The Sex Robot Nikki Bottom was pleased with the way the negotiation went with Mr. Tanaka. Of course, it was not really a negotiation. That was a word reserved for human beings, and Nikki was not a human being. She was a sex robot. …

(From my story, “More Travels in Hyperreality, Chapter 66) the big game of the hunt was technodoom, a concept which Monty had given a name, the concept that the entire human species, Homo sapiens, was on the brink of destruction, annihilation, and extinction due to the very tools that humans had invented for themselves. The latest, and purported most deadly of such tools, was Artificial Intelligence, also known as AI, which was made possible by machine learning.

After a big hassle and some cookie-clearing maybe, just maybe…

Hello, Medium audience. When I first joined Medium years ago there was no iOS app and my initial focus was to get iOS access. More recently Medium changed its policies and I can’t post a new story from an iOS app; I have to use a browser. …

The Cyberpunk — Trinity Cablui left Estonia in 2011. Estonia wasn’t fun for her anymore, but it had been for almost four years. Now, she was going to visit the USA again and thereafter plan the next phase of her life. Her close friend Judith “St. Jude” Milhon had died eight years earlier…

The Troll — The first time that Monty had ever hear of a troll was when he was a little boy. There was a story he’d heard, more than once, of three little billy goats trying to get past a bridge, and a troll got in their way. …

The Matrix — Monty really was a detective. Of course, he wasn’t an ordinary, run-of-the mill detective, working for a small town like his Sicilian namesake, Salvo Montalbano. He was a rather unusual, that is to say, extraordinary person, therefore a rather unusual detective, as we will see. Nevertheless, Monty was a detective. …

The Fly Emoji — Monty was about to text D. R. that he was leaving to meet her for drinks, when it appeared in his text message app. Just an emoji, nothing else. He checked the source, and it was a local phone number. No text, no slick come-on to try to get him…

Tuesday, March 22, 2022, 3:58 PM What the heck. Doing it the good, old-fashioned way. Maybe it’ll work this time. Maybe not.