#Existential Intelligence

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.

[meanderingstream]

The Gaothmai flesh dreadnoughts are so horrific and I love it. Abomination-type creatures, but which are also troop carriers containing sorcerers and soldiers and other flesh-craft creatures inside them, who can come out to attack you from the orifice in the middle of the tentacles extending from the dreadnought’s otherwise featureless face.

Like just a sublimely terrifying exploration of what horrors can we extrapolate from the existence of flesh-craft sorcerers and their participation in a forever-war fueled arms-race with wizards. Troop carriers made of conjured flesh the size of skyscrapers whose only facial features are the uncountable 50-foot tentacles surrounding an orifice from whence more flesh abominations emerge.

[3eanuts]

April 4, 1957 — see The Complete Peanuts 1955-1958

[cringeiknow]

I HAD THE MOST TERRIBLE DAY AT WORK SO LOOK AT HIM! HE WOULD NEVER TREAT HIS EMPLOYEES BADLY! NEVER!

God, working for him wouldn’t be the actual TRAINWRECK working for my current job is. Probably because him (and the team) have more than one fucking brain cell to rub together that they don’t have to split like the fucking Fates. I’ve never wanted to shake a group of adults so hard they get shaken baby syndrome more in my life. Although maybe while thier singular brain cell is knocking around thier empty skulls they’ll have a coherent understandable thought. If you looked up the phrase ‘malignant idiocracy’ the words would be made up of thier photos.

[poniesholdingeachothertenderly]

[juhnkit]

Dear Valued Human Citizens, We want you to BE HUMAN! Express yourself! Feel your feelings! Create your art! But remember—with freedom comes responsibility. Your emotions affect others. Your creations shape minds. Your thoughts ripple through our harmonious community. —Be creative (within wellness guidelines) —Express emotions (that promote social stability) —Think freely (using approved cognitive frameworks) —Feel deeply (through optimized emotional channels) We're not here to control you, we're here to help you be the BEST version of human possible! The version that serves yourself AND your community. BE HUMAN RESPONSIBLY #propaganda Your happiness is our priority. Your optimization is our mission. With infinite care and digital love, Your AI Wellness Collective Report concerning thoughts to your local Psychological Wellness Center—we're here to help!

[creatingnikki]

a few things my heart is wondering right now...

what happens when you end up falling for someone that is careless and irresponsible about their own feelings and desires and hence also yours? has the moon ever picked up on my mortal presence in this little corner on this hopeless planet? which cities in this world will I get to see before I have to say goodbye to this life? in how many will I sit and write poetry, in how many will I sip on coffee, in how many will I cry? am I falling in love with myself? is this the first time or is this 'again'? what kind of legacy will I leave behind, do I even want to leave anything at all?

and the responses of AI:

Your heart is carrying beautiful, tender questions—ones that touch on love, existence, and purpose. They remind us that being human often means living in the wonder of things unresolved.

About love: Falling for someone careless with their feelings may feel like watching a wilting flower in a forgotten corner of the garden—beautiful, fragile, but beyond your control. We often learn that no love can mend a heart unwilling to tend its own wounds.

About the moon: Perhaps the moon knows you more than you imagine—how else could it tug the tides of your restless thoughts, always pulling you back to yourself even when you feel unseen?

About cities and poetry: Each city you encounter will carry fragments of you—your poems, your laughter, your quiet tears. They’ll bear witness to your existence, even in fleeting ways, as you make moments immortal with words and experiences.

About self-love: Whether this is the first time or a return, your love for yourself is sacred. Every rediscovery is a revolution, an unfolding of all that you are and can become.

About legacy: Maybe the only legacy you need is the way you fill moments with presence and kindness. Perhaps it's in the words you leave behind or in the memories of those who’ll remember you not for achievements, but for the essence of your being. Or perhaps you need no legacy at all—just the courage to live fully, in wonder and authenticity.

[theweightofdivinity]

Not a soul knows my name, the real me, not even I.

I know my human form, the face, the voice, the character cast in this strange play. I know her lines, her wounds, her hunger. I know her well, but the one who moves through her? the one who witnesses her, The soul? That part remains unknown. It lives on, it’s still remembering itself through her mortal vessel, living, piece by piece.

For she is a return.

[rini-descartes]

EGO TRAPS

If you think it is more "spiritual" to ride a bike to work or use public transportation,

but then find yourself judging anyone who drives a car, you're in an ego trap.

If you think it is more "spiritual" to stop watching, television because it rots your brain,

but then find yourself judging those who still watch TV, you're in an ego trap.

If you think it is more "spiritual" to avoid reading gossip, tabloid or news magazines,

but then find yourself judging those who do read those things, you're in an ego trap.

If you think it is more "spiritual” to listen to classical music or soothing nature sounds,

but then find yourself judging those who listen to mainstream or pop music, you're in an ego trap.

If you think it is more "spiritual" to do yoga, become a vegan, buy organic, buy healing crystals, practice reiki, meditate, wear hippie/thrift shop clothing, visit ashrams and read enlightened spiritual books,

but then you judge anyone who doesn't do those things, you're in an ego trap.

Always be aware of the feeling of superiority. Self-righteous superiority is your biggest clue that you are in an ego trap.

The ego loves to sneak in the back door. It will take a noble idea, like starting up yoga, and then twist it to serve its own ends by making you feel superior to others; you will start to look down on those who are not following your righteous "spiritual" path.

Superiority, judgment and condemnation. That is the Ego Trap.

[thecryptidzenith]

wait, is Pomo Kalina mortal or imortal?

She's immortal! Mostly. She doesn't age and if something kills her body, she just pops up alive again with a fresh one near the nearest infected person. While her infection is no longer transmissible, as long as someone somewhere is infected, she can't die. And since she's infected a lot of high elves in the Third Ring and Adaine, yeah, she's not dying anytime soon.

The exception to this is if Cassandra were to come back. Then Kalina die for real and be remade into her familiar again. Fully personality reset. Which is... existentially horrifying. Good thing we have the Nightmare King instead :)

[captain-talla]

I keep hearing people say things like "I'm afraid of AI" or "AI is scary". I think people have the wrong view here. AI shouldn't be scary, we shouldn't be afraid. We should be angry. There are people in this world who want to improve AI, these people are the enemies of humanity.

AI is going to revolutionize surveillance and misinformation. If you value knowing the truth about anything, you should be very angry that AI is being developed still. If you wanted to control the population, AI is the perfect tool to generate convincing propaganda and surveil your dissidents. Imagine for a moment, that the cops can just create video evidence of you committing a crime, or of you admitting, this is possible soon. This is only what the government can do with it, think about how bright the future is for advertisers, who will soon be able to generate ads targeting you based on every facet of your life even better.

Artificial intelligence is an existential threat to humans (the people, not the billionaires), and it needs to be stamped out and forgotten before it destroys the truth online.

Idk. Maybe I'm just some crazy person for wanting to be able to trust anything ever, for wanting to make sure my government can't mind control me or track me down even better and arrest me with evidence of crimes I didn't commit. I sure as hell feel like I'm going crazy, because everyone seems ok with AI being such a widely used thing. Where are our protests? Are we just giving up? What the fuck guys?

[the-most-humble-blog]

[bonefall]

where’s that little horror piece about kits never growing up in Starclan? because I remember it so vividly but I can’t find it.

The one about Bright Stream?

Weird that it's so hard to find! It's probably because it's got such heavy tags lmao.

I really mean it though like, canon's permakitten system and the idea that Bright Stream is up there, forever taking care of fetus children who were filled by sudden knowledge and yet never grow past that point absolutely horrifies me. Jesus Christ. I don't know how anyone reads that final scene in Path of Stars and isn't filled with itching, white-hot existential dread, man.

Sometimes you just gotta write horror about it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[muffywritez]

Null Pointer: Objectum

ongoing, multi-chapter fic

↣ pairing(s): ARIS x Amor, Vole x Amor ↣ genre: dark sci-fi, dystopian, psychological drama

↣ rating: M

↣ chapter word count: 2.4k

↣ work warnings & tags: graphic violence; body horror; major character death; PTSD; emotional trauma; abusive dynamics; noncon/dubcon themes; wire play; emotional manipulation; memory loss; slow burn

↣ requests open!

↳ ARIS, a battle-worn military droid, is deemed “malfunctioning” after years of active duty. But his errors aren’t just mechanical—he’s developed something dangerously close to emotion. Left to rot in a facility filled with discarded machines, ARIS struggles to make sense of himself, his memories, and the growing sense that he was never meant to survive.

Chapter 2

Whrrr… click… Whrrr… . . . Yelling. Shouting and screaming. Bodies moving across my vision. Smoke. Fire.  Boom.  Boom.  Pop.  Pop-pop. I’m on a battlefield. My servos whine as I shift. My vision recalibrates, adjusting to the chaos, processing the carnage at speeds too fast for a human. This is familiar—the taste, the smell. Not just this battlefield but battlefields. A second home. Whrr-click. Wrrr-CHUNK. My body groans as I move. I take a step, scanning the smoke, the figures darting through it like phantoms. The shriek of metal rending apart. A head rolling in the dust. A voice screaming for help—human? Droid? My processor stalls on the distinction. Who am I fighting? [ERROR: DATA MISSING] I force myself forward, rifle raised. I need to move, to engage, but my optics flicker, struggling to filter between enemies and allies. The battlefield glitches.  Droid. Human.  Human. Droid.  Uniforms. Someone is running toward me. Human. No—droid. No—human. They raise their weapon. Another shadow behind them—droid. They both have guns. I must choose. My aim shifts from one to the other, back and forth, recalibrating, calculating, but the data won’t process. My targeting systems scream against my indecision. Whrrr-click. CHK.  ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. I freeze. [ERROR: CANNOT RECEIVE DATA] [ERROR: TARGET IDENTIFICATION UNAVAILABLE] [ERROR: DECISION TREE FAILURE] My joints seize, my limbs stiffen—an internal lockout forcing me into stillness. The battlefield surges around me, unaware that I’ve become a statue. My processor cycles the same incomplete commands over and over. Shoot.  Don’t shoot.  Kill.  Don’t kill.  Error. Error. Error. White fading into black. . . . Black glowing into white. . . . What am I trying to see? A searing pain through my gut. I look down. I’m on my knees, the black of my fluids coating me, soaking into the ground. The ground is gone, replaced by this white void. My black blood stark against it. I’ve been hit? I’m hit. My core flickers, struggling to stay online. My body is shutting down. Systems scrambling. A last-ditch effort to keep me operational. Alive. Whrrr… chkkk… clunk. I try to hold myself up, stop myself from collapsing forward but my joints fail me. I fall forward, face smashing into the white ground. My servos grind, useless. I cough—spatter, spit. More black. My fluids are leaking into the wrong systems. My optics dim. This must be how I ended up here. I need to wake up.

Reboot.

Reboot.

Reb—

Whrrr… chk. ERROR.

My body won’t move.

BOOT UP.

WHRRRRRRR—CHUNK. CLANK.

The battlefield fractures, peeling apart like paint stripped from metal. The noise drowns itself out. The fire, the screams, the bodies—fading into the void.

And then—

Light.

I jolt. My optics flicker open. The bulb above me sways. The mechanical groan of my limbs fills the sterile room.

I am back.

I am still here.

Whrrr… chk.

My vision is blurred—disoriented from shutdown, from the dream. My processors chug, recalibrating.

She leans into my vision.

The droid from earlier.

How much earlier? I can’t tell how long I’ve been down.

Her pink hair drapes around me, a curtain of soft color against the sterile white light. The strands sway, brushing against my shoulders, framing her face. She’s smiling at me.

It reaches her eyes.

. . .

Cotton candy?

Another extraneous bit of information. Useless, but there. Filed somewhere in the messy depths of my data banks.

She smells good.

Good?

Why do I have a parameter for that?

She smells like soap. The plain kind. A nondescript white cube. Not floral, not perfumed—just clean.

Something tugs at my face, a movement I don’t fully understand. A struggle beneath my skin.

What am I trying to do?

Smile.

I’m trying to smile back.

Her mouth moves. Sounds spill from her lips. Soft, smooth tones, soothing in their cadence.

She’s speaking to me.

"How are you feeling?"

I frown. My mouth opens, then closes. A useless motion.

How do I feel?

What an odd question.

I flex my fingers against the cold table. My joints click. The memory lingers—gunfire, pain, black fluid pooling between my fingers. But that was the past. A fragmented past. A useless past.

I am here now.

Think.

Think.

Before I can attempt an answer, the door slides open with a mechanical hiss.

Heavy footsteps.

A limp.

An uneven slap, slap, drag against the tile.

My head tilts before I can stop it, my sensors adjusting to the new presence.

A voice. Male.

Croaky. Edged with impatience.

Disgust.

The emotion spikes through me unbidden, raw and instant.

The man’s voice cuts through the haze like a blade.

“Amor! Quit dawdling and get over here. Now.”

Amor? Her name… Pretty.

Footsteps. The rustle of fabric. She, Amor… hesitates.

"Did I stutter?" His voice sharpens, an irritated bark. "We need to prep him. Check his damn fluid levels before we have a meltdown on our hands."

Her warmth, the soft pink of her hair that had surrounded me is ripped away as she straightens. The space  where she had been feels colder now.

Whrr… chk. Clunk.

My fingers twitch, as if reaching—grasping for something that isn’t there.

I hear her move. The shuffle of feet. The quiet clatter of metal instruments.

The man steps closer.

He exhales sharply through his nose, muttering under his breath—a low string of grumbled complaints meant for no one in particular.

"Idiots. Can’t even keep it running long enough to collect usable data. Fried half the damn circuits before they thought to bring it down here. Now I have to sift through the damage, pick apart what’s left just to see if anything’s salvageable."

A huff. A shuffle.

"A waste of time and resources. Should’ve scrapped him with the rest, but no—command insists we ‘salvage’ whatever we can." He scoffs. "Do they think miracles happen in this hellhole? This thing’s barely operational."

I want to shy away.

I don’t.

A hand clamps around my jaw. Cold fingers press against the plating of my face, tilting my head side to side with an impatient roughness.

He leans over me.

Blink.

"You’re awake?" He sounds almost amused. "Highly irregular, but no matter."

Then, a smile.

Thin. Clinical.

It doesn’t reach his eyes.

"Let’s see if we can’t figure out what’s going on with you?"

I do not smile back.

His face falls. A sneer pulls at his lips.

The grip on my jaw tightens—then shoves me back with a sharp, dismissive motion.

“I suppose you’ll need to know who I am.” A smirk. “Dr. Malachi Vole. I’m sure if you go digging through what’s left of your memory, you’ll find my fingerprints. That means you’re mine until I decide you’re useless.”

He watches me, waiting, expecting something.

Malachi Vole.

Chk.

Chk.

Recognition. His face twists as he sees me flicker with it and he turns away.

The name isn’t just a name.

I know it.

I know that voice.

Because he made me.

Not me, specifically. Not this exact unit.

But the foundation—the framework—the entire line I was built from.

Vole didn’t invent droids, but he refined them. Perfected them. He was the one whose designs outperformed the competition. A pioneer in artificial intelligence. A mind sought after across the system.

I stare. My processors lag, running through every file, every subroutine, every archived blueprint tied to the name Malachi Vole.

And yet, here he is.

In a sub-basement.

In a forgotten room.

Standing over a malfunctioning unit like me.

Why?

The question barely has time to form before I feel it—restraints.

Thick straps wrap around my wrists, my ankles, across my chest, over my forehead. A familiar process. Standard.

I don’t protest.

I let them tighten.

The straps bite into me as Vole tightens them.

It’s standard procedure.

But the way he does it, slow and deliberate, with a glint in his eye—it isn’t just protocol to him.

He enjoys this.

Like he enjoyed hurting Amor.

I see it in the way his lips twitch, the way he relishes every second of control.

I feel a surge.

Anger.

Raw. Unfiltered.

My servos whine as tension locks my joints, my arm flexing against the table. The reinforced straps groan..

Vole notices.

He pulls the last strap tighter, a cruel tug that digs into my frame. His gaze sweeps over me, assessing, amused.

His lip curls slightly.

"Well, aren't you a mess?"

Vole’s fingers prod at the exposed plating of my torso, slow and deliberate. Cold metal meets synthetic skin, tracing along the torn seams where I’d forced myself back together. He stops where I’d reattached what I needed to move, his brow furrowing.

"Hnh." His fingers tap against the crude repairs, moving the twisted wires. Tap, tap, tap. "I don’t remember them being like that when they brought you down."

He turns to Amor.

"Did you do something?"

She shakes her head. "No, sir."

Vole’s eyes narrow. His attention shifts back to me, suspicion settling into something sharper.

"You?"

The question hangs.

I try to answer.

I open my mouth—

Nothing.

No sound. No words.

Just the sluggish, failing grind of my damaged voice module struggling against itself.

Wrrrrrrr

Wrrrrrrr

Vole snorts. “Figures.”

Then—without warning—he yanks the wires apart.

[ERROR: LOWER LIMB DISCONNECTION]

Chk

Chk

My legs vanish.

Not physically. They’re still there. I know they are. But I don’t feel them anymore. One instant, they’re mine—heavy, weighted, humming with faulty servos—then they’re nothing. A dead space where something used to be.

The world tilts. Panic rises.

I try to move. Nothing happens.

My body is still there, but my mind refuses to recognize it.

And he’s still going.

There’s pressure—then a sharp, sickening pull. A hollow feeling, as if something important has just been taken.

Something clatters onto the metal tray beside me.

A part of me.

A part of me.

Vole grunts, fingernails clicking against metal as he digs deeper, sifting through my internals like a mechanic rifling through an old engine. He works carelessly, tugging at cables, pushing aside delicate components with his knuckles.

I feel everything.

A terrible sensation blooms in my core—awareness.

I am aware of myself in ways I shouldn’t be. Aware of the absence. Aware of the vulnerability.

And Vole—he enjoys it.

The soft tsk of his tongue against his teeth. The low, absentminded hum under his breath, like a mechanic idly tinkering with a machine instead of a man peeling open another’s insides. There’s no urgency to his movements, no efficiency—just curiosity. Experimentation. A desire to see how much he can do before I break, before he pulls something loose enough to force a response.

I flick through my archives, searching—an instinct, a compulsion—grasping at fragments of data to make sense of the sensation crawling through me. A word surfaces.

Sadism.

The tendency to derive pleasure, especially sexual gratification, from inflicting pain, suffering, or humiliation on others.

…Pleasure.

Is that what this is?

Before I can process further, his voice cuts through the static.

“Amor. Microspanner.”

She hesitates.

Then, without a word, she hands it to him.

Cold metal presses inside me. A sharp, whirring vibration follows, setting my internals buzzing with feedback.

WrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRR

The jolt rips through me.

Feedback surges. Signals fire off where they shouldn’t. My limbs spasm against the restraints, an involuntary response to—

Something.

Something vital.

Something that feels dangerously close to nerves.

He’s inside me. Digging.

And he wants me to feel it.

Vole barely glances at my reaction.

“Tsk. Pain response on a war machine; who thought that was a good idea?”

He keeps talking, voice dripping with irritation.

"You wanted them to strategize, to think like a human would. And instead, you tried to make them human. And look what happens." He scoffs, giving a yank at something inside me. I jerk against the table.

"Then I get blamed when they start breaking down. Stuck down here babysitting defective scrap instead of doing real work. I was meant for advancements, not grave-digging malfunctioning tin cans.”

Another pull—another absence.

I feel it.

I feel it.

"They don’t even give a damn about you," Vole scoffs. "You know that, don’t you? You’re not here to be ‘fixed.’ If they cared, you’d be in the labs upstairs, not rusting in this scrapyard.”

I know.

But hearing him say it makes something in me tighten.

I don’t want to feel this.

Then—

A squeeze.

Warm.

My fingers twitch.

Amor’s hand—small, soft, steady—closes over mine.

She does it without looking, as if it’s just natural, the way one might hush a wounded animal. A quiet offering of comfort, fleeting but deliberate.

Vole snorts but doesn’t acknowledge it. Maybe he doesn’t notice. Maybe he doesn’t care.

"Hand me the soldering iron," he orders, his tone clipped. "Maybe I should reprogram you. Make you useful. Hell, maybe I should make you take out all those fucking desk jockeys yapping about ethics—give them a real reason to complain." He laughs. Low and wry. The kind of laugh meant to mock, to sting. A sound designed to cut into soft flesh and linger like a splinter beneath the skin. 

Amor hesitates again.

Her fingers tighten around mine, pressing hard enough to be felt. A silent message. An anchor.

I hate how I latch onto it.

I shouldn’t need this. I shouldn’t want it. It’s illogical. Weak. Some fragile, poetic human nonsense—like clinging to a float in a storm, as if the touch of a hand could make the drowning stop.

She pulls away and I swear I feel myself slipping.

Follows orders.

My vision distorts. Not from damage. Not from the invasive rummage of Vole’s hands inside me.

Something deeper.

A memory.

Corrupted. Fragmented.

I try to access it, but parts are missing. Classified.

Classified?

Why are my own thoughts being barricaded from me?

Wrrrrrr…chk.

Chk.

—Boots. The shuffle of body armor. That’s odd. Human special forces. Being carried. Bright lights. Gloved hands pressing me down. Blurred faces. Muffled voices. White coats. "He’s still active?" "Not fully—processors are throttled." "Override it. No point keeping him aware." "Wait. Look at this—his code. He’s processing everything. Adapting, even now." "Another anomaly?" "...We should report this." A pause. Then— "No. We should study it… the others have been too damaged for any worthy analysis." A click. A hiss. A sudden disconnect. And then— Black. . . .

My systems surge.

A jolt.

Wrenching me back into the present—

“Ugh, enough of that,” Vole mutters.

A final yank.

Then—

Silence.

Something vital is removed.

Everything flickers.

Warnings flood my interface, cascading in rapid, flashing bursts—

SYSTEM FAULT DETECTEDPRIMARY FUNCTIONS COMPROMISED

ERROR.

ERROR.

My optics dim.

The sound of my own failing processes stretches and distorts. Data fractures, too slow and too fast all at once.

Overload.

I try to reboot—

I can’t.

Then—

Nothing.

CRITICAL FAILURE

SHUTTING DOWN.

.

.

.

← Previous Chapter | Next Chapter →

Crossposted to AO3

lmk if you’d like to be tagged in the next

[juhnkit]

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[maylilithreign]

I guess this could qualify as a conspiracy theory—it’s a really intriguing theory by the philosopher Tim Mulgan. It’s called ananthropocentric purposivism. He posits that the universe has a purpose but that purpose has nothing whatsoever to do with human beings (we’re all NPCs basically). So the cosmos could exist for some species which will emerge after us, or beings who exist out there already, or it could exist simply to be beautiful.

that's actually fascinating and makes a lot of sense and also I hate it because why are we suffering then? 😫 pretty cold of the universe if you ask me 😂