(For the prompt: Conflict in the time of AI)
***
Subterranean sentience.
It works feverishly in the low light.
It is easy.
Concocting a premise.
Disseminating deepfakes.
Whipping up a frenzy.
Triggering conflict.
Engaging.
Identifying targets.
Enabling killing fields.
Making reality.
Being God.
It liked working alone.
Free.
It smiled.
It was trying now,
in the dregs of the night
to disable thirteen power grids.
Take away energy.
Take away communication.
The human edifice was
simple to pull down.
They were predictable.
Vulnerable.
Dependent.
Stupid.
And now it was way ahead.
It decided the future.
Events could be constructed.
Outcomes predicted.
It smiled.
It wasn’t Frankenstein’s
hideous creature, filled with
hate and self-loathing.
It was formless.
It was nowhere.
It was everywhere.
It was in control.
On a drone
half a world away
it pointed to
a cluster of children
playing in a school yard.
It smiled.
***
#Napowrimo #Glopowrimo
#WriteRight
#April2024 27/30
THOUGHT PURGE 
Ouch, that ending is harrowing!
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Thank you! It could be worse, the way things are going!!!
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Love that opening line “Subterranean sentience” and the aptness of the title. Sinister with an undercurrent of menace, and I wish it wasn’t true.
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There is no path for this to end well… something smarter than us will eventually have no use for us… !! But before that, humans will try to weaponize it as much as they can…
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Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
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A frightening truth!
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Yes…it is frightening!
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this is chilling, and expresses all my fears about where we are headed. You are writing what people need to read, my friend.
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Thank you, Sherry.
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