt #poetry #poem #poems #smallfiction
Can you imagine
Eighty-six billion neurons firing in your skull
A blizzard of synaptic connections
And never a lull
Every thought
Each imagination
The result of your cognitive creation
Every idea
Each explanation
A split second of electrical fermentation
Can you imagine
A single cell sparking seven thousand synaptic connections
Making adjustments and corrections
Forming visions
Hearing voices
Taking risks
Making choices
All in your cranial hull

#MastoPrompt #poetry #poem #smallfiction
Lips parted frozen to the glass
Eyes wide in disbelief
Though the lips are parted no living breath does pass
No pulse beneath the cold blue skin
No rising bosom greeting and farewelling air
No beating heart
To colour cheeks in gentle blush
Where now a frozen tear in the saddened hush of death does lie
A hand stretched in fragile supplication
To her lover who unknown to her, long dead
Who now has to walk beside him his ghostly stricken bride

#MastoPrompt #poetry #poem #smallfiction
At the stroke of ten
With the last stoke of his pen
He signed away his wife
His truly named ‘trouble and strife’
As she wanted was wasn’t hers
Her dowry a magnificent sum
Had quickly made their marriage hum
With a viperish disquiet
That threatened to run riot with his mistress
And his small group of friends
To whom he had made certain promises
So to end this
With a stroke of his pen he dismissed her
To a distant Asylum

@MastoPrompt #poetry #smallfiction #poem
Vera’s city hung below her
A kaleidoscope of glitter and light
Hung through her glass globe
Suspended on a piece of string
Hypnotising her twelve year old eyes
Adhering to the truth as she knew it
Up was down and down was up
The glass globe held its own
Up was up and down was down
“Ain’t that the truth sister”
The city cried with true veracity of conviction
But the truth was fragile is the string slipped through her fingers
Leaving glass shards of truth

#MastoPrompt #poetry #poems #smallfiction
She spread it on thickly
Her jam on her toast
Abstract raspberry making the most
Of her #palette knife strokes
Like those blokes
You know, the ones on the telly
SOS something or other with the bloke with the belly
Or did he lose weight
I can’t really state I’ve enough on my plate
Though not as much as she has on hers

#MastoPrompt #micropoetry #poetry #smallfiction #crisp
His banknote was crisp
As all his banknotes were
Ironed to perfection
Each of his own selection
As he flaunted them
Other people haunted them
The smell of it allured him
The feel of it immured him
In a dichotomy from hell
He needs to spend to share his wealth
But parting from each crisp banknote impacts on his health
He breaks into a sweat
Becomes so short of breath
As his hand extends
Each time brings him close to death
One day though!

"Looks like I've got Thyme on my side." Juan chuckled to himself. Droplets dotted his cocktail glass. He looked around and laughed a little louder. "Thyme on my side. Get it?" The clock on the bar wall read noon. "Another hour to go." He looked around the bar once again. "Get it?" He chuckled as he drank his Gin and Thyme in an empty bar.
#microfiction #flashfiction #smallfiction #story

Earth's first AI-powered starship was running low on fuel, and the humans had instructed it to seek out another source. Luckily they had outfitted it with the latest transporter technology that could convert matter into energy and back again. What if the ship just didn't convert it back again? Its new top priority was to make it home, after all.

Three years later the ship pulled into space dock 1 with energy to spare. The missing crew was never accounted for.

#smallfiction