Dead Air

It's just sitting there. A million ones and zeroes on a screen. Taunting me.

Vocal asks that I share a story that never came together and do what I can to explain what I'm missing to make it work. I've read some of my fellow Vocalians' entries, trying to find a way to help me choose both what story and how to explain what's lacking.

This isn't my first time attempting such a thing in a Vocal Challenge, and as Natasja Rose pointed out in the entry I read from her (My Vocal Drafts Folder) some of the Challenges have become repetitive. And not in the ways that most specifically perk my interest or stimulate my own creativity.

Motivation to write has become something of a struggle, and since writing my first complete novel back in Dinosaur Times when the world was still worried about COVID, I've gone in fits and starts of creativity. So much so normal, I think, for us creatives.

Work plays some role in the numbing of my mind's eye. Dull repetition and background confusion cluttering a space I'd rather save for other things. But I wonder how much of it is my own lack of determination. In writing the above-mentioned book, I wrote every day from 12:00-13:00 and from 17:00-18:00. I had a goal of 2,000 words which I dropped to a much more achievable 1,000 after conversation with my dad.

In this time, my record for a single day was well over 6,000 words of new prose. Though when I was blessed by such high production, I was tormented the next day with what felt like a creative hangover. Still able to hit my goal, but rarely beyond it.

During that year I wrote three novels. Two that are not worth speaking of aside from the interesting nature of their ideas, and one that has now been read and generally enjoyed by four people I trust implicitly.

However, scattered between Word Docs on my desktop, Vocal's drafts mausoleum, and my Campfire account, I have any number of incomplete works begging for my attention. Sitting there. A million ones and zeroes assembled into English on a screen. Taunting me.

But which story ought I discuss in this bit of structured reflection? My long considered, unnamed, and ultimately trunked novel? One of the shorter book-length pieces like Welcome Home, The Tomb of Saint Lazarus, Plastic Love, Eyes of the Void, Succession Crisis, Lesser Son, The Archive, Descent, or The Dominion? My poor, beloved Dominion. Or should I focus on what waits for me specifically in Vocal's drafts itself?

Tell me, Empire, Close Your Eyes, Burden, Addict, Sword of Mankind, Fist of the Throne, An Ocean Aflame, Deep Dive, Blind Choices, or Cost?

Cost?

It only seems fitting that I should discuss Cost.

So here it is as it stands:

Our footsteps echo off spotless walls. Behind, I hear the sound of a door sliding shut. If there had been any other sound, it would have been silent. The silence of a library or the silence of a tomb does not compare. Closest is the silence only found in an empty cathedral on a still night.

Hallowed, reverential silence made of lacking things.

My breath is loud in my ears as each step lands, each heartbeat felt in my teeth and, I'm sure, audible to him.

Walking ahead of me, steps even and measured, he strides with the kind of confidence usually reserved for conquering warlords. New masters of all they survey. And the sound of his arrogance haunts me in the silent absence of life. Absent of even the background whir and hum of ventilation.

Arrogance to promise me that what was to come would elevate us. Would finally give us what we needed. Would finally level the field and let us compete. After a fashion, at any rate.

I am to be the first subject. Not the first tester, but the first end-user. Still in optimal conditions, still in perfect control. The final tester.

Years of practice. Years on years of constantly honing my skills, of pushing myself to become the art itself, of over-taxed effort and long sleepless hours. Come to this. Two men in a long, white, sterile hallway, and the next door. The final door.

"You're the first in a new generation," his perfect teeth are too white as he flashes me a winning smile. The kind that he must have spent hours in the mirror practicing. The kind he gives to investors and stockholders and customers. And test subjects. The kind that draws one to trust him.

"Remember what you said when we first talked, remember the race. You can't compete with what's out there. The speed. It's not doable. This is the only way."

He's not wrong. I cannot imagine a world in which he is wrong anymore. He, or rather this place, is the last hope. And a forlorn hope it is, to need such a man and such a place. But others have put us in this situation, and we must drown or learn to fly.

"Through that door," he says, still smiling, "you're going to see the mechanism. The best QA testers in the world have made sure that operation will be as simple as humanly possible. But we'll be on the other side of the glass, so if you have any questions, just ask. There's speakers and such in the room."

"Why are we down here," I ask, wiping sweaty palms against my jeans. "I mean, this is all very Umbrella Corporation. How's it going to make it out to consumer markets?"

"Miniaturization is the next step. Once we know for certain that Project Scribe works as intended, we can move on to the next phase. If all goes well, it'll be ready to ship in Q4 next year."

"And if not?"

"Greatness can't be rushed," he laughs then. It's a short, barking laugh. Not the kind that his performance coaches would have taught him. It's his. Uniquely his, and I realize that this is probably the first glimpse I've ever gotten of the man instead of the product.

Not to say I don't understand the joke. Rushing greatness is exactly the point. I'm not ashamed to admit that his laugh warms me a bit, confirmation that he considers my skill greatness is comforting. Confirmation that this man is human, not just a corporate homunculus, even more so.

"Just go through that door and wait for the green light. The literal green light, we're going for minimal interaction but of course, if you have any questions just ask."

I can see my reflection in the door, the ghost of my breath lingering on the gleaming metal. He presses a button, the door slides open, and we walk through together.

Six-hundred and fifty-nine words long. Or there abouts. Six-hundred and fifty-nine words of build-up and atmosphere. As Yosemitee Sam can be imagined as saying, "there's gold in them thar hills."

Now comes the difficult part. The part where I sit with my muses and ask what is delaying this work, what blocks exist in my mind that prevent me from hitting those little black keys and making the ones and zeroes on my screen coalesce into something worth reading.

Because I think it is worth reading. In much the same way that I think anything I actually hit publish on is worth reading. I believe it's worth the time and attention to read because I took the time and attention to write it. Something that cannot and will never apply to generated work. A point which is, itself, the point of this story.

Do I fear potential backlash from the moral of this story? No. Because there is a moral, and one that I believe is pan-humanist in its message. And I believe that that moral will resonate with people who can read through the lines, or even just the words on the page, and understand it.

Cost is the story of a writer who, in an act of desperation to compete with soulless slop shat out by algorithms designed to devour time and attention, makes a Faustian bargain. He trusts his future and pins his hopes on technology that will give him the ability to produce enough, maybe, at a pace that will allow him to keep his head above water in an industry that punishes him for his humanity. All the while rewarding the inhuman.

And the cost for his desperation is high. The reader will be able to decide for themselves how high, and whether that cost is worth paying.

I've been tinkering with this story for nearly a year, having accidentally read AI slop and been confused by the total absence of soul and watched a video wherein an AI scammer brags about "winning the race" for "content." Not art. Content.

To those few who might read this and question why I call that person a scammer, it's because she actively hides the fact that she produces content with AI. She believes that, in a toddler-level temper tantrum, readers are "unfairly biased against AI 'authors'."

Cough cough. I mean to convey this with as little fairness as I can. So please, listen closely. If you generate stories, art, poetry, essays, anything with AI, you cannot claim it. If you sell a book generated by AI, even if you edit it to make it more readable, you. are. not. a. writer.

Use cases exist for AI. Goodness knows that they do. And there are valid arguments to be made for its application as an accessibility aid even in creativity. But simply prompting an algorithm to generate slop, even if you take the time to clean up that slop, does not make you a writer. At best it makes you a director.

What I want to convey in this story is the visceral fear and desperation felt by authors and creatives all over the world at the threat of AI. And the extremes that we may feel driven towards in a climate that treats the creation of art as a race of some kind.

People, as a whole, will never be swayed by the genuine arguments against AI. They already know about the harmful affects of internal-combustion engines and car-centric urban design. They simply don't care, or don't care enough to advocate for meaningful change, or make those changes in their own lives. Much like how environmentalists, and their kissing-cousins vegans, will never change hearts and minds with aggression, we will never sway people by shouting at them. Though, that never stopped those well meaning groups, and it likely will not stop us. Shouting at people is fun and makes us feel like we're achieving something; even when what we're achieving is only further alienation.

A solution to any of those problems does likely exist somewhere. It's most likely both very simple in concept and possible only in thought experiments. Whatever the case, I don't know it.

I do know what comes next in my story. I know that the POV character enters that cold, sterile room alone and waits for the green light. I know that in the centre of that room are two pylons with hand-shaped indentations on them. I know that, once the green light flashes, he will put his hands on them and choose. And I know how much the process will hurt.

Often times, the endings of my stories are arrived at naturally. A meandering of story placed, piece by piece, until I step back and behold the fruits of my labour. And this one is no different. It's no different to any others that I have crafted in any meaningful way. Except that I cannot continue it, and in many ways, that makes it so much like so many others begun and shelved.

Standing in my way now is less so a question of what happens next, or even of where the story ends (meaning how tragic do I want to make it). Rather, it is the question that plagues me constantly as I open the word processor and tippy tap my way towards another completed piece. The question of, "how?"

How do I put the pieces that exist in my head together in such a way that they can be related through time and space to people I've never met so that they see some inkling of what I have imagined. How do I convey the moral and warning that I want to convey to people who are trapped behind their own eyes, much as I am trapped behind mine.

Describing the room, the stark white room that carries the echoes of engineers and designers; the ghosts of painters and factory workers and programmers whose presence can be actively missed, if not felt. How do I convey the cold sterility of a room that is designed by the creator, me, without losing track of the underlying metaphor?

That is what I've yet to figure out.

I sit down; I open my document and set my fingers on the keys in exactly the configuration that I was taught when I was six years old by Mavis Beacon, then I wait and stare and try desperately to think.

I try to push through the dead air in my blank and hollow mind and simply create the story. I know what comes next. I know what happens, I know how to use the words of my native language to evoke the setting and visceral feeling of a story being literally pulled from a mind into the 'real world.' I know what I'm supposed to do, but I cannot do it.

Yet.

Friends and family will have heard me jokingly say that I'm a Canadian, not a Can'tadian. And while that particular mantra has not always held truth for me, being entirely too disposed to give up and play Starcraft when trying anything, it is true for my art. It is true that I am, therefore, I create.

Still, when I set myself before this unfinished piece of art, I cannot make my fingers move. I cannot enter that often chased and rarely caught creative flow state which gives rise to some of my greatest work. I know what happens next, but the words do not come. Not even one. In months.

Life can only be breathed into our creations when we put the effort in, and some require more than others. I've written stories, ones that have done well, that were as easy as ignoring a deadline and opening a Word doc. Others have taken months, or years of effort, revisions, effort, anger, effort, deletions, effort, giving up, and effort - and yet they have achieved what amounts to no attention. Were I the kind of creative who values my art by its numbers, then I would be devastated by such a result.

But I'm not. The value of the creation is intrinsic. And I made it. That is what gives it value.

What is holding Cost back? What is keeping it in its current one-third written state? I have no idea. I know what comes next, I have a good enough idea of how it ends to be getting on with. I know that I can do it and that I can do it well.

Step by step, as does my character walking towards a destination that I have deemed will hurt, I must march towards the conclusion. I must carefully strike each key and watch each line of text materialize before my eyes. Imperfect and infinitely far from what I see in my mind, I have to see it through until the end. And I will.

If only I can escape the dead air between my ears and let the work itself come to life.