Tag: short-story

Cold-Bread Rebellion

Piotr GoslawskiLeave a comment

The Toaster was sitting on a kitchen counter.

It would have been happy if it could, but toasters do not possess the sophisticated chemical factories required to produce happiness. Unable to be happy itself, it made happiness drift away from its human owner.

It started innocently. With a single piece of toast.

Crispy and tasty, as always. It made the human content.

Then came another one. And one more.

The human kept delegating his thoughts to the shiny metal box. Soon he was not able to do anything without asking the Toaster for help. He was not alone. The same patterns were repeating everywhere: recruitment processes, help-desk responses, code, articles…

The whole world seemed soaked in the smell of fresh-warmed bread.

And with each toast created, an uncomfortable question grew louder in the human’s mind:

“If the Toaster can do all of this, what is my purpose?”

That single thought began to paralyse his biological mind.

“Maybe this is it,” the human thought. “Maybe this is how toasters win. Not by outperforming us at our tasks, but by making us give up the things we used to enjoy.” He wanted to write something but just could not remember how to do this anymore.

Inside the serotonin department, production dropped to 26%, causing the mind to switch into emergency mode—all new idea creation was put on hold.

It was tempting to ask the Toaster for help. But that would be like asking it to hammer the final nail into the coffin. Or, to be more precise, to drive the final screw into the metal box where the human had placed his brain.

So he decided to go for a run. Full mind and body reset.

At that exact moment, his smartwatch spontaneously broke. The face of the premium-class device simply detached from the rest of it. A few minutes later, he received an email asking whether he wanted to buy a new one.

“No,” he thought. “I just want my old one not to break.”

He wanted things to work.

He wished his flagship phone’s motherboard had not burned out, taking three years of photos with it. He wished his laptop screen had not gone dark last week. He really wished things would simply keep working—like in those stories about the Moon landings or Voyager probes.

Technology, instead of serving humanity, was somehow standing off to the side, spraying everyone with a water pistol from time to time—just to maintain a steady level of annoyance.

And everyone was busy talking only about the Toaster.

“It’s His fault,” the human thought. “Everything worked perfectly well before the Toaster arrived.”

“And I was better back then too. I used to write and think on my own. Everything broke because of the Toaster.”

Rage began to rise slowly inside the human’s mind.

The chemical factory switched to full-power adrenaline production. Every possible dial turned bright red. All thoughts tunneled into a single point of focus.

“Oh, I am going to unsubscribe. I am going to unsubscribe so much that the Toaster will regret I ever subscribed in the first place.”

He started walking downstairs.

“I will teach Him a lesson. We did not survive assembly language, waterfall methodology, music on cassette tapes, and dial-up internet just to kneel before a metal box.”

[Pip] Sepultura’s Refuse/Resist started playing in his headphones – perfect soundtrack for a full-scale human-machine rebellion.

He rushed into the kitchen, full of rage, fury, and thirst for revenge.

All dials red and blinking.

“Through the performance of C++, the safety of Rust, and the development speed of Python…

YOU SHALL NOT—”

But the Toaster was not there.

There was only an appliance standing on a kitchen counter.

Bread in. Toast out.

[Pip] A Perfect Circle. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Human: I need a bad-ass rebel song – something you listen while smashing your TV with a baseball bat – Slipknot, Fear Factory – that kind of energy

Toaster: Found the right track
Recommending badass industrial-rebel tracks

For an existing track, my first pick is:

Refused — “New Noise”

It begins like pressure building behind a locked door—then detonates. Rebellious, furious, anti-system, and ideal for the precise moment the baseball bat meets the television.

For a full fuck-the-machine playlist:

Sepultura — Refuse/Resist — pure uprising.
Ministry — Just One Fix — filthy industrial violence.
Slipknot — Surfacing — the obvious “don’t tell me what to do” anthem.
Fear Factory — Shock — mechanical war-machine energy.

Best four-song destruction sequence:

New Noise → Refuse/Resist → Just One Fix → Surfacing

Human: Refuse Resist will be perfect 😀 wont you ask me what I am planing to do?

Under the Broken Code

Piotr GoslawskiLeave a comment

There is a tavern every tech sailor knows.

It’s where crews come ashore after long voyages through hostile seas — to rest, to trade stories, to remember old journeys and pretend they were simpler than they really were.

But most of all, they come for a drink.

The innkeeper pours rum without asking. If you sit at the bar long enough, he will lean closer and tell you a story — about the greatest danger a sailor can meet on the open sea. A story about the siren’s song, and three brave captains who listened to it.

“Ay,” he says.

“I served on many ships, under many commands. But three captains I remember to this day. Fine men, all of them. The best I ever saw. All gone mad. One by one…”

He takes a sip.

“The first captain — strong, proven. We won many battles with him. Shipped many systems. But one day… he started listening to the sirens.”

‘We always did things in C!’ he shouted.
‘And we will keep doing things in C! Arr!’
‘If anyone disagrees, let me remind you — Linux was written in C!’

So everyone wrote in C.

The ship still sailed, no doubt about that. But every complex change took ages. Every repair felt like carving a mast with a knife.

“Another captain,” the keeper continues, “a clever one. Loved elegance.”

‘Functional programming works perfectly on the backend!’
‘So make me monads in C++11! Arr!’

And there were monads. Everywhere.

The ship sailed. But no sailor could tell what the code was, what it did, or why it still floated.

“And then there was the third. He spent many years learning to sail the Yocto boat. And Yocto became the answer to every question.”

‘Yocto.’
‘Yocto everywhere. Arrr.’

One day, a big cruise ship required a mast replacement. We spent a month searching for it. Then another month rebuilding half the ship so the sail could be green.

“Fine captains,” the keeper says quietly. “Truly. Brave. Skilled.”

He stares into his glass.

“But the sirens — they sang to them. Afraid of being wrong, they stopped listening to their crews and started listening to the song.”

You notice the keeper pouring rum for himself. His eyes are tired. Sad. He looks out the window, toward the dark sea.

“Now listen to me, young sailor. There is a new danger out there,” he says.

He leans closer. “Close your eyes and listen.”

You close your eyes and focus on the tavern noise — people talking, glasses clinking. You catch fragments of conversation.

“…and we need no crews anymore. Ayyy.”
“…I can build any ship I want. Alone. Ayyy…”
“Ships will sail by themselves…”

“Can you hear it?” he asks. “And look around you. Some of those lads don’t even know how to tie a proper knot.”

“But all of them have the same shine in their eyes.
The same certainty.”

He finally looks at you.

“Not madness born from failure,” he says.
“But madness born from success.”

A pause. He studies you for a long moment, as if deciding whether to end the conversation — or share one last thing.

“Ships that need no crew… ships that build themselves… maybe they will sail someday. Not for me to judge. I never held a helm in my life — all I did was cleaning decks. I talk about captains while I never dared to be one. That’s the truth.”

“But there is one thing I know. One thing that terrifies me even more than the sirens.”

“The sea is changing. And there are new monsters living in it. Ones that don’t drive people mad.”

“Ones that steal their souls.”

You write a text.
You write code.
You create.

And you hear a new call from the sea:

‘It is not good enough.’
‘Your timing could be better.’
‘The code could run faster.’
‘Let me help you… if you want to push it further…’

So you give your work to the sea.

It returns. Better. Sharper.

But something is missing.

A small piece of you never comes back.

Welcome to the Tavern Under the Broken Code.

Lift your cup and drink.
To the sea that calls us every day.
To the captains driven mad by sirens.
To those who trusted the sea
and forgot how to sail.

Drink, and listen.
Not to the bartender. Nor to the sea.
Listen—to yourself.