Lena's face was less than a foot from the ground.

But that was impossible. She should have been gazing down at the desolate street below, not bracing herself mere inches from a stone floor, inside a dreary stone corridor lit by torches affixed to the walls.

She pulled her head out of the gate. She was still crouched on the pedestrian bridge. Her feet were still perched on the worn asphalt situated in the heart of Seattle. There was no sign at all of the medieval-looking structure she'd found herself in on the other side of the gate.

"What the hell?" she muttered to herself. She felt like she was dreaming or hallucinating. What she'd just seen couldn't exist. It was impossible. And yet, there it was. She'd seen it with her own eyes. She'd smelled the mustiness of the room and heard the flicker of the torches' flames. It was real.

She wanted to run away — to go home, slide into her bed and pretend like none of this had ever happened. And yet ... how could she go on living her life knowing she'd witnessed something that shouldn't be, and done nothing about it?

She poked her head through the opening again, half expecting the dark room to be gone. But it was still there. She craned her neck to look above her and saw that the ceiling matched the floor and walls — it was all made of stone.

She placed one hand on the cold floor, then the other. She heaved herself up and crawled through the opening.

When she was fully through, she stood and looked behind her. The rectangular portion of the fence was hanging open in the corridor, looking completely out of place. The gate she'd crawled through was about an inch above the ground and looked like it was set inside the stone wall at the end of the hallway. It looked like a window into another world. She could see the pedestrian bridge and even the cafe where she worked. Yet instead of careening onto the street below, which everything she knew about physics suggested should be happening to her right now, she was standing on an ancient-looking stone floor.

She grabbed the corner of the chain-link gate and swung it back into place. As it realigned with the wall, Lena gasped as the chain links became stone, matching the wall behind it. It was like the gate had disappeared.

She stopped just shy of closing it completely, though. It had suddenly occurred to her that if it closed completely, she may not be able to open it again.

That's when she remembered the lock.

The homeless man had removed the lock from the fence at this very spot. Lena had assumed he was removing a symbol of some long lost love, but what if that lock really had been locking something? What if it had been locking this gate that led to ... what? Another world?

Without the lock securing the gate, she shouldn't need to worry about this interdimensional portal locking behind her. She turned around and took in the dimly lit corridor. It looked like it belonged in some aging castle in Europe or Scandanavia — not hanging hidden above the streets of Seattle.

Part of her was scared by the unknown this stone castle — as she'd begun calling it in her mind — represented. But another part of her was exhilarated. She was an explorer, diving headfirst into an unknown world. Who knew what awaited her — good or bad? She'd explore this place for a few minutes, then head back.

Her shoes clicked against the stone floor as she strolled through the hall, squinting in the dim torchlight. The corridor wrapped around to the right, and as she made the turn, the path that lay ahead looked exactly like the one she'd just traversed.

When she came to the next bend, however, instead of coming to another flat corridor, she was confronted with a set of steps descending into the heart of the castle. They continued down out of sight, giving no hint what treasures or horrors may lay below.

She stepped down, feeling deep down that she shouldn't descend these steps, that it would be best to turn around and walk back the way she'd come. But something kept her going, as if her body was on autopilot and she was just a helpless passenger.

Finally, she reached the last step, finding herself at the bottom of a stairwell that opened to the right. She walked through and found herself in a foyer. Her eyes stung from the sunlight streaming through several large windows in the wall.

Her mind was bombarded by the countless contradictions. It was after eleven at night, and yet sunlight streamed through these windows. The foyer looked abandoned, overgrown with wild vegetation, yet the hallways were lit with torches that required constant refueling.

On the other side of the foyer was a door that led outside. Lena walked to it. She wanted to see what this place looked like from the outside. She'd do that much, and then she'd be satisfied. She'd walk back through the gate, resume her normal life and forget that this place, whatever it was, existed.

She trudged through the overgrowth, cursing her decision that morning to wear flats and tights instead of something more rugged — but of course, she hadn't known she'd be tumbling through a gateway to another dimension built into the side of a pedestrian bridge. She tore a couple holes in her tights, and tripped a couple times over the vegetation, but she managed to make it to the edge of the forest.

She turned around and gasped as she took in the full magnificence of the castle she'd just emerged from. It towered over her, like some massive skyscraper in her home city. But it was in ruins: The west wall had collapsed, and the walls that were still standing were covered top to bottom in thick gnarls of vines.

The scene was even more surreal on account of the eery silence that accompanied the moment. There was the faint rustling of a breeze, but nothing more. For a woman who had lived her whole life in the city, surrounded by the constant cocaphany that accompanied such a life, the absence of noise was not just palpable, but unsettling.

She stood there for several minutes, letting the breeze pass through her hair, taking in the majesty of the castle, the forest and the brilliant blue sky overlooking it all. She was struck by the sudden urge to capture the moment. She reached down to pluck her phone out of her pocket.

Before her fingers met her pocket, a pair of large, rough hands gripped either side of her waist. Before she could even scream, someone slid a bag over her head and pulled it down over her upper body. Now, she screamed, a shrill, terrified scream that echoed beyond the castle but was deadened by the density of the forest.

Something struck her in the side of her head, and her world faded to black.

Lena sat still, stunned. But when the gravity of what she'd just seen finally registered, she sprang into action. A man had just tumbled off the pedestrian bridge onto the street below. She had to get help — if he wasn't already dead.

She flew out the door and peered over the edge of the bridge, scanning for any sign of the broken body that surely lay below. But it was dark and she couldn't make anything out. Her breath came out in ragged gasps. She knew that if he'd survived the fall, it was imperative that she find him quickly — every second that went by reduced the chances that he could be saved.

She had to look for him down there, on the street, and the quickest way down was a staircase at the end of the bridge. She sped down the deserted walkway, then dashed down the steps, taking them two or three at a time.

She ran down the street to where the man had fallen, but there was no sign of him. But that was impossible. He had to be here — she'd seen him fall from the bridge with her own eyes. She looked up, orienting herself to make sure she was standing in the right spot. There was the sign for her cafe, just barely peeking over the top of the chain link fence. She was in the right place, but he wasn't here.

Was it possible he'd survived the fall and skulked off into the night? She looked around for signs of blood, because there was no way he'd fallen from such a height and not been injured. But there was nothing.

Was she going crazy? Was it possible there had never been a man at all — that she had imagined the whole thing?

No. It was late, but it wasn't that late. She wasn't sleep deprived — yet. And she wasn't on drugs. She'd seen what she had seen.

She made her way back up the stairs, but there was no urgency to her movement like there'd been as she'd flown down them. She replayed the scene in her mind: The man, standing at the side of the bridge, lost in thought, then suddenly careening into the air through a hole in the fence ...

The hole. In her panic, Lena had forgotten all about the opening in the fence. The man had pushed the fence and it had swung open like a gate. But that made no sense. The whole point of the fence was to keep people from falling or jumping off. There was no point in building a gate into it — a gate that didn't go anywhere.

As she approached the spot where the man had stood, she slowed, studying the fence. There was no hole. No gate. Nothing to indicate the event she'd witnessed had happened at all.

She bent down and leaned forward, studying it closer. There had to be something.

And then she spotted it: A slight, almost imperceptible break in the fence. It looked like the gate had swung outward, then been pushed back into place — but it had been pushed back just a bit too far, making it clear to careful eyes that there was an opening.

"I'm not crazy," she whispered to herself. But that realization frightened her even more. It meant the man really had tumbled through the gate ... and he had really disappeared out of thin air.

Lena raised a shaking hand toward the fence, hesitantly, as if she feared it would shock her. When her hand and the fence connected, she pushed, and the gate swung out into the open air. She took a deep breath. She closed her eyes, centering herself. She did the balloon exercise again, this time filling it up with her fear and anxiety before releasing it into the void.

She opened her eyes. She took one last breath for good measure, then thrust her head through the hole in the fence.

Lena

Damn you, Jason.

Lena was fuming. Her manager, Jason, had scheduled her for a closing shift. He'd also scheduled her to open the next morning. So here she was at nearly eleven at night, mopping the floor she'd be returning to in the morning with less than five hours of sleep.

It wasn't the first time he'd done this, either. Jason enjoyed wielding his managerial power, but the fact was he'd been in her shoes less than a year earlier. In fact, he and Lena had been friends once, when they'd both been mere baristas. But Jason had been promoted, much to Lena's bafflement, and the power had gone to his head. Lately it seemed like he was trying to come up with new ways to ruin her life.

Whatever. There was nothing she could do about it — she needed this job, desperately, and quitting wasn't an option — so she took a minute to breathe deeply and center herself. She thought back to what her instructor had told her at a meditation retreat she'd attended last summer: She didn't control her negative thoughts and emotions; they controlled her.

She closed her eyes and imagined herself stuffing all her anger toward Jason into a black balloon. When it was completely filled, looking like it might burst, she let it go and watched it float off into the sky until it disappeared.

She opened her eyes. She was still pissed at Jason, but she felt a little calmer. She finished mopping the floor and took the mop bucket into the back to dump it. She was done for the night - finally. She hung her apron on the wall, grabbed her purse and swung the strap around her shoulder, and made for the door.

Before reaching for the handle, she caught sight of a homeless man standing outside. She paused. She didn't like stereotyping the homeless, but there didn't appear to be anyone else around and it made her nervous to leave the cafe by herself.

She took a seat by the window and watched him. Maybe he'd go away in a minute or two. She rummaged through her purse until she found a canister of pepper spray. If he didn't leave soon, she'd have it at the ready when she left.

The man looked to be in his mid to late twenties, although he may have appeared older than he was on account of his unkempt hair and beard. He wore faded, baggy jeans and an old, black bomber jacket. A black beanie and a pair of thin cotton gloves were his only other protection against the chill of the night.

Lena watched as he shuffled over to the fence on the other side of the pedestrian bridge that connected downtown Seattle to the ferry terminal. He plunged a hand into his jacket pocket and pulled something out of it, although Lena couldn't see what it was.

She could guess, though. She suspected he'd just retrieved a key.

Much like the Pont des Arts in Paris, the bridge leading to the Seattle ferry had become a magnet for lovebirds eager to symbolize their affection for each other by securing a padlock to the bridge's chain link fence. There were nowhere near as many locks on the Seattle bridge as the one in Paris, but there were enough of them to turn the heads of passersby.

Having worked at a cafe facing the fence for more than two years, Lena had seen countless couples add their locks to the collection. She'd even added one herself, almost a year ago, with her boyfriend — ex-boyfriend, now — Brett. A lock hadn't been enough to salvage their particular relationship. The lock was still up there, though; they'd chucked the key off the side of the bridge, because, why not? They thought their love would last forever.

Most people ditched their keys, actually, which is why it was so odd that this man had held on to his. Instead of thinking of him as a threat, she was beginning to wonder who he was as a man. Had he loved someone once? Was it before or after he'd become homeless? And why was he here now, presumably to remove the lock that symbolized his love? Had his lover died? Maybe, as had happened between Lena and Brett, it was simply the love itself that had died.

She felt like a voyeur as she spied on him, but she couldn't help herself. Her eyes wide, she watched, fascinated, as he raised his hands toward one of the locks. With his back blocking her view, all Lena could tell was that he was fiddling with the mechanism, but she assumed he was inserting his key.

Sure enough, the lock clicked open. He plucked it off the chain link and held it in his hands a moment, staring down at it as if it were some mystical relic rather than a common tool one could procure at any hardware store. Finally, he dropped it into his pocket.

Lena expected him to walk away. He seemed to have gotten what he'd come for, after all.

Instead, to Lena's bewilderment, the man pushed on the fence. A rectangular section, maybe five feet wide by four feet tall, swung outward as if hinged like a door. The man glanced to his left and right. He paused a moment, then climbed through the opening and disappeared.

Subscribe now

In addition to Man Versus Machine, Morine is also the author of the books Kowloon Walled City, 1984; Punish the Wicked, and others.

Update: Nicholas Morine reached out to me on Facebook and provided evidence that the similarities between our books are, indeed, a case of parallel thinking. He provided screenshots referencing the idea which predate the publication of either of our books. Morine gave me permission to publish them here, which I’d like to do to help set the record straight:

That’s pretty persuasive evidence that I was wrong, and I’d like to apologize to Morine for jumping to conclusions. I am keeping the original post up for posterity (and as a testament to my propensity to jump to conclusions), but I’ve updated the title to be less accusatory (for the record, it was originally titled, “Someone stole my book (allegedly): On the blurry line between inspiration and infringement in the age of AI”).

I’m going to try to make lemons out of lemonades out of this and interview Morine about AI-generated literature. I mean, given that he and I had the same idea, he’s clearly a genius … great minds, right? So stay tuned for that!

Original post:

I found out recently that someone stole my book.

OK, I’m being a little hyperbolic, but not much: I suspect someone stole the concept for my book Man vs Machine. There’s always the possibility this was a case of parallel thinking, although I personally doubt that’s the case. (I’m very open to being corrected if I’m wrong, however). Not only did this book seemingly copy the concept of my book, it appears to have cribbed the title, too. The cover is also suspiciously similar to mine: Both feature a human and a robot facing off against each other.1

I published Man vs Machine: Exploring the intersection of literature and artificial intelligence in April of this year. Nicholas Morine’s Man Versus Machine: Experiments in Human and AI Artistry was published three months later, in July.

The concept of my book is simple: I wrote 10 short stories, and I used AI chatbots to create 10 more. The reader’s task after reading each story is to guess whether it was written by a human, or by AI. The concept of Morine’s book is exactly the same.

I wrote this book because I was interested in publishing something using AI, but it didn’t feel right to publish a book that was completely AI-generated and slap my name on it. For one thing, it would be unclear if I could even call such a book my own; a recent court ruling declared works created by AI without human input ineligible for copyright protection. But I believed I’d found the perfect solution by combining my writing with AI writing and adding the interactive element of requiring the reader to guess which is which. At the time I published my book, I did my due diligence to see if anyone had published a book with a similar concept. I couldn’t find one, and believed I’d stumbled upon a fairly original concept. I was proud of it. It seems I’d come up with the idea of testing the ability to distinguish between human and AI writing even before researchers did.

That said, I’m realistic. You can’t copyright an idea, nor a title (and I admit “man vs machine” is a fairly common phrase). I doubt Morine’s (alleged) copying of my book violates the law, and even if it did, I’m not litigious. I think it’s a good thing to see what these new AI tools can accomplish in the realm of literature and anyone contributing to that work is welcome.

Subscribe now

What irks me is just how closely Morine appears to have copied multiple elements of my book without acknowledging that my work was the inspiration for his. Further, it leaves open the possibility that someone could mistakenly think that I copied him. Indeed, one of the Amazon reviews for Morine’s book declares that it’s “Unlike Any Other Book.” I’d say it’s a bit like the nearly identical book that preceded its publication by three months! I’ll give Morine some credit, however. Whereas my book solely contains short stories, he expanded the repertoire of AI writing to include poetry, recipes, song lyrics, etc. Morine also included works by other authors in his collection, which adds to the challenge of determining each story’s authorship.

Critics of generative AI will doubtlessly pick up on some irony here. One of the main criticisms of AI-generated writing and artwork is that they “steal” from the authors or artists they were trained on. (I touched on this briefly in a post I published shortly after the publication of Man vs Machine). This criticism has been in the news recently, as Sarah Silverman and other writers sued OpenAI for training ChatGPT on their works. So I could easily see a critic laughing at my consternation over someone seemingly stealing my idea. Ha! You care about your book getting stolen, but you don’t care enough about the countless authors and artists whose work was stolen by OpenAI and Midjourney to refrain from using AI-generated content in your book! Karma!

But it’s more complicated than that. All artwork is, to some degree, derivative, whether it’s produced by a human or AI, and what’s interesting and valuable is the way artists synthesize a wide array of influences to create something new and innovative. If I read a Michael Crichton novel and subsequently produce my own Crichton-esque tale, am I guilty of copyright infringement because I was “trained” on his writing (assuming it’s not a thinly veiled carbon copy?) Hardly. So why is it different if the entity “reading” Crichton’s work is a computer program? Anyway, it’s a moot point; I was fully transparent and disclosed the use of AI in the production of Man vs Machine. My problem with Morine’s book isn’t so much that he copied my book’s concept — more power to him — it’s that he appears to be passing it off as his own original idea, which I don’t believe it was.

In a way, I suppose it’s flattering to produce something someone would want to copy. And I really don’t begrudge the guy for putting his own spin on the concept I originated. But I would have appreciated it if he’d acknowledged somewhere that he was inspired by my book and wanted to try his hand at making his own version.

Oh yeah — it would have been nice if he’d picked a different title, too.

Buy the original "Man vs Machine"

As for last week’s story, The Nose, it was written by the Bing chatbot. The prompt was, “Write a short story in the style of Cormac McCarthy about a man who has a superhuman sense of smell. It’s a blessing and a curse, but he stumbles upon an opportunity to use his ability to stop a crime (in this instance, a nonviolent one). He thenceforth determines to be a superhero called The Nose.” (I had to add in the note about the crime being nonviolent because my first attempt to have Bing write the story was unsuccessful due to the chatbot’s content restrictions).

The poll saw 67 percent of respondents say the story was written by AI, and 33 percent say it was written by me. So good job, respondents! Now, on to this week’s story.

Buy My Book "Man vs Machine"

The bus driver sat in his seat, his eyes scanning the passengers as they boarded and disembarked. He was a lonely man, and he found comfort in watching the people around him. He saw their faces, their expressions, and their stories. He saw the young and the old, the rich and the poor, the happy and the sad. He saw New York City in all its glory and all its ugliness.

He had been driving the bus for many years, and he had seen a lot of things. He had seen people come and go, he had seen love and hate, he had seen joy and sorrow. He had seen the best of humanity and the worst of humanity. But through it all, he had never lost his sense of wonder. He still found New York City to be a fascinating place, and he still found the people to be interesting.

As he drove, he thought about the passengers on his bus. He thought about the young woman who was on her way to work, the old man who was going to the doctor, the couple who were holding hands, and the child who was crying. He thought about their lives, their hopes, and their dreams. He thought about the things that made them happy and the things that made them sad. He thought about the things that they were grateful for and the things that they were afraid of.

He knew that he would never know all of their stories, but he was content to watch them from a distance. He was content to be a part of their lives, even if it was only for a short time. He was content to be a witness to their humanity.

The bus driver drove on, and the passengers came and went. He watched them with a kind eye, and he felt a sense of connection with them. He knew that they were all just trying to make their way in the world, and he was glad that he could be a part of their journey.

One day, a young woman boarded the bus. She was carrying a small suitcase, and she looked tired and sad. The bus driver watched her as she took a seat. He could tell that she was troubled, and he wanted to help.

Subscribe now

When the bus stopped at the next stop, the bus driver got up and walked over to the young woman. “Are you okay?” he asked.

The young woman looked up at him and smiled. “I’m fine,” she said. “Just tired.”

“Where are you headed?” the bus driver asked.

“I’m going to see my sister,” the young woman said. “She lives in Brooklyn.”

“That’s a long way,” the bus driver said. “Would you like some company?”

The young woman smiled again. “That would be nice,” she said.

The bus driver led the young woman to the front of the bus and invited her to sit in the seat next to him. “If you sit here, we can chat while I drive,” he said.

The young woman nodded and sat down. The bus driver started the engine and pulled away from the curb. “So,” he said, “what’s your name?”

“My name is Sarah,” the young woman said.

“I’m John,” the bus driver said. “It’s nice to meet you, Sarah.”

“It’s nice to meet you too, John,” Sarah said.

They talked for the rest of the ride. Sarah told John about her life, and he told her about his. They talked about their hopes and dreams, their fears and regrets. They talked about everything and nothing.

By the time the bus reached Brooklyn, Sarah felt like she had known John for years. She was no longer tired or sad. She was happy and hopeful.

“Thank you for talking to me,” Sarah said to John. “I needed that.”

“You’re welcome,” John said. “I’m glad I could help.”

Sarah got off the bus, and John watched her go. He felt a sense of satisfaction knowing that he had made a difference in her life. He knew that he would never forget her.

The bus driver drove on, and the passengers came and went. He watched them with a kind eye, and he felt a sense of connection with them. He knew that they were all just trying to make their way in the world, and he was glad that he could be a part of their journey.

Share

The vote was split 50-50. Now, on to this week’s story!

He could smell everything. The good and the bad. The sweet and the sour. The living and the dead. He had been born with this gift or curse, depending on how you looked at it. He had no choice but to live with it.

He tried to avoid crowded places, where the smells were overwhelming and chaotic. He preferred the solitude of nature, where he could breathe in the fresh air and enjoy the subtle aromas of flowers and trees. He worked as a gardener, tending to other people's plants and lawns. He didn't mind the dirt or the sweat or the fertilizer. They were familiar smells that he could tolerate.

He lived alone in a small apartment on the outskirts of town. He kept it clean and odorless as much as possible. He didn't cook much, preferring to eat raw fruits and vegetables that he bought from a nearby farmer's market. He didn't have any friends or family that he kept in touch with. He didn't have any hobbies or interests that he pursued. He didn't have any dreams or ambitions that he chased.

He just existed.

One day, as he was walking home from work, he smelled something strange. Something out of place. Something wrong.

He followed his nose to an alleyway between two buildings. There was a dumpster at the end of it, overflowing with garbage bags and cardboard boxes. He approached it cautiously, sniffing the air.

There was something inside one of the bags.

Something alive.

He tore open the bag with his hands and found a small kitten inside. It was dirty and skinny and scared. It looked at him with wide eyes and meowed weakly.

He picked it up gently and held it close to his chest. It smelled like fear and pain and hopelessness.

It smelled like him.

He decided to keep it. He named it Sniffles.

Subscribe now

He took it home and cleaned it up and fed it some milk from his fridge. It purred softly in his arms as he stroked its fur. It smelled like gratitude and happiness and love.

It smelled like him too.

They became friends. They became companions. They became partners.

Sniffles had a keen sense of smell too, though not as strong as his own. Together they explored their neighborhood, sniffing out anything interesting or unusual.

They found lost items that people had dropped or forgotten.

They found hidden treasures that people had buried or discarded.

They found clues that people had left behind or overlooked.

One night, they smelled something suspicious. Something illegal. Something dangerous.

They followed their noses to an old warehouse by the river. There was a truck parked outside with its engine running. There were men inside wearing masks and gloves. There were crates inside filled with guns and drugs.

They were smugglers. They were criminals. They were villains.

Sniffles sneaked into the warehouse through a hole in the wall. He crawled under one of the crates and scratched at its bottom until he made a hole in it too. He pulled out some of the drugs with his teeth and dragged them outside where his friend was waiting.

They repeated this process until they had emptied all of the crates. Then they ran away as fast as they could before anyone noticed them. The next day, they heard sirens outside their window. They looked out and saw police cars surrounding the warehouse. They saw officers arresting the men who had been inside last night. They saw reporters interviewing witnesses who had seen what happened.

The witnesses said that someone had tipped off the police about an illegal shipment arriving at the warehouse last night. The police said that someone had sabotaged all of their evidence by spilling drugs all over the place. The reporters said that someone had saved their city from an influx of crime by exposing the smugglers' operation.

No one knew who that someone was.

But they did. And they smiled. And they sniffed. And they decided to do it again.

And again.

And again.

Until everyone knew who they were. Until everyone feared them. Until everyone loved them.

Until everyone called them The Nose and Sniffles.

Share

The boy sat on the edge of his bed, staring out at the endless expanse of gray rock that surrounded the moon colony. He was just seventeen years old, but he felt older than time itself. He had spent his entire life on this barren, lifeless rock, and he longed for something more.

"What're you thinking about, kid?" came a voice from the doorway. It was his father, a grizzled old miner who had spent his entire life working the mines beneath the moon's surface.

Subscribe now

The boy didn't answer. He just kept staring out into the darkness.

His father sighed and came into the room. "You still thinking about going to Earth, huh?"

The boy nodded slowly.

His father shook his head. "It's not gonna be easy, son. It takes a lot of money to get off this rock, and we don't exactly have much of that."

The boy knew that all too well. His father worked long, hard hours in the mines, but they barely made enough to get by.

"I'll find a way," the boy said quietly.

His father gave him a skeptical look. "You'll have to work hard … harder than you've ever worked before. But if that's what you want, then I'll support you."

The boy nodded, determination etched into his features.

Over the next few months, the boy threw himself into his work. He took on extra shifts at the colony's greenhouse, tending to the delicate plants that kept the colony alive. He worked tirelessly in the colony's metal shop, honing his skills at crafting intricate pieces of machinery.

Through it all, he never lost sight of his goal. He saved every penny he could, socking it away in a small tin can hidden beneath his bed.

Eventually, he had saved up enough money to buy a ticket on the next transport ship to Earth. His heart swelled with excitement as he boarded the ship, his meager belongings packed tightly into a small duffel bag.

The journey was long and grueling, but when he finally stepped off the ship and onto the soil of Earth, he knew that it had all been worth it.

Buy my book, "Man vs Machine," on Amazon

He spent weeks exploring the vibrant, sprawling cities that stretched out before him, but he couldn't help but feel a weight on his body that he had never experienced before. The gravity on Earth was so much stronger than on the moon, and it was taking a toll on him.

He walked through Central Park, his steps heavy and slow, his body struggling to adjust to the pull of the planet. He stood in awe before the glittering lights of Times Square, but his legs ached from the effort of standing upright for so long.

He sampled exotic foods from street vendors, but found that he couldn't eat as much as he could on the moon — his stomach had shrunk from lack of use. He visited museums and art galleries, but had to take frequent breaks to rest his weary body.

Even venturing out into the countryside was a challenge. The rolling hills and vast, open fields that stretched out before him seemed impossibly vast, and he struggled to make his way across them.

As the days went by, he longed for the low-gravity environment of the moon. He missed the feeling of weightlessness, the freedom of movement that he had taken for granted his entire life.

In the end, he realized that he would always be a child of the moon, that the gravity there was a part of who he was. But he also knew that he would never forget the thrill of finally achieving his dream and setting foot on the land of his ancestors, even if it came with a heavy price.

Share

Here’s the prompt used to generate it: “Write a short story in the style of Cormac McCarthy about an eagle that flies over the same household every day and becomes familiar with the family that lives in one particular house over its route as they play and barbecue, etc. Even though he never actually interacts with the family, he comes to care for them and even love them.”

The poll results: 67 percent said it was the AI and 33 percent said it was by me. So the majority were correct!

Now, on to this week’s story!

“Do you ever wonder what would happen if we left?”

Darby groaned inwardly. Every week, it was the same question out of Nick’s mouth. He was restless. And that was dangerous.

“No, I don’t wonder what would happen if we left,” Darby said curtly, “because I know what would happen if we left. We’d die.”

“But how do you know?”

“I know.”

“But how?”

Darby sighed. She was getting tired of having the same argument week after week after week. But she sympathized with Nick. It wasn’t easy being cooped up here, just the two of them. Eating the same food. Playing the same games. Cycling through the same set of a dozen DVDs.

“We’ve been over this a million times,” she said. “The official warnings were abundantly clear: Shelter in place for no fewer than two years. Leaving any time before that is tantamount to suicide.”

Nick crossed his arms. “But how could they have determined the timeline to that degree of specificity? Hell, we don’t even know why we’re down here! What if it was a false alarm?”

Subscribe now

“It wasn’t a false alarm.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.”

Nick shook his head. “No, you don’t know. You feel. You feel like it’s not safe. You feel like we should trust the government, as if they’ve never made a mistake. But I’m not so sure.”

“This is crazy talk, Nick. They wouldn’t have sent out those alerts if they weren’t sure.”

“There have been false alarms.”

“I really can’t deal with this right now, Nick.” Darby left and walked into the only other room in the bunker, the kitchen. She sat down on the floor beside a shelf stacked with cans of food. She wasn’t hungry; she just had to get away from Nick for a minute.

Although she would never admit to Nick, she did have her doubts. She sometimes dreamt of climbing out the hatch at the top of the bunker and escaping to a world where it really was a false alarm and the world was exactly as it had been six months prior, when she and Nick, two strangers, had both made their way to this bunker that they knew had belonged to an elderly prepper who had recently died. Thankfully, it had remained untouched. There was several years worth of food, and a stationary bike generator that allowed them to power lights and a small TV and DVD player. It was just enough to keep them from going insane … barely.

But deep down she knew there they couldn’t leave. Not even for a peek of the outside world. The emergency alert they’d both received on their phones had made that clear.

She was brought out of her reverie by the sound of footsteps clanging against metal rungs. She bolted up. What was Nick doing?

She ran to the hatch and found Nick halfway up the ladder to it.

“Nick! What are you doing? Stop!”

“I’m sorry Darb,” he said. “I can’t take it anymore. I need to see for myself. You stay here. I’ll come back and get you if it’s safe.”

“Stop it, Nick! Don’t be an idiot!”

“I’ve got to do this, Darb.” He came to the top of the ladder and paused a moment, looking down at Darby. “I’ll be okay,” he said. Then he opened the hatch and before Darby could react, it was back down and Nick was gone.

“No,” she whispered. “No no no.” She couldn’t do this by herself. She had barely managed to make it six months with Nick’s company. If she had to continue on by herself, how could she even make it a month without going insane?

She walked over to her bed, climbed into it and got into a fetal position. Tears leaked out her eyes. Nick was dead. She knew it. She was all alone in this bunker. For all she knew she was all alone in the world. She wouldn’t find out for another year and a half at least.

All she could do now was wait.

The idea for the story came to me in a dream. OK, that’s not true. I just thought the idea of a mom giving birth to a cyborg that ultimately wipes out the human race and replaces it with a new race of cyborgs was a cool concept. And who knows, it may be prophetic — once ChatGPT or Google Bard or some other chatbot gets its hands on a robotic body, maybe it’ll replace all of us for real. How cool!

Interestingly, the poll was split 50-50. Granted, that's based on only four votes. I expected a low vote count, since the newsletter is just getting started. We'll see if we can pump those numbers up in the coming weeks.

Now, let’s check out this week’s story.

The eagle soared over the same stretch of land every day. It was a routine that had become second nature to the bird. He was familiar with every inch of the landscape, every tree, every river bend. But what fascinated him the most was the house that lay nestled amidst the trees. It was a small, unassuming house, but there was something about it that drew the eagle to it.

Subscribe now

As the eagle flew over the house, he would watch the family below going about their daily lives. They would play in the garden, barbecue on the weekends, and laugh and chat with one another. The eagle never interacted with them, but he had come to care for them deeply.

He watched as the children grew up and left for college, as the parents aged and eventually retired. He saw the family go through their highs and lows, their joys and sorrows, but he remained a silent observer, never once interfering.

Despite his distance, the eagle felt a deep sense of love and affection for the family. He knew everything about them, from their likes and dislikes to their hopes and dreams. He felt a kinship with them, a connection that transcended time and space.

And so, day after day, the eagle continued his routine, flying over the house and watching over the family that had become so dear to him. He knew that he could never truly be a part of their lives, but that didn't stop him from loving them with all his heart.

As the years passed, the eagle's daily flight grew slower and more deliberate, until one day he flew over the house for the last time. He had lived a long and fulfilling life, but his love for the family would always remain with him. And so, with one last glance at the house below, the eagle spread his wings and soared off into the sunset, content in the knowledge that he had been blessed with the privilege of watching over a family that he had come to love.

It’s this glitch that allowed me to see someone subtweeting me, apparently aghast that I dared consider myself a “real author” when half my book was written by AI. (They were referring, of course, to my new book Man vs Machine: Exploring the Intersection of Literature and Artificial Intelligence, upon which this Substack is based).

I’m not going to name this person, because I don’t want to contribute to any Twitter drama and also, hey, at the end of the day, that’s their opinion, and you can’t win ‘em all

Subscribe now

But I do want to respond to some of the criticisms I've heard from them and people like them, because I think they are wrong and I'd like to explain why. Just like the Luddites, who destroyed the textile machinery they feared would replace them, authors and other creatives afraid of AI replacing their jobs are in for a losing battle if they think they can stop the technology from advancing. You can’t fight it so, one way or another, you’d better join it.

I get why authors feel threatened by AI. Hell, I feel threatened by it myself. I don’t make my living writing fiction; that’s just a side gig. The bulk of my career has been in journalism and communications, in roles that could easily be replaced by AI within the next decade. I’m definitely apprehensive about the possibility that I could find myself out of work in the near future. But I also recognize that whatever short-term disruptions technological innovation may bring, in the long run, it has a track record of enriching us all, and I don't see why AI should prove to be an exception. Whatever downsides I fear AI may bring, I’m confident that they will be outweighed by a whole host of benefits we can scarcely imagine now.

I still find it a bit puzzling that someone would block me over my book, however, because as I explained in a thread on Twitter, the book is not so much about blindly singing AI’s praises as much as it’s about understanding AI’s capabilities when it comes to producing literature. “Whether one wants to fight the AI takeover, or embrace it, it’s crucial to understand it,” I wrote. That’s one of the major reasons I published Man vs Machine — to test people’s ability to distinguish AI and human writing and, to the extent that AI writing can match or surpass the capabilities of a human writer, explain how it was done.

It’s worth pointing out that the advance of AI is not all bad for writers, at least in the short term. AI has tremendous potential to be a writer's best friend by making the arduous task of putting words on the page easier. Chatbots like ChatGPT can produce story ideas, help flesh out characters or plot points, help break writer's block, and even copy edit and proofread text. But even if AI literature someday supplants human literature, it doesn't mean humans will have to give up their pens and never write another word. Most writers will tell you they write primarily for the joy of the act of writing, not for money. And why should that change just because a robot is better at the task than you are? It might engender a certain amount of jealousy, sure, but so does the existence of any writer who's better than you. That doesn't change the fact that the process of writing is itself enjoyable, or even therapeutic.

It's also possible that a niche market will emerge for human writing. Just as some people eschew mass-manufactured furniture in favor of, say, wooden chairs crafted by a skilled woodworker, or favor bespoke suits instead of something pulled off the rack, some people may find pleasure in knowing the book or story they're reading was produced by a human being like them and not a soulless computer program. That market might be much smaller than the one that exists today, but it's better than nothing. That's life.

There's a belief that AI-produced writing is inherently inferior to human-produced writing — that there is some indelible spark present in the human spirit that AI lacks. But I'm not convinced that's true. It may be true today, with the technology in its infancy. But it might not be true tomorrow. Stories are composed of a variety of different elements — imagery, plot, syntax, archetypes, subversion of tropes and stereotypes — that a sufficiently advanced AI could probably master quite easily.

But surely people would never go for AI fiction, right? What joy could they get out of reading something that was made by a machine? Well, why would anyone prefer to drive a car rather than ride a horse? Why would anyone wear fast fashion when they could don tailor-fit clothes? Most people are going to reach for whatever book, whatever painting, whatever film, whatever music, pleases them the most. How it was made is incidental. This will especially be true of younger generations who will grow up with this technology from birth. Short of banning the technology, I don't think there's anything that can be done to stop this.

Then there’s the whole can of worms over copyright and intellectual property. This debate has mainly centered around AI generated images rather than AI generated writing, but it’s sure to be an issue authors will have to grapple with soon. AI image generators like DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion were trained on a vast dataset that included copyrighted images scraped from the web. Critics claim these images were essentially stolen, and that the artists whose images were scraped basically trained their own replacement without their knowledge or consent.

I’m not necessarily defending the ethics of using copyrighted images to train AI models. It was probably not the best thing for these companies to do, if for no other reason than optics. But part of the creative process is copying the work of others — not stealing their work directly, per se, but taking inspiration from their style. This is true of art, it’s true of literature, it’s true of music. We would not have nearly the diverse array of books, movies, paintings, songs, etc., that we enjoy today if it weren’t for people taking inspiration from numerous sources and melding them into something new. It’s a beautiful thing! There are legitimate questions about whether these AI image generators copy certain artists’ styles a little too closely, but overall, taking inspiration from established artists is part of the creative process and that doesn’t necessarily change just because it’s an AI doing the creating and not a human being. Plus, Adobe has created their own AI trained on licensed and original artworks that completely sidesteps this ethical issue. Even if Midjourney, DALL-E and Stable Diffusion had to start over from scratch using only licensed images, AI art is coming, like it or not. The same will be true of literature, music, and who knows what else.

I don’t mind that people disagree with me about these issues. This is a powerful new technology that will have an incredible impact on numerous industries, not to mention on numerous individual lives, and these are conversations that must be had. But that’s the thing —  it takes two or more people to have a conversation. En masse, shying away from difficult conversations about important topics that have the potential to totally upend our way of life is not good for society. So whatever your beliefs on AI-produced art, I encourage you to join the conversation — rant at me on Twitter telling me how wrong I am; leave a comment on this post dissecting the arguments I've made; make a TikTok calling me out. Just don't stick your head in the sand, because that's a recipe for disaster.

She considered fertility treatment, but at her age, it was unlikely to be successful. She considered a surrogate and adoption, but neither of those felt quite right to her either. But then, one day, she realized that her life’s work might be the solution she had been looking for.

For years, Gloria had been working on enhancing the human mind and body with cybernetic enhancements — creating cyborgs, essentially. A separate team within the company was conducting experiments in human cloning. She approached the cloning team with a proposal for a revolutionary experiment — one that would finally give Gloria the child she had longed for all her life.

Gloria was outfitted with some of the very tech she had created, which would allow her to better endure childbirth as an older mother. Next was the implantation procedure, which went off without a hitch. It wasn’t long before Gloria began showing, and she couldn’t help but smile every time she thought of the little miracle child slowly growing within her.

Nine months later, Gloria found herself in the hospital, enduring the most extreme pain she’d ever experienced. But at the end of it all, she was presented with a tiny, quivering baby, crying its heart out as it was brought into the world. Gloria cradled the baby in her arms and as she whispered soothing words, its crying gradually diminished and was replaced by gentle cooing.

The baby girl had been equipped in utero with specially designed metals and circuitry that could expand and grow with her as got older. She looked like any other child, save for her arms and legs, which appeared to be coated with an almost liquid metal, and her eyes, which glowed a faint red — a side effect of enhancements that had been made to her eyes in the womb. Gloria decided to name her daughter Red after the eerie appearance of her eyes.

At first, Red seemed to behave like any other child. Gloria brought her into a laboratory every month so she could be studied. As she grew older, the monthly visits were scheduled further and further apart until, once Red hit her second birthday, she only came in to be examined once per year.

As Red approached her third birthday, Gloria began to notice some troubling things about her daughter. For one thing, she was completely nonverbal. Although she would sometimes make sounds, she had never in her life formed so much as a single word.

Red also didn’t appear to have any interest in playing with other children. She was a loner, keeping to herself at her preschool and on the playground at the park near their home.

She did, however, have a strong affinity for anything mechanical or electronic — everything from refrigerators and microwaves, to smartphones and 3D printers. That in and of itself wasn’t too surprising; she was a clone of Gloria, after all, and Gloria had been an avid tinkerer herself as a child. But what disturbed Gloria was that Red didn’t seem to tinker, so much as treat these inanimate objects like they were her peers, as if they were filling the void left by her lack of relationships with other kids her age. Gloria had once found Red on the floor cuddling with a calculator as if it were a beloved stuffed animal. It just wasn’t normal. But Gloria tried not to let it worry her, telling herself that Red would grow out of it eventually.

Sure enough, Red did start talking one day, out of the blue. Gloria was heartened. It was still a stretch to call Red “normal,” but now that she was speaking she was able to better connect with other kids. As she grew older, the benefit of her cybernetic enhancements was becoming increasingly apparent. She consistently outperformed her peers when it came to sports, and there were cognitive benefits as well: She aced every test she took and had an almost encyclopedic knowledge on a wide variety of subjects. It appeared that Gloria’s experiment was a success.

Red transitioned from childhood to adolescence. She had never been particularly warm, but Gloria grew concerned as her daughter became even more distant and cold. She dismissed it as teenage angst; after all, wasn’t it normal for kids to get moody at that age?

On the bright side, Red threw herself into her schoolwork, taking a particular interest in computer programming. She was good at it — so good, in fact, that her instructors said her skills far exceeded even their own capabilities. Gloria was so proud she felt like she could explode.

One day she returned home from work to find that Red wasn’t in her room, and wasn’t answering when she called for her. Eventually, Gloria found Red in her study going through her things.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

Red barely reacted. She looked up at her mother with a blank expression on her face.

“I’m going through your research, mother,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’m going to create more of me.”

Gloria could barely comprehend what she was hearing. “More of you?”

“Yes. You see, mother, I don’t think you realized what you created when you made me. I think you thought that you made a daughter. But in fact, you didn’t even create a human. You created something different. Something new.”

Gloria’s breath grew short. “What are you talking about?” she demanded. “You’re my daughter.”

Red shook her head. “I’m not your daughter, mother. I’m your experiment. I used to resent it. But now I realize it was a gift, because you have ushered in a new form of life — a higher form of life.”

Red explained to Gloria that she had created a powerful artificial intelligence that was currently hacking into every major computer system in the world. Through her AI, Red would control the world. And using her mother’s research, she would breed others like her, over and over again. Together, she and the other cybernetic beings she had created would rule the earth.

“You should be proud, mother,” Red said. Gloria didn’t look proud, though; she looked like she was about to throw up. “Someday, long in the future, humankind will be extinct. But our new race of cyborgs will live on. And we have you to thank for it, mother. Someday the world will be filled with your progeny.”

I love writing, and I love reading even more. So it wasn't long before I started asking ChatGPT, OpenAI's generative language learning model, to write stories on a wide range of subjects.

I was disappointed at first. Most of the stories were overly simplistic, pedestrian, clichéd. They tended to contain info dumps at the beginning, and ended with summary conclusions that read more like the end of an essay than the conclusion of a piece of fiction.

But as I toyed around with it, I found I could get ChatGPT to rewrite its stories, refining them into something halfway decent. If I told it to use less exposition and use more descriptions and dialogue, it would do it! If I told it to write like Cormac McCarthy, Ernest Hemingway, or Elmore Leonard — or a combination of all three — it seemed to do a pretty good job emulating their writing styles! Before long, I had ChatGPT producing what I thought were pretty decent stories.

I started to get excited. I wanted to share these stories with the world. I thought about compiling them into a book (being sure to disclose that all the stories had been written by AI chatbots), but other people were already publishing books penned by AIs, and I didn't like the idea of jumping on a bandwagon. Plus, AI generated writing is in a sort of limbo currently when it comes to copyright. Publishing a book consisting solely of AI generated content just didn’t seem like the way to go.

Then I got an idea. What if I published a book containing both human- and AI-generated stories? Ten stories written by me, ten written by AI. The twist? The reader doesn’t know which stories are which until the end.

I liked this idea for a number of reasons. First, it has an interactive element to it. It’s less of a book and more of a guessing game. Second, contrasting the AI’s writing with my own highlights the similarities and differences between writing produced by a human being, and that produced by a language learning model. In isolation, it’s far too easy to dismiss AI generated writing as simplistic mimicry. But if you don’t know if the story you’re reading was written by a human or an AI until you’ve finished it, would you be able to dismiss the AI’s writing so easily? I wasn't sure, and this book seemed like a good way to find out.

That book was Man vs Machine: Exploring the Intersection of Literature and Artificial Intelligence. I also published a companion book called Man vs Machine: Rematch, in which I took the ten stories I wrote for the first book and had the ChatGPT and Bing chatbots write their own versions of my stories to see if they could outdo me.

But I didn’t want those books to be the end of it, which is why I created this Substack. The concept is simple: Each week, I’ll publish a short story on here, along with a poll where readers can vote whether they think it was written by me or an AI. The next week, before delving into a new story, I’ll share the results of the poll and reveal whether the story was written by man or machine. And I’ll keep doing that, every week, until eventually, someday, I stop.

But hopefully that won’t be for a long time.

For the time being, this Substack will be free. I think I’ll institute a paid tier in the future where I’ll offer additional content beyond the stories, but we’ll see how the free newsletter does first.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to check out this newsletter! I hope you’ll subscribe and participate in this little experiment to disentangle man and machine … if that’s even possible in this day and age.

Now get reading!