"The Steel Plague" is a short Cthulhu Mythos story by author Nate Southard. It was published in the thematic anthology Tomorrow's Cthulhu by Broken Eye Books in January 2016.[1]
Synopsis[]
After a sophomore's science fair experiment into self-replicating robots goes disastrously wrong, the newly-created machine - who require only metal and plastic to recreate themselves - slowly begin the process of dismantling human civilisation.
In the aftermath, one woman survives long enough to witness an enormous swarm of the little mechanoids create a vast, temple-like construct from their own bodies, before something huge and terrible emerges from beneath the ground.
Behind the Mythos[]
As the robots evolve over the course of the story, the noises which they emit begin to sound more and more like a language, albeit one unknown to humans. Near the conclusion, their chant becomes "R'lyeh! Ia! R'lyeh! Ia!," from which one could infer that the monstrous subterranean entity is intended to be the Great Old One Cthulhu.
References[]
- ↑ Title: "The Steel Plague" at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database