Playing with AI. A Lovecraftian tale

 I asked Google AI 'write a 490 to 510 word Lovecraftian story based on a researcher as Miskatonic University'

The result:

'The parchment did not crack; it groaned. As a junior archivist at

Miskatonic University’s Orne Library, I was accustomed to the musk of decaying history, but the "Cyllenius Fragment" emitted a scent of ozone and stagnant seawater that defied the dry Arkham air. My mentor, Dr. Armitage, had warned me against uncurating the acquisitions from the Innsmouth raid, yet the thirst for forbidden lineage is a draught that once tasted, never satisfies.

By the light of a guttering lamp, I traced the ink. It was not black, but a bruised, iridescent purple that seemed to pulse beneath the surface of the vellum. The script was a frantic hybrid of Latin and glyphs that resembled the rhythmic twitching of a crustacean’s limbs. As I translated, the stone walls of the sub-basement began to lose their solidity. The familiar dampness of the library basement shifted into the crushing pressure of an abyssal trench.

"The stars are not positions," I whispered, my voice sounding hollow, as if echoing through a vast, leaden bell. "They are apertures."

The text spoke of the Great Weaving, a time when the sky would peel back like a cauterised wound to reveal the gelatinous void beyond. I felt a rhythmic thumping—not my heart, but something beneath the floorboards, a heavy, wet percussion that vibrated in my marrow. The shadows in the corner of the room detached themselves from the stonework. They did not move like shadows; they flowed like spilled oil, possessing a hateful, sentient geometry.

I reached for my spectacles, but my hands were slick with a cold, translucent ichor. Panic, sharp and metallic, tasted of copper on my tongue. I looked at the window, expecting the familiar silhouette of the Miskatonic campus, but the glass revealed only a swirling, cyclopean vista of emerald suns and towers built of calcified bone.

A sound began then—a piping, dissonant flute melody that bypassed the ears and vibrated directly against the brain stem. It was the idiot music of the vacuum, the soundtrack to the mindless churning at the centre of infinity. I realised then that the Fragment wasn't a record of the past; it was a beacon. My reading had provided the final, psychic resonance required to bridge the threshold.

"Ia! Ia!" The words bubbled up unbidden from my throat, no longer my own. My skin felt tight, itching with the phantom sensation of scales.

I looked down at the desk. The ink from the parchment was crawling onto my sleeves, etching the same rhythmic glyphs into my very flesh. I tried to scream, but my jaw unhinged with a wet, sickening pop, stretching to accommodate a language no human throat was ever meant to shape. As the lamp finally flickered out, I wasn't in the dark. I saw everything—the crawling chaos, the blind dreamer, and the terrible, shimmering truth that humanity was but a brief, accidental flicker in a universe of ancient, hungry gods.'

It then said 'Would you like to explore another archival discovery from the Miskatonic vaults, or perhaps focus on the biological transformation of the researcher?'

Now, a lot of people hate AI and go on about how it can kill creativity and art and all that. Personally, I'm the sort that can (and have) build a computer or upgrade a laptop and have been around computers since abot 1973-4. So I'm quite happy with AI bearing in mind how careful you have to be when asking AI to do something - I use it a lot on the likes of Quora but make sure I'm using it to put things I already know in order - AI can make some ridiculous mistakes - I have been known to ask it to correct a statement several times. Having said that I can think of a lot of uses for AI in writing scenarios, etc - might look into this further.

Incidentally, that 'Cyllenius Fragment'...

 'Based on the provided search results, there is no single, widely recognized "Cyllenius Fragment" in classical literature. However, the term "Cyllenius" relates to Hermes (derived from Mount Cyllene). 

Search results show potential connections:

Archaeological Finding: A fragment bearing the legend "[th]" and referring to a wooden phallus of Hermes Cyllenius is mentioned in a Cambridge University Press archaeology article.

• Literary/Author Reference: "Cyllenius" appears as a name in lists of authors or editors, sometimes associated with Bernardo Cyllenio (Bernardinus Cyllenius).
• Poetic Reference: The Travels of Cyllenius. a Poem. in Sixty-Six Cantos is listed as a non-fiction work from 1796. 

Note: The results also mention "Cyllenius" in contexts of 700-600 BC (Loeb Classical Library) and within the works of John Dryden.'

So the AI engine made it up...