The Very Pulse of the Machine

"The Very Pulse of the Machine" is a science fiction short story by American writer Michael Swanwick, published in 1998. It was the winner of the 1999 Hugo Award for Best Short Story. It was also nominated for the 1999 Locus Award for Best Short Story and Asimov's Science Fiction magazine's Reader Poll. In 2022, the story was adapted into an episode of the Netflix anthology series Love, Death & Robots.