Franz Kafka had a great influence on writing and literature in the 20th century. Even today, strange and/or creepy stories are called Kafkaesque. In his novella "Die Verwandlung" (usually translated into English as "Metamorphosis") a man slowly turns into a cockroach.
In my version of Metamorphosis, I go one up on Kafka. Not only does a woman totally change, her entire world changes around her. More than that, she becomes something much, much more interesting than a cockroach.
The story is told in the form of "Autolog" entries. In the future, Autolog entries have replaced blogging, tweeting, and other forms of posting as a person's thoughts are automatically recorded for all to see.
I don't really like this story, but it is a writer's equivalent of an "ear worm" that keeps playing in my head. The only way to get rid of an "ear worm" is to sing the stupid song. The only way to get rid of a "writer's worm" is to finish the story and post it... so I did.
In one of my English courses in college most of the class became almost orgasmic about "Metamorphosis". I didn't like it. The professor asked each of us to say why we thought Kafka wrote it. I was one of the last to answer and I said, "He needed the money."
According to the professor, I was right. Kafka always said that he hated "Metamorphosis" but wouldn't say why. He was asked in a newspaper interview shortly before his death in 1924 if he had ever written anything just for the money. His answer, "Die Verwandlung." Many think that it is his greatest work.
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WARNING! All of my writing is intended for adults over the age of 18 ONLY. Stories may contain strong or even extreme sexual content. All people and events depicted are fictional and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Actions, situations, and responses are fictional ONLY and should not be attempted in real life.
If you are under the age or 18 or do not understand the difference between fantasy and reality or if you reside in any state, province, nation, or tribal territory that prohibits the reading of acts depicted in these stories, please stop reading immediately and move to somewhere that exists in the twenty-first century.
Archiving and reposting of this story is permitted, but only if acknowledgment of copyright and statement of limitation of use is included with the article. This story is copyright (c) 2015 by The Technician.
Individual readers may archive and/or print single copies of this story for personal, non-commercial use. Production of multiple copies of this story on paper, disk, or other fixed format is expressly forbidden.
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Judith Conroy Autolog Entry 3619-107-09-27
I did it! I smuggled AIM out of the facility. No one is supposed to be able to get their hands on Artificial Intelligence Metal, but I did it! I have been planning this for a long, long time. And my plan worked!!
My first plan was going to be misdirecting an emergency repair kit to a fictitious damaged space craft to replace one used on a mission. It was a good plan, but there are too many cross-checks meant to guarantee that every gram of AIM is accounted for. Misdirecting a kit would have been no problem. I send out replacement kits all the time, and as long as a shipment receipt was included to close the case file, no one would notice. But I knew that any kit issued is automatically cross-referenced against damage reports and vice versa. I would have also had to create a false battle or accidental damage report in the system. That would have involved getting into military planning records that I can't access with my current clearances.
Besides, there aren't that many battles or accidents. I would be able to get by with something like that only once, and one kit wouldn't have enough Artificial Intelligence Metal for what I wanted to do. There isn't all that much AIM in a repair kit because you don't need a lot of AIM to repair a damaged spacecraft, regardless of how big it is or how badly it is damaged.
That's the beauty of AIM. Once you put it in place and activate it, AIM merges itself with the metals already present in the craft and it changes the characteristics of that metal. For a short while, almost all metal in the whole ship can become quasi-sentient and self-repairing. So, all you really need is a little bit to start the process.
I need more because I am not going to use AIM on a space craft. I am going to use it on a human body- eventually. For now, I need to run a series of tests on lower life forms to prove that AIM can be used to repair or modify a living organism. Once I prove my theories, I can get investors and then legally obtain and market AIM for medical uses. A short while after that I will be rich beyond even my wildest dreams.
But first I have to prove that AIM will work for medical purposes, and the tests needed to prove that will take at least three times more AIM than is in just one kit. What I smuggled out of the facility today was the equivalent of four kits. I would never have been able to misdirect four kits.
Actually, getting the AIM out of the facility once I had acquired it was the easiest part. AIM isn't explosive or poisonous, it won't trigger the automatic vapor sensors. The scanners we have to pass through each day can't penetrate the thick metal of our security briefcases, so we have to open them each morning and evening for visual inspection by the guards. The guards are so used to quickly shuffling through layers and layers of papers checking for contraband, that they didn't notice that the inside of my briefcase, itself, was slightly brighter than usual. That's because taped to the inside was a thin slab of AIM protected by an unmarked transport stability pack.
Transport stability packs are normally used to safely contain bulk blocks of AIM before they are broken up into the 4.5 gram nuggets used in the repair kits. The stability packs also help prevent the AIM from being accidentally activated. Proper activation is essential to AIM. The amount needed to "seed" a repair is only 4 grams, but to allow for the possibility that a portion of the nugget might not properly activate, all repair kits are stocked with
exactly
4.5 grams of AIM.
The exactness of that measurement is what gave me the opening I needed to accumulate my needed amount of AIM. Getting it was tedious, but very easy. We have to sign out any AIM from Central Stores when we do experiments or tests in the lab. It is signed back in again when we return it to Central Stores. I took advantage of the fact that the scales at Central Stores measure to one one-hundredth of a gram, but the property ticket that it prints rounds to the nearest tenth.
We have been dividing and certifying AIM nuggets for repair kits for the past three months. Each time I started on a new kit, I would go to Central Stores and carve off a nugget that was exactly 4.54 grams. With an electronic scalpel, that isn't as hard to do as it sounds. The property ticket would read 4.5 grams. When I got it down to my lab, I would carefully shave .09 grams off the nugget before I began my tests. The nugget, which now weighed 4.45 grams would be within spec for the repair kits, and the property ticket when I turned it back in would read 4.5 grams.