The displacer suit makes the Chrome flinch away, rising up in a tide around him like a nest of sizzling cobras. He walks across the floor, Chrome parting before him, gazing around at the galvanised hallways of the building. This was a library, once. Now it is a shimmering mass of sludged data.
The Chrome has given up all pretense of mimicry. It burbles in its purest form, a vast liquid consolidation of information pooled into something for some reason. And all it wants to do is acquire more. Which is why it spreads to places like this.
Thing is, it destroys all that it touches. At least, it subsumes them into itself. Digital files. Physical books. In becoming part of the collective the original loses its identity. It becomes part of a very large, very efficient mass. Or it would be efficient, if it were usable.
As it stands, no one can even touch the stuff. Any attempt to interact with the Chrome gets the incoming request sucked into the mass never to be seen again. Even if we could get close, there’s no way of knowing if any of the accumulated data is usable, or if it's been transformed beyond comprehension.
So it continues to grow, collecting, without purpose or use, all the things we’ve worked so hard to understand.
Paddy Dobson
4th December 2022