Previously: “The Black Quill.”
This week, a bit of a longread: “The Mechanical Cassandra,” a creepypasta that wraps up the unnervingness of the uncanny valley with the horrors of prophecy, plus a dash of body horror for flavor. Who doesn’t love a good automaton story?
“The Mechanical Cassandra” dates back to 2020. I believe its original publication may have been over at Reddit; it’s been more accessibly archived at the Creepypasta Wiki, however, where it arrived at around the same time (its Wiki publication date is in late August of 2020). With shades of the ballet Coppelia, the E.T.A. Hoffman story “The Sandman” on which the ballet was based, the Twilight Zone episode “Nick Of Time,” and, of course, the real-life history of the Mechanical Turk (which wasn’t really an automaton at all, but, well…), this one has a long lineage — and it’s just as horrifying as its predecessors, making it a worthy addition to the pantheon.
[Like what you read? Check out Dangerous Games To Play In The Dark, available from Chronicle Books now!]
This is perhaps a good one to keep in mind at our current moment in time. Sure, we’re a little beyond automata now — but the principle is the same. And so is the danger.
Really, we just need to stop trying to create things in our own image. Playing god never ends well.
Find an excerpt below, and read the full story at the Creepypasta Wiki.
***
…“The Mechanical Cassandra.”
That had been the title of the paper but it provided little in the way of illumination. My lack of comprehension must have been clear and he nodded, giving a little shrug.
“You have no idea what it is,” he said.
“Are you going to tell me what it is?” I asked and as the words left my mouth I could hear that I’d made more of my irritation evident than I wanted to. It would be obvious to anyone who heard how I said the words just how pissed off I was becoming with the way this man seemed to almost revel in how little I knew about something he was apparently well educated in. But if it bothered him, he didn’t show it. In fact, he barely seemed to register anything other than the flat nature of the words.
“A curiosity. A myth. An urban legend… a ghost story. At least that’s what most people think. Look… I have to meet with someone in a little while but if you’re interested, I’d be happy to discuss this more. And… I’d like to offer you something for going to all this trouble. You really have helped me out.”
Keep reading…
***
Follow The Ghost In My Machine on Bluesky @GhostMachine13.bsky.social, Twitter @GhostMachine13, and Facebook @TheGhostInMyMachine. And for more games, don’t forget to check out Dangerous Games To Play In The Dark, available now from Chronicle Books!
[Photo via Rama/Wikimedia Commons, available under a CC BY-SA 2.0 FR Creative Commons license.]
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