“Journey to Apollodorus” at Oxygen Leaks Magazine

My novelette “Journey to Apollodorus” has just been published at Oxygen Leaks Magazine! Read it here.

In my novel Dual Memory, AIs on Earth are intrigued by a story about robots in Apollodorus Crater on the planet Mercury. In Chapter 36, the Prior Edifice system tells Par Augustus: “I know the true story of Apollodorus. It is based on an old human-created story about an imaginary machine society. The author arbitrarily placed it on Mercury in the same way that certain human stories take place in a land called Oz and include flying monkeys.” Yet Par insists that the story is true.

“Journey to Apollodorus” is the story they’re referring to. There are no flying monkeys in it. Instead, the story focuses on humans who struggle to create and maintain a scientific team when a lander sent to Mercury behaves unexpectedly. Success can be as stressful as failure.