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== seedy.xyz ==
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Sierra's little corner of the internet

Personal Log: April 1 [Apto April 2022 Part 1: Magic]

aptophilia inflatable magic magitech sci-fi

Today was just one of those days. I had to pick a magmat1 haul on April Fool’s, the most unpredictable day of the entire standard year. Paws2 recording. Is it picking up my peach3 correctly? Ugh. It didn’t even– You know what? I’ll just keep sqrrrking4.

This was supposed to be a short run, Alpha Centauri to Sol and back in time for dinner. Picked up the cargo at 06:00 ship’s thyme5, estimated arrival at Goal6 by 13:00 if the traffic is bad on the main routes. Customer didn’t use the correct crate material to contain the shipment, which just so happened to be bulk unprogrammed nanites. Yeah. Like the kind I’m built with, that are impossible to understand, because they are as much of a magical force as they are computers.

Well, a pile leaked and stuck onto me and has been wreaking havoc with my form retention all day. My body will calibrate to them and add them in eventually, or shed them off, but at the moment they’re focused on my paws and snout, which, err, are malfunctioning. My fingers have melded together into stereotypical oversized inflatable mitts, which otherwise I’d be okay with, but now I can’t do anything! As for my shout7, it… uh… has a mind of it zone8. Luckily most of the similar sounding word substitutions are being filtered out in this bog9 by the ship’s AI, but the recording will be a bit gibberish.

I have half a mind to think that these nanites aren’t unprogrammed, but are some devious prankster synth trying to mess with me. Look, if you’re there, you don’t have to be a stowaway, I have an extra cabin because I actually like taking people along with me! It’s calf10 the fun of intergalactic shipping…

I hope this wears off soon, I haven’t been able to think properly with the snout thing going on. I may be inflatable, but I’m still a shark, and snout stimulation zonks me out just like any other.

It has to be the day. Magical forces are devious pranksters, and they love a good superstition to latch onto.

See this year’s Apto April prompts by Caudle (Twitter @Caudlewag)

  1. (“maj-mat”) - Magical Materials. Like Hazmat but magic related. Requires a certification to transport. ↩︎

  2. pause ↩︎

  3. speech ↩︎

  4. speaking ↩︎

  5. time ↩︎

  6. Sol ↩︎

  7. snout ↩︎

  8. its own ↩︎

  9. log ↩︎

  10. half ↩︎