Hacker News Reader

Comment by sdoering | Hacker News Reader

Oh what a beautiful idea for a short story. Would have been a great writing prompt over in the redditverse probably.

[Edit:]

Could be a crime novel. A classical who-dun-it, but with the need to trackback the route and stuff like this and things happening in between and the data of the car being tampered with or stuff like this.

View on HN

There's a powerful sci fi short story I read in an anthology quite a while ago (I believe called The Flying Dutchman) describing a crewless bomber being repaired, fueled, taking off, bombing its target, landing, and then doing the same thing again. As it describes this repetition, you slowly realize that humanity has long since been wiped out and the bombing runs are automated systems repeating themselves. (That's my memory of the story, anyhow, I read it in the 80's :) ).

(Edit: found it, "Flying Dutchman" by Ward Moore, it's from the 50's and you can find its text online with those terms)

There’s a short film that has the same plot - I assume based on that story. I don’t remember the name.

Do you mean these two short films by Dima Fedotov? https://youtu.be/pyMNIFZTQkg https://youtu.be/IjJmTeBSEzU

Thanks for linking these! They indeed capture that same concept and are quite beautiful, in a haunting sense. In this case automated technology seems to inhabit the same space as ghosts in a non-sci-fi setting. At least the type of ghost that re-enacts some event over and over. (The title of the short story I mentioned is an overt reference to one of those stories). I wonder what added meaning the technological element conveys, e.g. the difference between a story about ghostly sailors re-entering naval combat ad infinitum vs. a story about robotic pilots continuing a physical war patterned by their long dead designers. Both are a form of haunting.

I like that the name refers to a legendary ghost ship itself [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Dutchman

For the story to work well, there needs to be no logs, or misleading ones. I assume Teslas records travel in at least one log?

It could work if the car had gone on enough trips, it wasn't clear which one was the important one. Maybe someone is sending the car out every day to hide their tracks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com