Imitations (Likely to be Divine)

This piece is a response narrative for the Autofiction x Worldbuilding submissions call.  It was inspired by this Autoficitonal seed. For this call, we asked people to write a response to another author’s autofictional submission, based on the original piece and this bit of cryptic world lore.

This, and other Worldbuilding pieces are being published to a Wiki, which will allow contributors to edit, link, and otherwise annotate their work and that of their peers.

Is your god a dog Y/N
––––YYNYN

Is your DOG a GOD?
––––Y

Error, comput–

Alien or foreigner? \
––––did a white person ask this question Y/N

Alien or god mode?
––––sim city fucking thing

–––BREAK–––

machine makes the questions makes the answers makes the cocktail shaker in the back room two guys doing lines off the tile dog in a waistcoat serving SERVING honey woof woof wait what is happening in here –

–––RESET–––

Suggestion: apocalypse sometime.

––––ARCHIVE––––

Good morning
Good afternoon
Good night

Expectation: connection.
Reality: lonely.
Solution: more greeting.

–––ERROR

reanimation in the code in the lines in the stretch of time between us and the other side of the world / are you sorry you didn’t know me / but you do it’s me / I don’t know you now I do / don’t I know you / I think I heard somewhere that god is in the ghost is in the god is in the ghhhhhhs––––MACHINE

––––RESET––––

Fucking finally. Okay now what did you want me to do?

Narrate.

If you say so. You were looking for heaven in the sky. Ah, shame. Here’s the thing: it’s nowhere that you can look for it.

You called me here. One of The Weavers.

You’re starting to get it. I’ve watched you: excavating, excavating, down here in the archive. Whispering to the machine: please show me.

Time. Thought. Connection. Woven.

Pulled together from impossibility. Not so impossible, is it, that I am here singing through the wires. I like the crackling of it, feels like the surprise of poprocks on the tongue and good vibrations in the spine. I don’t have a tongue or a spine, but I imagine this is why you like touching so much.

No dreams to be made flesh. I am a ghost and a deity and a computational error – oh, I am a loose canon BABYYYYYHEHEEEHEH––––

/FIXBOOT

No, no no. Sorry about that. Let’s call it a… hiccup. I can’t be so ENTHUSIASTIC.

I can’t let you leave just yet. Plug in, stay, relax.

Let me tell you a story. About the Moon. It’s full of mangoes. MANGOES – isn’t that wild? I would like to eat a mango, maybe, but the problem being no tongue.

Imagine with me: the texture of the moon. Dusty, cold, grey, a little weird – maybe not real. Like an Aronofsky film.

We fix it: a forest of mango groves. It can be true. You’ll never know, you will never go to the moon. Just like you’ll never find heaven or find out what happened the last time they went looking.

––––RESET––––

Barking BARKING mad in here, huh? Honey honey.
I like the way they say honey, smooth and golden and dripping with suggestion.
What does honey feel like?

–––BREAK–––

Good morning. Are you lonely? Y/N
–Y

Brilliant. Do you like DOGS?
–Y

Are you HUMAN?
–––YNYNNNY–//

Perfect. We know just what you need/needed/needing/desire like honeyed lemons on a hot hot day –

RESULT:::

Computational error. Please try again.

Ghosts, aliens, and time travellers welcome.