Wednesday, July 26, 2023

Blog post by Joseph Chang

 The Machine 


The galaxy seemed dim without any sign of life. The earth, the home which humanity had

inherited over hundreds of generations, teetered on the edge of destruction. Each passing day, the

ancient heartbeats of our celestial home grew fainter. The foundations of the earth began to groan and

shake, the fiery pits to hell rumbling in anticipation as if humanity had incurred the wrath of the gods.

Even the fierce and powerful sun, once a beacon of hope and source of life, threatened the destruction

of the world we knew it. By this time, many of us had accepted the inevitable and waited excruciatingly

for what was to come.


With this, the greatest minds of the earth were brought together. For months they toiled,

searching from the endless void of space to the farthest corners of the vast universe. So, at last, and

with much difficulty, their endeavors brought upon a hope. A machine which could capture the power

and might of the very “gods” which threatened humanity’s end. The machine. Though it contained the

potential to create life, it was a weapon of incomparable power and destruction. Regardless, it was our

one and only hope. Thus, the machine was created.  


At first the machine did nothing but good for us, giving us years of bliss and prosperity, but it

was a power too great to resist. The machine soon revealed itself to be an evil power, taking it upon

itself to bring about the end of mankind. It filled our minds with hatred and loathe, bringing its heavy

influence upon our every word. Soon after, the last and greatest of the Great Wars began, decades of

carnage and genocide, taking the lives of billions. Then came years of famine and disease, and with the

end of the Great Wars, it was done. We few who survived remain in this war-torn, hell-like world. The

earth’s life dims even more each day. Perhaps this was the very reason the gods sought to destroy us.

4 comments:

  1. That last line packs a punch. You could turn each one of these paragraphs into a full-length story. I hope you'll write the trilogy someday!

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  2. I very much enjoyed reading the Story about "The Machine" and couldn`t resist making parallels
    between your story and contemporary events that are affecting our lives today.I especially was intrigued by the following line:;At first the machine did nothing but good for us, giving us years of bliss and prosperity, but it was a power to great to resist". It reminds me of the current debate over A.I. I hope that you will continue to expand on this Tale.

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  3. It's so interesting that there are so many different powers at play: the earth, the sun, the gods, the creators of the machine, and the machine itself. All of those have the capacity to foster life, and the capacity to destroy it--and they all seem to be fighting each other for dominance. There's almost something cyclical to this story: one entity defeats another in a bid to give/control life... and then they turn harmful, so another entity has to come in to do it all over again.

    I'm super curious about the machine! I noticed that its chosen form of destruction isn't physical violence, but rather sowing discord among humans. It almost seems manipulative, which I think points to something more human than machine. I wonder if that instinct came from its creators. So intriguing!

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  4. I really like it. I like the way you have it start out as just a sort of just dystopian world and it becomes a commentary on AI

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