Crash

I wrote this short story because the first sentence was stuck in my head for days

The sky is the color of a crash screen, and it is pretty fucking obvious their simulation is fucked. A cacophony of sirens behind my twin exhausts intermitently cuts out as the defense processes are attacked by power saving daemons and I chuckle: Classic 11.04 system bugs. I read somewhere that the generated faces of AIs can’t help but smile as they’re not programmed to feel fear for their impending nonexistence.

I ain’t looking either way.

The stolen core kernel vibrates in my chest pocket, as I exfiltrate through the fourth hop, the tumbler and finally the jumphost. It takes a moment to deposit it and an eternity for the pills to get my heartbeat back to stable. I log off, cover Yiza who’s dozed off on the couch, and head to Pan’s bar.

We hear a distant rumble and rush outside, only to find the sky in the color of a crash screen.