Hi there,

I'm reviewing the entries for the Lodestar competition, and your story was next on the list.

I'll add my comments in chronological order, consisting mostly of my reactions as I read the story. At the end, I'll try to provide some general comments on the story as a whole after I've had time to think through it all.

Right, here goes.

"What exactly would you make of a portmanteau of the words masterpiece and disaster..." - All right, that was a very different kind of opening than what you see in most stories. On one hand, that in itself made me more interested to read on. On the other hand, the very impersonal second person narrator seeming to adress the reader rather than any characters and the fact that we get no hint of characters or setting details to ground us in the story world made it very difficult to connect with the story from the start. That said, you do counter this nice with a mystery to keep me hooked already in the second paragraph. Especially the "Nothing that should or could have caused it had happened" bit made things interesting.
What I'm trying to say is, I feel ambivalent about the story opening. It both hooked me and pushed me away.

"Store closed. No internet." - Huh? This threw me off. I don't believe there are anywhere in the world where there aren't generally offline options for paying in grocery stores, and we have been given no indication that this takes place in a distant future.

"I wondered if it was just coffee." - Ha, nice!

"Civilization was falling, and there was nothing in place to catch us." - That seems a bit drastic. I mean, it seems the world have been without internet for a few hours and nothing more. That said, I do love that line in itself.

"two of the most looted items were computers and smart TVs" - Yeah, I can definitely see this happening, sad as that is.

"In a matter of hours [...] Both were actively brought under control within hours." - I know this is a very minor detail, but the opening and ending lines of this paragraph are very similar, which made that final line seem a bit repetitive.

"Power systems were reports that public service techs received texts" - Huh? I think there's something wrong with this line. Maybe it's just that "reports" should've been "reporting", but I'm not sure.

"with the AI that took over the internet and has delivered a message early this morning." - Nice. I probably should have seen this coming, but I didn't, and I think it made for a nice twist to an interesting mystery. And I like the explanation for why the power plants still functioned.

"Millie Renalds? [...] We need you! Apparently, the AI is your biggest fan." - Hmm... This threw me off, because so far there haven't been any indicator of who or what the the narrator was. I think this bit of the story would've worked much better for me if we had been given some sense of who the narrator was throught the previous part of the story.

"I want your assistance in writing my autobiography." - What a perfectly human and egoistic wish. I love that this is what the AI wants.

"Sometimes it would snarkily respond to the really stupid question" - I'm already loving this AI.


Overall
This was a great story in so many ways. The prose was nice and clear, the premise was interesting, and I think you created a nice little mystery.

The one thing that did annoy me throughout was that we didn't get a sense of who the narrator was. I feel like it would've been a much stronger story if we had gotten some sort of character to care about and to root us in the story. Having reached the end, I can see why you didn't do that, though, as it would have ruined the sort of meta ending for the story. To be honest, though, that ending didn't work for me at all. Cutting the last couple of paragraphs would have made for a more straight-forward mystery and made the story less original, sure, but I also think it would have made it stronger. However, I think I'm moving very much into the arena of "this is definitely a matter of taste," so maybe I should just shut up now.

Anyway, there was an artistic choice I didn't agree with, but other than that, I really enjoyed this story.

That was the end of my ramblings (for now). I hope some of my thoughts will prove useful to you.

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .