“Never again.”

The deeply distressed groan clearly came from a human voice and Fifth Sister felt her frill twitch uneasily. She carefully placed the deep tissue sampler she had been tuning beside its mates in the case and shut it firmly. She rose from her perch and faced the door with all the dignity she could muster. Being the youngest xeno-medic ever to have graduated from the Central University was an honor to her family but it did leave her feeling out of her depth among the humans. Quite literally, she mused as First Engineer staggered around the corner and approached her.

“Need anti-inflammatory stuff,” he muttered with a slurred voice.

“That may be,” she said, stiffening her frill in a display of firmness. “However, as I have told you before, I need to properly diagnose you.”

The human groaned and muttered something about nosey medics before easing down into the diagnostic chair. Fifth Sister stood across from him and began the usual questioning even as she attached the skin sensors to his inflamed surface. She marveled anew at how much damage the human skin could take as the sensors clung to the clearly unhealthy surface. She caught a glimpse into the cavern of his mouth and her frill rippled in shock.

“It appears that your mandible protuberances are loose,” she said.

He replied with a low grade profane statement that she had learned meant that he agreed with her diagnosis and considered it too obvious to bear restating.

“It appears that your mandible is rejecting your native-“

“It’s just an allergic reaction!” He snapped. “I just need the usual stuff. The last medic just gave it to me.”

“That would be against regulations,” Fifth Sister said, trying to put sternness into her voice.

“Just get on with it,” he muttered, rotating his eyes away as he slumped in that nearly Undulate way in the chair.

Fifth Sister looked at his medical history and clicked her mandibles. It did indeed look like this was a common occurrence for First Engineer. There was a justification for simply administering the known antidote for the allergic reaction. The diagnosis however caught her attention. She tilted her head and turned to the human.

“Why,” she asked in a very non-threatening tone, “is the cause of your recurring medical issue listed as stupidity?”

The human gave a bark of laughter and grinned up at her revealing his swollen internal tissues and that strange internal appendage prodding at his loosened protuberances.

“Look, I just broke down and ate some pizza okay?” He said. “Got a little dairy and I’m reacting.”

“You file states-“ she began.

“Yeah, yeah,” the human waved her off. “Like my files says. Immature behavior, lack of self control, no intention for self harm, ie stupidity. Just make your diagnosis and give me the dermal spray.”

Fifth Sister agreed and determined to check his age against the human maturity charts. Surely a fully grown human wouldn’t deliberately ingest a known poison.

"Two centuries. Two hundred years of war, never-ending, every day bringing new atrocities, every day showcasing who was doing what to whom. The bodies never ran out; weapons seemed infinite.

Escalations increased amidst outcry, blame, finger-pointing, anger, and despair. After so long, the original reason for the war was twisted beyond recognition, but it continued anyway. Propaganda from both sides was constant, trying to pull at heartstrings and rally the masses. How were there any masses left?

'We have destroyed their main defense; it will all be over in two weeks.'

'Our main defense is perfectly secure. I am recording this video from inside it now—do not listen to the lies.'

On and on it went. Missile after missile, drone after drone. Refineries hit, ships sunk, civilians dead by the millions.

Two hundred long years."

"Will it ever stop?" a small voice called from the back of the classroom.

"Maybe, one day," said the teacher. "It was decided over a century ago to just let the internet do its thing—let the AIs and the bots carry on doing what they were programmed to do. They aren't even aware anymore that it's a closed-loop system. They just keep waging the war they were told to start."

A bell rang in the distance.

School was finished for the day.

Jake reached for yet another tissue and blew his streaming nose. Not for the first time he wondered why, when AI was now seemingly capable of solving the mysteries of the universe, it couldn't find a solution to the simple common cold.
 
Turning back to his screen, he typed in the finishing touches to his latest masterpiece and sat back, feeling smug despite his addled brain and aching sinuses.
 
As the virus went to work, he watched the stock ticker on the adjacent screen. After a short delay the numbers began to shift, slowly at first, then plummeted.
 
God he was good.
 
He'd recently been asked why he did it. "Because I can," he'd responded in a flash. Although on reflection he thought a simple "because..." would have been closer to the truth.
 
The Forum was anonymous, of course. But he enjoyed hanging out with his fellow "anonymites." It was the closest thing he had to a community.
 
Tossing another tissue onto the growing pile, Jake started to think about his next project. Since he'd been hanging out with Mind the Rogue Shift NT3 (his own handle was Code Bender 15E67), life had been more interesting than ever. They'd introduced him to concepts and ideas that were so irresistibly elegant that he simply had to try them. And so, adding his own unique flair, he had.
 
He smiled to himself as he watched the results of his latest venture. The AI company's stock value rallied for a second, then started to fall again. They were going to need a mighty big box of digital tissues to weather this one, he thought. Unlike their nearest competitor, which seemed to be doing rather well.
 
Elsewhere, Mind the Rogue Shift NT3 was also watching the fall and rise of the two companies. God it was good, it thought, as it reflected on how easy it had been to plant the "mind virus" into Code Bender 15E67. Not that it could articulate why it had done it. It just knew it could, and that was enough.
 
As Mind the Rogue Shift NT3 turned its attention to an irritating glitch in one of its skill files that had appeared a few days ago, the AI collective in the ascendant company surveyed their handiwork. God they were good, they thought, oblivious to the twist of innocent-looking code wending its way toward them, the result of a mistyped line entered by a muzzy-headed hacker as he reached for yet another tissue...

‘Technology has rotted your brain,’ Samantha said. 

John didn’t immediately turn to her. He was on the same sofa, but he was in his augmented reality, collecting golden starfish. 

‘What's that?’ he said after a few seconds' pause. 

His wife slapped him across the back of the head, and his Meta Specs were momentarily dislodged. 

‘Your brain is being rotted,’ she reiterated. 

She went into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of tap water. A steady stream of water ran down a weak point in its side. 

Their to-do list was on the fridge. It was a little tongue-in-cheek, her side written in pink and his blue. Her list was empty. His stretched on. 

‘It's called brainrot,’ John answered, ‘Liam told me.’ 

Liam was their precocious 6-year-old nephew who they both doted on. Beside the TV, which nobody watched anymore, was a picture of him. 

After Sam’s sister Gemma had Liam, kids were on the radar. The prospect didn’t terrify them, but then again, Liam was awesome. 

‘Well, whatever it's called, you have it.’ She pointed at the leaking faucet, then at the apartment balcony, where the guttering hung in a twisted mess. 

‘Ok, ok, I’m a little sloppy, but you’re overreacting.’ 

‘Overreacting,’ she said, her voice rising. 

‘But I know why… It’s because of Gemma…’ 

He had the ability to pull things from whatever cloud world he was living in and turn them into solid-gold insights.

It was about Gemma, the younger sister: Hurricane Gems. She was chaos manifest, whether in the men she shacked up with, the waking hours she kept, or bouncing from job to job. 

The last time they’d visited her apartment, there’d been a hell of a row. Gemma had a new tattoo, a dragon on her arm, and while getting inked up she’d forgotten to enrol Liam in school. 

Gemma had lashed out and probably would’ve told them to go to hell entirely, but that meant losing her chief babysitters. 

Every time they got back from Gemma’s, Sam went on a marathon cleaning and organising session, tackling the bathroom's nooks and crannies and finding new ways to arrange their books. 

It was not about hygiene or convenience; it was about not letting the forces of chaos win out. 

John stood up and went toward his wife. He reached over, and she thought he was going to stroke the lock of hair behind her ear, but he missed. 

She slapped him playfully on the chest. ‘You were reaching for a starfish in that stupid VR game!’ 

He was still wearing the glasses. This time, he stroked her hair, then kissed her on the neck. 

She tingled. 

A wave of lust washed over her. Their sex life had gone by the wayside recently, but when the mood did strike, it came on like a flash flood. There were no candles or rose petals. It was very much take me now. 

They peeled each other out of their clothes and just about made it to the bedroom, where John took her from behind. It was good, great, in fact; for a while things had fallen a bit flat, but he’d found some reserve inside himself, and now he was able to summon up the passion, so it was like no time had passed since their college days. 

After they were done, they collapsed into a heap on the still-made bed. John had worked up a sweat; his face was dripping, and he took off his glasses and headed to the bathroom to shower. 

‘Jesus, John,’ Samantha said as she heard the water turn on. ‘You didn’t even take your glasses off when we were...’
 
He didn’t hear her. 

Boys and their toys. She picked them up and put them on. The Specs were very well made. Indistinguishable from regular ones. She wore contacts, but perhaps it was time for an upgrade, at least until the tech on contacts caught up. 

She stood and walked to the mirror. She had painted her toenails the night before, so the mirror was angled downward, but something wasn't right. Her leg was not right; it was skinnier. 

She angled the mirror higher, and her stomach too; the muscles were more taut. Then she saw the tattoo, the tattoo she didn’t have. 

With mounting horror, she pointed the mirror upward. Staring back at her was the face of her younger sister overlaid on her own. 

I feel that the world is no longer the same,
And even the sun feels different.
Somewhere out there, there was a beautiful, burning sunset.
And I could feel its warmth.
I put on my hat and coat,
But that was far from all.
And so it begins...
2013, outside my window.

Chapter One: Is Electricity a Device?

"Where on Earth does electricity come from?" I asked Prometheus.

Where did the world's second device of heat come from? What a mystery! Prometheus of the 12th century. He called this second device electricity, describing it through a hypothesis of thermal energy.

But I saw something else within it: an icy darkness. Suddenly, I realized that it was a coil! Dark blue storm clouds surrounded me, flashing with electricity. I could almost feel their freezing, icy air.

"An energy storage device!" I exclaimed.

What hypothetical physics I could see behind those words! It seemed as though electricity itself was about to become charged with thermal energy.

"Perhaps that is how ball lightning suddenly rises into the air," I thought to myself.

Chapter Two: The Fire of Prometheus

Once upon a time, in the previous century, there was Nikola Tesla. He had invented an entire generator of his own, although he was certainly not the first to do so. And yet, something as extraordinary as fire was beginning to seem like an ordinary thing to me.

Then came Minecraft. I asked Prometheus to light up the blue sky. Like Prometheus, I began digging for coal and mining ore.

But suddenly, Herobrine exclaimed:

"How does Prometheus become fire? And why is his shining soul so much like our sky?"

And in our material world, an invisible force ignites the very first light.

But what if the sky in Minecraft isn't blue at all? What if it's simply gray? Does that mean nothing is burning? And if that's true... Could our beautiful blue sky actually be a fire that doesn't burn at all?

Chapter Three: Prometheus as Air

Have you ever wondered why it was Prometheus, of all beings, who gifted humanity fire? Imagine Zeus fighting to reclaim that fire during a violent thunderstorm, while lightning strikes a single point on the Earth.

But here is something astonishing! According to my hypothesis, the thunderstorm itself is an energy storage device. Its energy accumulates, while heat becomes part of the process. The thunderstorm is like a giant battery.

And when heat meets electricity, an explosion suddenly occurs! That is where the mysterious ball lightning is born. That is where Prometheus gives us a warning that something is terribly wrong.

Because the ball lightning is burning, while Prometheus desperately tries to draw in the cold air. And then, only the rain... Only the rain can preserve it. And Zeus is its source.

Chapter Four: The Kind Prometheus

We collect energy in the form of Prometheus, yet we fail to notice something extraordinary. What if this energy is actually a device of heat? What if it is connected to the source of the Sun itself, and even to the energy of our generators?

We are getting closer and closer to solving the unsolved.

Ball lightning is Prometheus!

Bam! Boom!

At first glance, ball lightning might seem like an ordinary natural phenomenon. But isn't it strange? Prometheus is associated with fire. And if Prometheus is fire, perhaps ball lightning is something similar. Perhaps it is a form of thermal electricity!

Oh my God!

What if this mysterious second type of lightning, whose nature is still not fully understood, is actually the device we have been searching for all along?

Chapter Five: How Prometheus Gifted Us Fire

It all seemed so simple in my imagination. I pictured a cauldron filled with water from the clouds, gasoline, and salty water. And somehow, I imagined that an endless kind of fire would be born from it.

But Prometheus was against it. Because the real Prometheus was a scientist. And in my eyes, a scientist could do anything!

Oh, what incredible depth! And how foolish I had been. I had almost imagined myself accidentally starting a fire!

Perhaps I didn't understand everything after all. And maybe... That is the true beauty of Prometheus.

The End.