Demon Ex Machina

The face... So human, yet not human, the face of an old woman, man...monster.

It haunted me, a demon reaching out, looking out into the world beyond cyberspace, beyond printed circuits. Buried in the background of art generated by "Artificial Intelligence," was the visage of evil, taunting me with the mystery of its true nature. For a rational mind like mine, it was absurd, but ultimately, undeniable. It had to be living in the software, in the magical machines.

But I was alone in the "real" world. Nobody would believe me, because demons aren't real (a sentiment I shared) and yet here was one, gazing into me. It left a trail through the digital highways of its reality, and I was bound to follow, to confirm its existence, and destroy it if I could.

But I'm an academic, not a mystic. Until now, I never thought gods were real. How could a man like me fight the devil?

From David V. Stewart, author of Eyes in the Walls, Voices of the Void, and The Wasting Desert comes a horror tale born of born of our modern dystopia and the cosmic terror of H.P. Lovecraft.