It sat among the ravaged dishes clustered atop her dinner table—pumpkin, like the one she had in the oven. Excess heat had fissured its filling and charred the crests of graham cracker crust. While overcooked, a piquant but sweet aroma wafted from its weepy surface. Had it been there …

  The wind whipped across the wide city street, carrying bits of dirty snow in its wake. In the early-morning grey, the huddled forms of New Yorkers were already beginning to move – masked workers on their way home from the night shift, parents and their kids venturing out for …

  There are first and foremost 2 facts that the reader must be made aware of. 1 – Sylvia was the first conscious computer life form on planet Earth. 2 – Sylvia was a state-of-the-art toaster whose bread grilling was powered by a cutting-edge machine learning algorithm. I can assure …