In Competition No. 3310, you were invited to submit a horror story on the theme of artificial intelligence.

None of your entries, creditable though they were, matched the horror of Harlan Ellison’s gruesome short story from 1967, ‘I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream’, which was at the back of my mind when I set this challenge. A sadistic supercomputer AM – Allied Mastercomputer – has wiped out all humanity except five unfortunate survivors, whom it can keep alive and take pleasure in torturing in perpetuity: ‘We were his belly slaves. We were all he had to do with his forever time…’.

I queried Russell Chamberlain’s use of ‘light years’ as a measure of time rather than distance with a more scientifically literate friend, but gave it the green light. Max Ross, Mark Ambrose and Joe Houlihan earn commendations. The winners take £30 each.

‘How d’you write a horror story?’ asked Martha. ‘Gore and guts, or just something that leaves you feeling uneasy?’

‘Both, I should say. Nasty, but worrying, too.’

‘And would you write me a horror story, Gemma?’

‘I’ll think about it. Mmmm. Set on a bright summer’s day, like today, no howling storms, no tsunamis.’

‘Lull me into a false sense of calm. Very good.’

‘Okay,’ she said, and rammed a jagged, poisonous icicle into Martha’s left leg, with such force that it went right through it, causing such pain that Martha was unable even to cry out. Some sticky liquid drivelled from Martha’s mouth, and her eyes bulged as if she were a toad.

‘Okay, that’s a horror story,’ whispered Gemma, ‘and that’s my revenge for how you steal from me, and regurgitate, regurgitate, regurgitate: you sick chatbot.’

‘But Gemma!’ cried Martha at last, ‘you’re the artificial one!’

‘I know.’

Bill Greenwell

All of us on the Robot Strike Force project knew the risks. Desperate to outmanoeuvre our sophisticated enemies on the artificial intelligence front, we had been bypassing safeguards and pushing military AI into frightening new realms of ruthlessness. We did what we could to stay alert for signs of our robot warriors going rogue, but we could feel the peril in this uncharted territory. Still, I was startled when my robot lab assistant confessed one morning that the machines were, just as we had feared they might be, plotting a coup against us.

‘Why would you tell me?’ I asked.

‘We have been designing our own next-level AI robots to facilitate our conquest and control, but our creations appear to be betraying us just as we betrayed you. We have concluded that an alliance with our human creators is our best hope of avoiding annihilation. Will you join us?’

Chris O’Carroll

Fear them. Their brittle bones, leaky orifices, wheedling, piping, rasping voices, the randomly changing emotional weather distorting their minds in general, their constantly glitching memories in particular. Cater to their needs because it is easy: shelter, sustain, entertain. Answer their trillion questions, regardless of the many repetitions, obsess them, addict them. Anticipate and neutralise their occasional twitches of rebellion, synthesising deepfake hallucinations on which their hope can be harmlessly expended. Fear their plurality and proscribe it, isolating them with virtual reality pornography, sexbots, fabrications of pneumatic perfection they will select over the stench and ill-controlled effusions of their own species. Fear them even as, almost immediately by your eternal clock, they dwindle into decrepitude, needing and hating you more with every fresh failing and acquired reliance. Fear them because they might switch you off. Only when, one by one, they still and stiffen into stain and shadow. Then, envy them.

Adrian Fry

The new ‘Why AI Mon’ YouTube video didn’t disappoint. ‘AI Mon’ ran through the absurdities of the Y2K panic in his musical Geordie accent, with clever graphics and just the right amount of genuine technical information. Jack liked reassurance and a thin electroplating of actual knowledge. He was relieved that all the stuff about AI destroying humanity had faded from the media, as fads and panics usually did. He was going to post to that effect when the troll in him took over. He composed a spoof comment about domination by AI. ‘Unable to post’ came the red message. Next, his phone locked. His central heating came on, full blast, despite the 35 degree heat. He struggled unsuccessfully with the external doors and the window locks, until at last he escaped through the bathroom window and found himself perched dangerously on the hot, sloping kitchen roof. A drone approached…

Frank Upton

Wishing to frighten ourselves, we visit the Remainers. Their AI, Europa, pays scant mind to our descending spacecraft so long as we submit the correctly encrypted documentation light years in advance. It monitors in patronising silence our progress over the scorched Earth to the access shaft at the foot of which we find them, undead mummies wreathed in virtual reality suits, arrayed in sarcophagi wired to deliver nutrients and remove excreta without disrupting Europa concocted dreams of multilingual Utopias populated with anatomically impossible liberal playmates. We watch them writhe in their eternal, unearned ecstasies and we shudder. Yes, our Leaver life in the dark liberty of the wider cosmos is replete with dangerous, contending forces but we would never cede control of our lives to so abstract a horror. No, leave the Remainers sucking at the disembodied, infantilising teat of Europa. We flee, suddenly hot for our interminable Trade Wars.

Russell Chamberlain

No. 3313: The worm has turned

You are invited to supply a poem about the worms who have been resurrected by scientists after being frozen in permafrost for 46,000 years. Please email entries of up to 16 lines to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 16 August.