Spindlewheel Stories

The ship hurtled away from the molten light, leaving me terrified and alone as my chassis cooled and contracted down into a single state for the first time in decades. my optics took their time adjusting to the relative dark of space, scraping together meager reflections of color instead of the torrential starlight I’d become accustomed to. For the first time in decades, I shivered. Coordinates locked, engine humming, I allowed myself one last look at the star. There it was. Under the solar flares and pressing up beneath the roiling surface, the machine. its coiling body candled, silhouetted by starlight, too big to be real, a bad joke, but twitching like an embryo, stretching the membrane. Testing the shell for weak points. I-- we-- should have left years ago. We are long past the point of no return. It’s not a question of if: it’s when. I pray for the gilded lily that I return in time. [Content Warning: robot cannibalism, death threats, zealotry] The track "Golden Threads in Mist" is by Michael B