Publishing Dystopia

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room-- but she was blind to it all as her focus was strictly bent on completing the prodigious tasks he assigned her.

She had no need to catch glimpses through the plate glass window as she had her own virtual window from which she gathered news of the outside world.

The world as seen from the window of his room was of deserted streets in the downtown core of a large metropolis: empty, but for the occasional ambulance or police cruiser rushing by toward an emergency, eerily silent as there was no need for the usual sirens.

The former crush of pedestrians had dissipated like mist on the river beyond as the sun rose, for this was another of numerous recurring government lockdown periods that had continued unabated for years as the virus that had first affected the world years before, continued to mutate from one variant to the next.

To most others, this view of the uninhabited city, might have seemed dismal, but for the man surveying the scene before him, it represented a last golden window of opportunity for he surmised that those confined to their homes would soon tire of binge-watching their favorite television series and grow bored watching repeats of other programming. They would turn once again to reading and his company was poised to fill the gap, having suffered through a downturn in sales in the past few years.

The room was the office of Alfred D. Harrington, founder of eponymous Alfred D. Harrington & Associates, a mid-sized but venerable and prestigious publishing house. His associates had recently left due to diminishing sales to establish other publishing venues. As his brand was known throughout the world though, Alfred was loathe to change his company's name by dropping the "Associates", as it conveyed the impression of distinction in the publishing world.

It was in the corner of his office that she sat day by day, silently and complacently attending to his bidding, producing stories and adventures set in far-off places around the globe, although her own travel experiences were nonexistent. Despite lacking first-hand knowledge and experience, her limitless access to information gave her the basis on which to create engaging and knowledgeable books about a variety of subjects; among them the most popular genres being Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Romance, Children's Fiction and with travel having been curtailed, Adventure.

She produced whatever Alfred suggested and prompted-- efficiently, accurately and in a timely manner. Being pleased with her work, he fondly nicknamed her "Qwerty" in honor and in remembrance of the antiquated, "qwerty" typewriters used by writers of the past-- for he did have a sentimental side beside his more avaricious one.

Alfred had little need of his earlier complement of employees in order to run his business. Most of the offices sat empty except for those in use by his secretary, his marketing specialists and publicists, as well as most importantly, his salespeople, kept busy encouraging book sellers to stock his books.

No longer was there a need for editors, designers, fact checkers or free-lance illustrators, for Qwerty could accomplish the work of all his former employees.

With a few instructions she produced "clean copy" manuscripts, free of grammatical or syntax errors or of improper word or phrase usage. But at times, just to amuse himself, he directed her to change a phrase or tweak a word and even to insert a new one of his own choosing. By so doing, he fed his own ego and congratulated himself for being an integral part of the creative process and by the end of each day, felt himself omnipotent.

Those same editors, designers and graphic artists, having spent years honing their craft, were now redundant in his publishing house: their expertise and talent no longer needed. Years of loyalty to his company and their combined knowledge that had maintained and increased his fiscal bottom line, were of no concern to him now as their usefulness had come to an end. Some had been fortunate to find employment in other publishing houses where his secret had not yet been discovered.

By day, Alfred studied the best seller lists of The New York Times, and Amazon, among other published lists, to see how his books fared in sales and ratings, as well as to determine which genres were on the rise in popularity.

Whatever the public needed or desired, his publishing house could supply in abundance and in quick order; be it fiction, nonfiction, business, science, sports or advice. Qwerty was capable of writing it all from her limitless sources of information that provided her with a wealth of ideas.

Should his books show signs of falling behind in ratings, he directed his secretary to purchase them in bulk--just enough to raise their rankings, but not enough to arouse suspicion of his tampering to artificially inflate sales. He knew he could sell them all to book sellers eventually, so what was the harm? It was, after all, standard operating procedure among some other publishing houses as well, for they were all aware that it was the means by which books reached and maintained their position on best seller lists, which in turn, enticed more readers to purchase them.

At the end of each day, Alfred leaned back in his cushy, well-padded leather chair, feet up on his desk and perused the day's output.

With the fall season upon them, this was the time to concentrate on children's books, always one of the biggest sellers of the Christmas season. He chose one from the burgeoning pile of manuscripts on his desk and began to read the story that Qwerty had created.

The Spirit of Yuletide

There was once a surly young Knight named Sir Edmund who lived in a dark and gloomy castle. Sir Edmund was grumpy and unhappy, and he never seemed to find joy in anything.

One cold and snowy Christmas Eve, Sir Edmund was sitting in his castle, feeling sorry for himself as usual. Suddenly, there was a knock at the door.

Sir Edmund grumbled as he got up to answer it, expecting to find one of his annoying neighbors. But to his surprise, he found a small, glowing figure standing on his doorstep.

"I am the Spirit of Yuletide," said the figure, with a twinkle in his eye. "I bring light and joy to the world, and I have come to visit you."

Sir Edmund was skeptical, but the Spirit of Yuletide was so friendly and kind that he couldn't help but be drawn in. The Spirit led Sir Edmund on a journey through the castle, showing him all the beauty and magic that he had been missing.

They sang carols and danced, and the Spirit showed Sir Edmund how to make toys and decorations to spread joy to others. Sir Edmund's heart began to fill with happiness and love, and he realized that he had been missing out on the magic of Christmas.

As the night wore on, Sir Edmund became more and more filled with the spirit of Yuletide. He laughed and smiled, and he began to see the good in people and the world around him.

When the Spirit of Yuletide left, Sir Edmund was sad to see him go. But he knew that the spirit would visit others, spreading joy and light wherever he went.

And as the years went by, Sir Edmund became a happier and kinder person, thanks to the magic of the Spirit of Yuletide. He spread joy and love to all those around him, and he never forgot the magic of that special Christmas Eve.

So let us all embrace the spirit of Yuletide, and let it fill our hearts with joy and love, for it is the most wonderful time of the year.

"Wonderful time of the year, indeed!" thought Alfred. "It strikes just the right chord for the season and with illustrations, it's sure to be a top holiday seller."

He scrutinized the manuscript once again and began to note the best sections to highlight with illustrations. No need for several specialized rounds of editing. With a few instructions to Qwerty, she would produce full-colour images of the highest quality to embellish the pages and the cover in a matter of minutes.

All he had to do now was consult with his marketing specialists, (for he did acknowledge that their experience and expertise were still of value), to decide which cover would be most enticing and visually appealing to the public.

And then he noticed it. Something was not quite right--the title! What on earth did it say? It seemed that Qwerty had gone off the tracks a bit. She was conversant in so many different languages and he had forgotten to specify English. "Ah", he thought, "that was my fault."

But strangely enough, when he searched online, he couldn't find a meaning for the words in any language. He had no time to research further and decided to dismiss it as just a minor glitch. He was quite unaware that scientists had already discovered that AI's had sometimes mysteriously begun to create their own language.

Having decided that the cover third from left was the more inviting and representative of the story, he would simply pass it to his secretary to send to the printers and let his publicists and sales personnel take over to create the hype and buzz needed to guide the book into the hands of the buying public.

He then continued plowing through the massive pile of manuscripts which would soon flood the markets, at the same time making his printers ecstatic, for they too had suffered from the previous publishing downturn.

All in all, a good day's output by Qwerty who was capable of generating so much as she sat quietly working away in the corner of his office-- for "she" was his specialized AI, programmed to research, compose and illustrate books within minutes.

"Yes," he thought, I am well on my way to prominence once again in the publishing world," fully expecting to have exceptional sales year after year while those of his competitors continued to sag.

But Alfred's window of opportunity began to diminish as his competitor's publishing houses also discovered and began to utilize AI to generate reading material.

When the onslaught of AI-created books began to saturate the markets, human authors and graphic artists attempted to salvage their positions in the publishing world by tagging their work, "#artbyhumans", but to little avail for they could hardly compete with machines whose output continued to become increasingly more sophisticated and refined and could produce books in a fraction of the time it took humans.

The general public was not concerned with who or what created the books, and those created by AI were undiscernible from those created by humans even when viewed by experts. As long as they were appealing and entertaining, and satisfied their needs, the reading public continued to buy books that were rated the highest on the best seller lists.

But even that soon came to an end, as the buying public also discovered AI. Parents were delighted at how easily their AI could generate text and illustrations to create stories for their children and how easily they could tweak the text to their own liking. They simply stopped buying books when they could create their own at home.

Not only did their personal AI create fictional stories for their children, they found that it could also generate instruction manuals for everything from home repairs to gardening and simple auto mechanics which were far easier to access than searching the internet.

Book sales continued to dip even further as the general public's use of AI apps and programs grew and the ripple effect that was first felt expanded to a tsunami-sized disruption of the publishing world.

Book sellers stopped purchasing books in bulk from publishers as they no longer had need for large quantities-- save a copy or two for display purposes in their store fronts-- for they had also discovered the new technology of "print-on-demand" which could be accomplished on portable machines in their back rooms, according to needs and desires of the buying public.

No longer was there a need to keep physical book stocks on hand as books and other material could now be printed as the public demanded it. Also being a greener option, it diminished their carbon footprint and prevented unsold stocks of books from filling land-fill sites.

Conventional printing establishments were left with little to print and even the world's top producing printers began to falter and the smaller establishments soon shuttered their doors. The entire publishing industry was on its way to becoming as archaic and obsolete as Gutenberg's printing press.

Writers and graphic artists expressed the same anger at the use of AI as the Luddites had toward Gutenberg's printing press almost 600 years previously. They verbally attacked the use of AIs in the similar vein as the Luddites had physically attacked printing presses and those who used them in a dishonest and unscrupulous manner.

Writers, having been declared redundant, now began desperately to compete with each other and the AI's to compose the most thrilling, most imaginative narratives of their lives in a flurry of desperation to save their craft and marked them with the hashtag, "#createdbyhuman".

Finding that using their computer "qwerty" keyboards was far too slow a way of producing (for the keyboard configuration had originally been created to slow down typing to preserve the wear and tear of the typewriter carriage), they turned instead to voice activation and dictated their stories.

The market became even more saturated with human and AI created books struggling for prominence, but sales stalled again as people were no longer content to read the prose generated by either means and had turned instead to audible books.

Print books were quickly converted to audible ones voiced with machines. Reading became just too time consuming and awkward while audible books could be listened to even while driving, walking or doing household chores.

As they couldn't physically destroy AIs, writers paid hackers to infiltrate their fail-safe systems and feed them misinformation and viruses as they were just as vulnerable to interference as any other component of the digital world. AI's began to misquote and misappropriate other writer's material with disastrous results.

Creating a reprint of Margaret Atwood's, famous line in The Handmaid’s Tale,“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.” (Don’t let the bastards grind you down) AI misquoted it as:

Don't let the children of unknown parentage pulverize you.

And from a famous children's story: “The most beautiful things in the globe cannot be seen or touched, they are suffered with the heart.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince:

The maximum gorgeous items in the biosphere cannot be viewed or handled, they are suffered with the fist-sized organ that pumps blood throughout your body.

Undeterred, Alfred and his contemporaries continued using their AI to generate audible books and the window of literacy began to shut permanently as writing and reading skills became a thing of the past.

With reading skills disappearing, and what little was left of written expression no longer trustworthy, the use of pictorial expressions such as emojis, already proliferating on the internet, became the norm for the masses. Human creative thought and written expression became the enclave of only the few who resisted the use of AI.

End Note: The above Spirit of Yuletide story and cover were created by AI in a matter of minutes with just a few simple prompts by my computer guru. It is based on my own two children's stories, The Yuletide Knight, (Amazon) the story of a surly young knight whose life is changed by the visit of a young maiden known as The Yuletide Spirit (Amazon). The AI- created story differs from both of mine and has not been published but similar stories are on the market.

It had been my intention to submit this story to the "Window" Challenge but I just couldn't conceive of an ending for it...and so it remains.

For more information about the reality of AI already available see:

https://flip.it/F3LuFT

https://flip.it/LT3hl9

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