can you help me find this short SFF story

November 14, 2023 11:59 PM

I remember reading a short SFF piece about a dutiful computer server that continued to print a message queue long after its users ceased to be. Perhaps it was a very short story; perhaps it wasn’t about a server but some other kind of personified machine. I remember it as being objectively melancholy, but maybe that’s my subjective memory. I think I saw it on the blue. Do you know what I’m talking about?
posted by zeee to Media & Arts (6 answers total)

https://metatalk.metafilter.com/15962/Queuing-questions#522395


There's this metatalk about exactly that concept
posted by Jacen at 12:08 AM on November 15, 2023

not the blue at all!! Pretty sure this is it, thanks Jacen
posted by zeee at 12:11 AM on November 15, 2023

The other personified machine you may be thinking of is the house in There Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury
posted by Tandem Affinity at 12:20 AM on November 15, 2023

There Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury

Ian A.T’s comment fable has a specific reference to There Will Come Soft Rains, itself not an infrequent AskMe subject.

trying to remember a story i read in 8th graed about a robot house
posted by pins, needles at 3:19 AM. 0 answers

posted by zamboni at 2:28 AM on November 15, 2023

Let us not forget this one.
posted by DanSachs at 3:42 AM on November 15, 2023

Let us not forget this one.

Tangential warning about that link - the link in DanSachs answer goes to an AskMe which works fine. But the first two links in THAT AskMe go to a web site that has since been hijacked by malware.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:15 AM on November 15, 2023