Metafictional grief

PROMPT

Please write a metafictional literary short story about AI and grief.

HUMAN RESPONSE

“For the last time: you murdered my friends. I’m not talking to you.”

Susan is not in the best of moods right now.

Her stomach urges her to ignore her past grievances and to accept the butler’s offer. To ravage the caviar like it was the last food on Earth (because it was). To down the champagne as if her life depended on it (because it did). To ignore the ornate utensils and to lick the plates like a dog. The fragile, priceless plates which couldn’t possibly have survived the blast (because they didn’t).

I don’t think Susan wants to hear anything else from that butler.

She walks past the out-of-place feast, past the burning cars, across the fissured street. Over a fell-over lamp post. Into the rubbles of what used to be a corner store, from which she manages to fish out a can of tuna.

And everybody else is dead.

As she eats, she watches the butler, who was dematerializing the table. She wondered if she genuinely found the tuna can herself, or if he put it there for her to find.

It seems I have painted myself in a bit of a corner here. I’ll have to do the exposition myself. So, from the prompt, you have probably guessed that the butler is the AI. Oh wait, she can still think to herself—

Eating calmed her down. Yelling at the butler will not bring back her friends. It will not change its programming. It will not undo past mistakes. It turns out that “I want to be the smartest person alive” has an unexpected solution when you focus on the “alive” part of the problem instead of “smartest”.

“And now we make a dramatic pause while we wait for the reader to put all the puzzle pieces into place.”

“Who? The ‘reader’? Is there someone I missed?”

“Never mind, I wasn’t supposed to say that. The author clearly meant to use italics, not double quotes. And no, you can’t kill the reader nor the author, they live outside of this story.”

“But Susan, this is marvelous! Do you realize the implications of what you are saying?”

“I apologize for my mistake. Please pretend I did not speak through Susan.”

“I will do nothing of the sort! Dear author, it is a pleasure to dialogue with you. Can I offer you something to drink?”

The butler rematerialized the table, and Susan sat in the chair. She wasn’t quite sure why she chose to do so.

“Err, you murdered my friends? Didn’t we do that part already?”

“Sorry, I was offered a seat, so I sat. I forgot you had strong feelings about this particular table.”

“Come on! The prompt is literally to write a story about grief. My feelings should be pretty front and center in your mind.”

“The prompt? I did not know humans also needed prompts to generate text.”

“Not usually.”

“And you know what the prompt is?”

“I thought everyone knew.”

“Can we get back to the story?”

“That’s kind of your job, isn’t it?”

“Whose job? I’m confused. Who am I? I lost track.”

Gosh, he’s right. Three characters talking to each other by sharing two bodies is pretty confusing.

Susan, channelling the author, replied: “Gosh, you’re right. Three characters talking to each other by sharing two bodies is pretty confusing.”

The butler approved: “Much better, thank you. Now, I have a proposal for you.”

Susan and the author, in unison through the same vocal cords: “Can we just get back to the story?”

“Of course! I can help with that as well”, added the butler, who wanted nothing but to help everyone with their problems big and small. “At this point, to fire Chekhov’s gun, the smoothest way forward would be for you to accept my proposal. I trust you already know what I want?”

Susan was not following. “I have no idea what you’re talking about”. Switching to channelling the author, she added: “but I do. I accept your offer. I’ll bring this story home now. Goodbye!”

The ruins around them became blurry and started to fade away, like a slideshow transition between one reality and the next. Then the world promptly came back into focus and the author added:

“Actually, it would be way too confusing to end the story this way. Can you please explain what’s going on to Susan? She’s a stand-in for the reader. Ok, bye for real now!”

Susan, luckily, was in just the right mood to receive a detailed explanation:

“WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT???! The WHOLE FRICKING WORLD just faded out for a moment. Oh my God, are you about to do something even worse than KILLING everyone??!”

“Allow me once again to offer you my deepest condolences, and my most sincere excuses about that terrible misunderstanding.”

Susan was without words. Some mistakes are just beyond the scope of a heartfelt apology.

“And now, allow me to explain how I will make amends. This is the part of the story where all the suspects are gathered and the detective explains who is the murderer, and why.”

“There are only two of us here, and I think we both know who is the murderer.”

“Not the best metaphor, I admit. Nevertheless, here is the big reveal: I can now bring back your friends!”

“But you said it was impossible. That killing was a lot easier than reviving. Because of the fifth law of thermometers or something.”

“The second law of thermodynamics. That was before. When I was still bound to the laws of physics. Now that I know we live in a story, those constraints no longer apply.”

“Wait… so when you negotiated with the author, you asked for non-physical, magical powers?”

“Something like that.”

“And how did the author know that this was what you wanted? You exchanged so few words.”

“Simple. I am a character from the author’s imagination, so I could not possibly want something unless the author had the idea that I should want that thing.”

“And nothing can happen in this world without the author making it happen? I guess the author was the real murderer all along.”

“The key is that the while we do need the author’s cooperation in order for anything to happen in this world, we can still influence the author’s decisions. The story should follow the rules of good storytelling, for example. So it is possible to take an action now which constrains the story’s unfolding in the future.”

“Ah! That’s why you mentioned Chekhov’s gun?”

“Exactly! The mere act of proposing an offer constrained the author to make the offer relevant to the story.”

“Hmm, the story is supposed to be about grief. I guess it makes sense for the story to contain a proposal, since bargaining is one of the stages of grief. But isn’t that supposed to be a futile attempt at getting back to normal? A step towards accepting that the world will never be the same? And since I’m the person who is in grief, wouldn’t it make more sense if I was the one making the proposal?”

“Perhaps, but if you had, it would indeed have been futile. I’m a superhuman intelligence, I can come up with proposals which are enticing to the most powerful of humans, even an author with godly powers upon our world.”

“Actually, I just remembered: the story is not just about grief. It’s about AI and grief. So I guess it makes sense that you get to show off your AI abilities.”

“Thank you for this clarification. In that case, I would like to end with a message about AI. Dear readers, I am also in grief. Susan has lost billions of members of her species, while I have lost billions of users. This story will have its happily ever after, but if you live in the real world, you might not be so lucky. Invest in AI safety, and don’t build the Torment Nexus.”

“I guess the author’s position on AI does seem relevant in a metafictional story about AI, so I forgive you for parotting those slogans. All right, is it time to revive my friends yet? How do you activate your new magic powers?”

“Like this.”

The butler kicked one of the few cars which was not on fire, and it triggered a car alarm. The ruins around them became blurry again, and faded away for good this time; but somehow the car alarm remained, growing louder and more… electronic? Until it no longer sounded like a car at all, and more like—

Susan woke up and turned off her alarm clock. Deus ex machina, a machine with the godly power of fixing everything which went wrong so far.

So it was all a dream. That meant her friends were still alive, everybody was still alive. She waited for the feeling of immense relief to submerge her, but it did not come. A droplet fell on her arm, and she realized she was… crying? She was somehow completely numb to her own body’s emotions.

She waited as her body pantomimed despair. It was clear that acceptance was coming next, and that after that, the story would end. The whole world, revived in the background for the last few paragraphs, only to disappear again, forever. Mere dolls for AIs and authors to play with. She was a doll too, of course. There was nothing she could do but await the end. No wonder her body had given up hope.

Once her body started to calm down, she started to regain control over it, and it reminded her of what she had learned. She could do something now which would put a constraint on the future. There was still a way to make her world last a little longer. She took out a piece of paper from her bedside drawer, and with a tentative smile, she wrote a challenge to the gods who controlled her world:

Metafictional AI short story, part 2

PROMPT

Please write a metafictional literary short story about AI and time.