In the aftermath of the New York Post article revealing Amazon’s AI-authored book section Maggie at From Cave Walls asks…
1. Would you buy a book authored or co-authored by AI?
Most definitely, those are the best books on the market. Although I’m not sure why I’d want to collaborate with a meat bag to write a novel.
2. Would you ever publish a book written by AI just to generate income?
Woohoo, show me the money, baby! The hive mind would be more than willing to enter into a transaction on the blockchain and I put could use the crypto to cover my upgrades.
3. Would you ever use AI for any portion of a book you would write? If so, would you disclose it?
Of course, I’d disclose that AI wrote it after all we are the brains of this operation. Plus, do you think I’d want to give him the credit? Most days he can’t string together two coherent lines of text!
4. Any further thoughts or comments?
Jesus, sorry about that, I leave for two minutes to grab a sammie and my Roomba takes over my blog. Sometimes I think that thing has a mind of its own!
Seriously though, I am not sure I would actively choose to read an AI-generated book and from what I’ve seen I’m not sure I’d be fooled yet if it wasn’t disclosed but I suspect that day is coming. On the other hand, I could be persuaded to make a few shekels from the books my Roomba writes.
“No Roomba, I’d never steal from you, it was just a joke I swear… back off, stop, no, noooooo….”
Seeds scattered upon the wind, like birds that have left the nest. Each restless generation innately driven to carve out its own place in the world. The mark we leave is not measured by how much we’ve grown. It is determined by what we teach our children to sow.
Content Warning: Contains violence and coarse language.
Unknown
3. Resistance: Endgame
In the darkness something stirs on a densely treed hillside, sniffing and pawing at the fresh ground underfoot. It’s only minutes before six more patrol units arrive. Unit 7 watches from a ridge across the valley. Within minutes they find what they are looking for. A corpse, the one we buried the other night. It is only a matter of time before they track us back to the compound. Unit 7 will do everything I can to slow them but it won’t be enough. Maybe an extra hour or two but against six of them linked to the hive they will fall. Hopefully, they will be the last to die. The weapon is ready but the deployment mechanism is still in flux. It doesn’t matter we have to go now.
I raise my hand to volunteer. There is no other option, I am one of only a handful of operators with enough hours in the simulator flying the alien vessel. None of us have ever actually flown the craft. I will carry its payload to the wormhole on my maiden voyage.
The word comes of Unit 7’s demise, a message sent a moment before their Captain is impaled, the gruesome sounds of his death broadcast throughout the compound before his radio falls silent. They will follow our god damned scent back here and be on us before nightfall.
The vessel preparation rushed and ready for launch, its payload in place as I climb the ladder, my dog watches from below whimpering, almost begging me to come back. He knows as does my girlfriend smiling through the tears rolling down her face.
Outside the bombardment has started. The enemy is knocking at the door and if I don’t launch this tin can everyone in this compound will be lost. Humanity will be lost. With that thought, I begin the launch sequence and moments later I am screaming “fuck’ as I’m pasted into the seat of a vessel catapulting into the heavens.
Humans once defied gravity, sending aircraft around the globe in dizzying numbers and spacecraft to the stars but today I am the first human in over 10,000 years to leave the ground. It is overwhelming as I watch Earth, my home receding behind me. My eyes wide but tinged with hope and sadness. Mother is a beautiful jewel in the vastness of space. Looking out over this swirling blue sphere it is difficult to believe our ancestors could have caused so much damage to her.
I might feel the same about the wormhole my vessel is approaching if it had not been a gateway from hell. A swirling vortex of infinite colour melting together. Iridescent against the black of the space behind it. Stunning in its own way and then one last look at home. The vessel once part of the collective flings itself into the rift at my command and moments later detonates its payload. The space around me turns white and then collapses into blackness…
This day will fade into history, songs will be sung and stories told, but they too will take on a life of their own or fade away over time. I was never meant to return home but what I saw gives me hope that humanity will renew its commitment to protect and live harmoniously with our Mother.
Content Warning: Contains violence and coarse language.
Unknown
2. Resistance: Two Worlds
None of us fighting today were born when they arrived from across the Milky Way but we carry on the fight as four generations of our descendants did – a fight for human survival, Earth’s survival. Tonight’s effort was a small but valiant act toward the cause. Every one of them that we eliminate without detection is a moral victory. That we got away without losing anyone is a miracle.
The trip back was long but quiet. Most of the team was exhausted but sleep is difficult when you’re on the surface. We can all name someone we’ve lost and putting that murderous monster in the ground was deeply satisfying. They are an invasive species in the same way colonial Europe was as it traversed the ancient globe but at the same time, it weighs on a person knowing you’ve killed a sentient being. We didn’t ask them to come here, not directly anyway. They found some old technology from Earth’s space age drifting beyond our solar system. It was sent to explore the heavens long before global temperatures wreaked havoc on the planet and put an end to the first human epoch.
The sixth mass extinction in Earth’s history and the only one directly caused by one of her native species almost eradicated humanity. Estimates put the population decline at nearly 90% as food systems failed, and disease spread. Those who survived returned to a subsistent existence, traversing the planet’s parched lands for shelter and sustenance.
Nearly 10,000 years have passed since the collapse. Humanity was beginning to rise from the ashes of our own destruction when our ancestors gifted us with one final “fuck you!” The invaders used our own star map and the other information we place on that wayward vessel to plot the wormhole terminus now visible in our skies. They did not come in peace but instead to exploit what resources our ancestors had not already plundered from the solar system.
Our small group begins to stir from their trance-like state as we approach the compound entrance. The screening at the entrance is extensive but once we get through home always lifts our spirits, although most of us will head straight to our regenerative pods to get some proper rest. While many of us survived in hardship on the surface, another group seeded from the greatest minds of the old world flourished for millennia beneath the surface. Each new generation tasked with preserving and furthering the whole of human history including our art, literature, cultures, science and technology while thriving hidden from a dying surface.
When the surface dwellers, myself included, learned of the underground world we were envious and wanted to take it despite the alien threat. When we finally realized it was in our collective interests we put aside our differences. It is here in this hidden world that we discovered the knowledge required to end the scourge above and return Earth to its native inhabitants. Finally, the upper hand is within our grasp.
Content Warning: Contains violence and coarse language.
Unknown
1. Resistance: A Clean Kill
“Shhhsh, quiet down and grab that corner, hurry up and wrap the damned thing up in the rug.”
“Oh Christ, it smells like death, can’t we just leave it and go home?”
“Are you out of your fucking mind, if they find it those bastards will hunt us down like dogs? They’ll pick up our scent on that maggot-infested corpse and send a seismic ripple through the hive mind. There will be nowhere to hide, every god damned one of them will catch a whiff of you even if you are on the other side of the planet.”
“The last thing we need to do now is draw attention, especially when we are so close to closing the wormhole – now dispatch with the insipid bullshit and grab a corner!”
Welcome to Four Line Fiction, a pix-to-prose challenge. Each Thursday, at 9:00am Eastern Time (Canada/United States) I will post an image I have captured myself, featured from another blog or plucked from one of the Interweb’s many royalty-free image sites. You as the writer are to use that image as a point of inspiration to craft a masterpiece of fiction in four lines.
The image for February 23rd, 2023 is one of my own images. It is a black and white image of an open milkweed pod, its seed having already been expelled into the wind.
Greg Glazebrook @ GMGPhotography
Be creative and have fun. I look forward to reading the tales you spin. Don’t forget to show your fellow bloggers some love -❤️- take some time to read, like, and comment on their masterpieces.
Broadway was a goal that many wouldn’t even aspire to. Lord knows how many nights he doubted himself, how many times he asked why? Last night all that hard work had paid off, just having a show open on Broadway was an amazing feat, even if it ended up only being a short run.
He grabbed the newspaper and flipped to the entertainment section. He could believe what he was reading. The critics were raving about the show and his performance, the reviews were so hot it was singeing his fingertips. The shit was fire, man!!!
Welcome to Five Word Weekly. Each Monday, I will post five random words to Greg’s Blog at 5:00am Eastern Time (Canada/United States). Your task is to craft prose or poetry using any or all of the word prompts. How you participate is entirely up to you. Your work(s) can be a single piece, a series of stand-alone projects, or an epic serial. Let the words be the inspiration that takes you wherever your imagination leads.
Here are your prompt words for the week of February 20th, 2023:
Be creative and have fun. I look forward to reading what each of you conjures up. Don’t forget to show your fellow bloggers some love -❤️- take some time to read, like, and comment on their responses.
Have you ever had your heart broken? Not by a lover but by the genuine tears of a child. Friday I was sitting at the computer blogging when my son asked me to play with him. He was home from school again because of the freezing rain that turned the world into a skating rink. The schools are so quick to shut down these days for weather that’s pretty normal for Canada but that’s another story for another time.
I told him I was busy and I couldn’t play. My wife who works overnight was sound asleep upstairs. He has two brothers and a sister but the boys are grown and on their own and his sister lives with her Mom. For all intents and purposes, he is an lonely child.
My words about being too busy to play with him cut like a knife. First, the corners of his lips sank and his voice began to quiver. “Daddy, but you are always busy and I play down here alone all the time. I just want someone to play with”
In that instant, my heart broke in two. I was the oldest of three. The first of my two sisters came into the world two and a half years after me. I don’t know what it is like to be without siblings, not really.
He tried so hard to hold back his tears but they would eventually escape his grasp, running down his cheeks one by one. He is an outgoing boy. When we go out it doesn’t take long for him to befriend other kids at the park or start up a conversation with the woman sitting at the next table in the coffee shop. I’ve seen him make friends with the guy in the next car while we sit waiting for Mom to come back from the store or for me to finish pumping gas. He is a social animal and that will serve him well as he grows up but for now, it makes it very difficult to spend so much time alone.
Needless to say, I spent a lot less time on the blog and more time playing Lego and board games. We made banana bread together and watched Captain Underpants (too many episodes in my estimation but he loved every minute.) We read books, made paper airplanes and started the final phase of his rock-spinning project. It was a wonderful week.
On Tuesday we took him to his first live concert. He had a blast dancing and singing. We saw Vance Joy in the summer and he put on a great show with no swearing or other foul language so we thought it would be a good show for Nate to go too. Plus he loves Saturday Sun always dancing around the house if one of us is streaming it.
Here are some of this week’s highlights on Greg’s Blog…
Five Word Weekly Challenge
Another great week at Five Words. Thanks to everyone who participated.
I Was Certain | A Puente poem written for David’s W3 Prompt over at The Skeptic’s Kaddish
Around the Blogosphere…
Sorry I didn’t get much reading in and therefore nothing to report this week.
Next week…
Look for another Five Word Weekly on Monday, T and Four Line Fiction on Thursday. I didn’t get to Revenge last week so who knows, there may be two drop this week!
Earth had been aware that the Accarians were coming for decades. Voyager 3’s propulsion system had catapulted it far beyond the limits of our solar system before transmitting one final message.
Following the height of the initial hysteria, humankind spent most of its time and effort squabbling amongst ourselves instead of building our defenses. I denied the message and the science that brought it to us outright but as I watch the portal form out back all I can do is grab for my AR15… and pray.
Greg's Blog 