“Flower”, the screen of the sleek notebook lit up with the answer. Ray, with a degree of unrestrained exuberance coursing through his veins, typed, “Specific response required.” Within seconds, the screen glowed yet again. “Sunflower.” Hardly able to contain his excitement, Ray dragged back his chair, almost knocking it over in the process and bounded out of the room to call the University.

The research grant forked out, after being initially mired in skepticism and apprehension was now worth every penny. Reinforced learning, or Q-learning or deep learning (the nomenclature doesn’t matter) had reached its apogee. The machine could now, taking as its input, a series of disparate ‘test images’ ‘spit’ out as output the exact nature and content of the images.

Melanie, a while later ambled into the study. There was just a low hum, a murmur coming from the open laptop. A series of words were making a random pattern of lattice work against a dull and drab background:

“Knife”, “Stab”, “Ray”; “Kill”; ‘Suicide”; Robots”; “WIN”

Melanie did not comprehend this seemingly mad babble. If she had, she would have called Ray and informed him that these words were never a part of the set of ‘test images!’

(Word Count: 200)

Written as part of Sunday Photo Fiction. Write a story of around 200 words based on the photo prompt given (above). Hosted by Donna McNicol . For more details visit HERE

To read more of the stories based on this week’s prompt, click HERE