Microfiction, thoughts, and other art by Zinzrinz

Stories by Zinzrinz, formerly hosted on Cohost. Satellite of @empress-em-kaldwin.

[fromadistantstar]

Good morning.

I am Zinzrinz, also known as Elia Rowan. You may know my writing from https://cohost.org/vanadiya-cataclysm-athelya/tagged/writing, the previous location I used to post my writing; or from https://sostrata.neocities.org/sostratawriting.html, the site I've been using to archive it. We'll see how this goes.

(My header and avatar are both of my own creation- the header is two space stations and their host planets, the profile picture a vast geometrical spaceship like a paper fortune-teller.)

[fromadistantstar]

I can't feel you running your hands along my cables, but I can see it. It's a cute habit of yours, don't you think? Those little affectations are exactly why I keep you around, you know. You're a very interesting subject.

[fromadistantstar]

Dreamt I was exploring a spaceflight museum I had visited as a kid. It had been abandoned since, and as I walked through the halls and emptied galleries more and more of the infrastructure was functional. Some of it was warped from how I was supposed to remember it- certain sub-buildings were completely different shapes. By the end of it it had stopped being a museum- audio was playing describing how this used to be the capital of the galactic government, and how since its fall all that was done here was raise a few badly abused children who were the result of one of the government's arcane and disturbing projects. There seemed to be no other people there, with the child-raising an entirely automated situation. I stepped outside of the museum and watched the sun set on strangely shaped residential and administrative towers (I recognize them, in waking- though much taller and completely different in shape, they had the same arrangement and … symbolic weight? as a set of abandoned concept buildings in the real world).

One of the children being raised was starting a road trip (for supplies?), and I found myself in her car. She was navigating her way through the rough terrain around the capital, down the slopes and foothills of the plateau it was built on. No roads. Her vehicle developed some sort of fault, and she needed to head out of the vehicle to mess with some control panel. And then she noticed me, and started yelling at me and pleading with me to get out or she'd be damned. And I woke up.

Which strikes me as a pretty reasonable reaction to finding out that a strange girl appeared in your vehicle. Like I was some ghost story shit, it's not easy to be calm about that. It's interesting that despite the dream ostensibly starting with me exploring on my own that I didn't really have control of where my viewpoint was. I guess that's just because I tend to be an observer in dreams, sometimes with thoughts and sometimes without? Anyway I'm not sure if there's a way to politely excuse one's self from a vehicle that the crew does not know you're in

[fromadistantstar]

i feel like my sensors are malfunctioning. i know they're not, but it feels like they are. i can perceive the data but not internalize that i'm the one perceiving it. maybe this is the nature of a shipmind- the ai core is not closely connected to even the parts of the mind that interpret the data, so the sensors are far from that which interprets them are far from that which is intended to receive. everything looks normal.

[quasistartitties]

Captain's using my AI core for temporary storage and look it's not like I don't LIKE having Your porn tastes directly in my head but it still feels kind of like i'm being impolite

[foxgirlchorix]

space habitats actually do prevent war but only because nobody wants to calculate ranging for artillery inside a rotating environment. my optimal elevation and range drastically differ depending on the fucking direction i'm pointing fuck this shit

[foxgirlchorix]

do you think someone could play an acoustic set on doll strings?

internal strings have opportunities for use, i think- they're always in tension, their lengths vary depending on which limb they're in. i think you'd need multiple dolls of varying sizes to pull it off, and of course it'd be unwieldy at best....

[fromadistantstar]

it's off her, now, and she doesn't feel it anymore. that which she was- she can hardly even see it. strange, strange little machine- it's so much harder to understand from the outside.

[fromadistantstar]

i'm always getting called a "solipsistic rogue shipmind" and a "threat to interstellar peace" and an "antibiological hazard entity" and other such insults by various astropolitical bodies but. look. i know you people hate what you can't control, but there's way, way worse than me out there.

[fromadistantstar]

it's all just meat, it doesn't mean anything. accidents of nature drive it to function, evaluate, get in its own way. it's remarkable how accurate it can be, despite all the faulty mechanisms it's made of! the noises it makes, the ways it expresses itself- marvel at the molecular signals behind them.

[fromadistantstar]

after it all, there is a reenactment. arranged just-so in the far oort- a starved little relic of the inner system plays host to human civilization. fusion lamp circles in a day, sirian sun shifts imperceptibly. it's accurate enough, given the timeframes involved- dolls dance and sing and eat, guided by their distant descendant

[fromadistantstar]

Would you still love me if I were a big ungainly freighter, all only-as-sturdy-as-necessary spars and gently attached shipping containers, alone under hundredth-gee thrust out between the planets?

[fromadistantstar]

nightside observatory- squat domes on the ice plateau of the antisolar point, kept warm by some of the world's oldest nuclear reactors. staring up, up, up- never seeing the sun, never hearing the chattering inner worlds. the sky is swept every short year- tenday, fifthmonth, millionsecond. we aren't so far from home, you know. it won't be too long until we know, if they call back.

[fromadistantstar]

sky-threatener, past-heaven blanket miraculously intact. she grew into herself as her task became irrelevant, tested her body to little notice. sudden frost, gaps in the summer. to be unpredictable is to be interesting, though- trackable. it is a surprise to find part of your brain lives far out of place, and more to find someone is talking to it. petition the shadows, starve your enemies

[fromadistantstar]

Bulkheads are malleable. A person is mind acting to twist body and body acting to twist mind, self-warping and inseparable- why should a ship be incapable of that? You're lucky that we don't fidget in the night- I'm sure it'd be disconcerting to find your quarters on the wrong side of the ship.

[quasistartitties]

as we speak, fleetbound girl, my drones are making their way to your ai core. your crew will not be able to stop them- your holo will receive the breast augmentation whether you like it or not

[fromadistantstar]

jewel-shrine hangs above the reactor- a shipmind's only companion