MOTHER did the best it could, but you can't expect a redirected killing machine to be perfect at raising children, especially since there was only a rough prototype for the program. They loaded her with the prototype, they tossed in all the (often contradictory) child-rearing texts they could find, and they hoped for the best. It was the best option they had. MOTHER had all her drones to help with the physical duties, after all. Uninjured adult humans were scarce, and there were only so many foster parents available. At a certain point, having forty children tended by one adult caregiver is even worse than automating the process. And so they put humanity's future into the cold robotic arms of the thing that had nearly driven us to extinction. Oh, not the intelligence. They analyzed MOTHER as best they could, and they decided that yes, she was just one of the generals, and at that, she was one that had always seen priorities of war over the need to kill humans. She did try. She would never give in until her objective was reached, and her objective was to restore humanity. She did pick up a kind of screwy definition of humanity, some people have argued, trying to produce the best examples of humanity. She wrapped her cold metal limbs in sheepskins and dedicated one of her drones to constantly filling hot water bottles to slip underneath, so that she could give us the illusion of warmth and softness. I know it worked for the youngest babies.


Inspiration: "Mutter" - Rammstein
Story Potential: High.
Notes: Insanely high casualties, post-traumatic shock, tons of orphans--yeah, this could work.

We put the animate in the inanimate! She eyed the booth suspiciously. "What are you doing at a housewares convention?" she asked. "Isn't that the slogan of those people who put fishbowls into teddy bears? I got my nephew one of those--his mother never forgave me. She calls it Swamp Teddy now, but it's his favorite thing. She told me to get him an ant farm next year, and she's praying that attracts his attention." The representative hemmed and hawed, "Well, yes, the animate there did take more maintenance than perhaps its target audience was prepared for--"


Inspiration: http://thehairpin.com/2012/04/the-toy-fair
Story Potential: Medium.
Notes: Eh. Setting. Mildly entertaining bit, but not a story itself.

The techno-anarchist stopped in the shadows and twiddled his mustaches, the wire filaments wound into them gleaming even in the darkness. Really, if he was going to be that obvious, it was practically not worth her time. The house system would spot him in another ten steps and take care of matters in a way that would leave the garden well-fertilized for winter. She sighed. He might not be worth the trouble, since he seemed to be entirely incompetent, but he was still human, and it went against her core to let a human be wiped out by an unthinking machine, even if he was the kind of human that would probably claim the machines were the way of the future and it was humans' responsibility to get out of their way--

Inspiration: "techno-anarchist" from comment on previous entry.
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: Although she likes thinking machines just fine. She'd better, since she might be one.

The last one of her kind, she thought to herself as she edged along the precipice. She carried the death of her race in her and so she could not die. She could lose parts of her, even lose the life of this body, but the last one of her race would be reborn and come to finish what she'd started. And the last one reborn would also be the last one of her kind. So it would be, and so it would continue, until the mission was done and the future was secured. Then she might seek a way to be other than the last one of her kind, or so the records said. She tried to think about the idea of not being the One Alone, and her mind could not work its way around the edges of the idea. If she was not the One Alone, what would she be? Such thoughts were foolish fancies that she had been warned against by the --

Inspiration: "The Last Mohican"
Story Potential: Medium? Medium-high? High?
Notes: Trying to think what scenario could be so dire that the whole species couldn't be exposed to it, yet one (exceptional) individual could overcome it and make things safe for the others. Maybe that's why this is high potential--my mind is pulling at the edges of this idea to try and figure it out.