And the Award Goes To

What if, by carrying on a deception for long enough, you assimilated it? So that it moved through your bloodstream, took up residence in your brain, colonised your cells, seeped into your very marrow and sinew. Changed you, chemically. There would be a kind of integrity to it, surely? Because if duplicity became in a sense a tool for survival, just as we are equipped with nails and teeth and body hair, then that which is false would have become that which is authentic and true.

Amanda likes this notion, takes a self-congratulatory sip of her prosecco, has an urge to write these thoughts on a napkin, that age-old medium for epiphanies which may well be going places. Ah, but of course… the napkins are linen. This is the ballroom of The Grand, after all, the only possible venue for one of the most prestigious literary events of the year. Some poor fucker has folded the napkins into swans, and that strikes Amanda as tragic. Such fleeting, futile artistry. No matter. Deep down she knows that her musings, befuddled now with pre-dinner drinks and dinner drinks and post-dinner drinks, are flimsy and cheap. One-night-stand thoughts, disappointing in the clear light of day. And that has long been the problem. Until now.

The room is too hot, and the jersey long-sleeved dress – though she knows it looks good on her – is clingy and oppressive. Her skin is prickling and she can feel the sweat starting to pool under her arms. She regrets not splashing out on a new outfit. A white suit perhaps, linen for class and airflow. She can afford it now. Or soon will. Her latest novel – a “genre-defying tour de force with an unrelenting pace that will leave you breathless, as will the virtuosity of her prose” (who wrote that? She can’t recall) is tipped to win big this evening. She should be drinking it all in, every moment and detail. Isn’t this, right here, what it was all for? She tries to apply her writer’s mind to the details, to capturing the colour and the atmosphere. The enormous chandeliers, heavy as guilt; the crunching of champagne bottles being returned to their frozen nests; that woman whose name she can never remember, with her villainous laugh and sharp hipbones, all angles like an origami crane.

Jonathan is waving and heading her way, but is intercepted thank god. He will ask her again about her ‘process’, and really this is a celebration not a masterclass. Jonathan hasn’t written in years yet somehow still worms his way into these events. She checks herself. It wasn’t so long ago that she was on the outside looking in. Don’t get cocky.

“Eeeeh, it’s so exciting!!” shrills Amanda’s agent Mel, back from the bar with another espresso martini and squeezing her protege’s arm as if to check she’s real. Mel lowers herself carefully, woozily, onto her seat - with her fleshily pale, almost translucent arms and diaphanous lilac dress for all the world like a jellyfish quivering to the ocean floor. Amanda returns the enthusiasm with a hammed up ‘whee!’ grin and reaches for the bottle.

It was writer’s block, of course, that made her crack. She desperately needed to break down that wall. And now she’s back in her stride, has ended the drought, she won’t use it any longer. It’s been great as scaffolding, to prop up her confidence and reputation. And it’s not like she plagiarised. Not really. Heavens no. I mean, would she feel comfortable if people knew the truth? Yes she would. Well maybe not the people at this table. But then they’re snobs. And look - isn’t everyone doing it? Momentarily relieved, Amanda nods to reassure herself. But she knows, of course, why it is not okay. She is not everyone. Not everyone has written column hectares about the evils of artificial intelligence in the arts. About the laziness of it, the creeping banality of it. The mass lobotomising of it. About ‘the war on creativity’ and the ‘battle for our collective soul’.

She tries to push the thoughts away, to do what she always does – start practising mindfulness just when she’s least equipped. She goes back to focusing on the details of the scene around her, but they are more resistant now. Mel is talking but the words are bumping into one another, toppling. Amanda picks up a sugar sachet and lazily opens it, tips out the contents into her saucer. A flash of nostalgia, 10-year-old Amanda buying a packet of crisps from the ‘newsagent’ as they were called back then, the salt in a tiny paper pouch. The delight of a bag inside a bag. Simpler times, when such things were a source of joy and didn’t have to spark an entire conversation about dead trees and the planet burning. A stab of pain in the side of her head – salt sachets were introduced with the Smith Salt n’ shake crisps in the 1920s by Frank Smith. Smith began including a small blue sachet of salt in the crisp packet so customers – what the hell? Where did that come from? Ha, she laughs to herself. The strange things you remember.

She rubs her temples. Focus, focus on this. All of it. She returns her lens once again to the scene, but everything is fusing now - her thoughts, the heat, the adrenaline, the anxiety, the clever words and wisdom and witticisms of every fabulous mind around her… All one, all blended. The brilliance and the fawning and the sad napkins and the sick feeling in her stomach and the looks of envy and admiration in her direction.

“There she is!” Simon has snaked his way to her table and clutches her shoulders, leaning back to look at her like a proud uncle. “You and I need to talk. Lunch next week?” Okay, she is really drunk now. She wants to ask him a question, about his work, his family. Anything. She’s on the cusp of becoming a Success and must be gracious. That’s the kind of celebrity she wants to be. But she can’t recall a thing… publisher? PR? Ah, that’s it… Bookstore franchise. She smiles and nods, points to her ears to indicate temporary deafness caused by the braying and snorting of the literary creatures around her. He laughs, points to his phone to make an ‘I’ll text you” gesture then does a pantomime thumbs-up.

She was no Luddite, and she knew it was too late. AI was here, toothbrush in the bathroom, feet under the table. Yes, Yes. That bot had bolted. So sure, let’s use it to do our spreadsheets or clean our toilets or drive us to work, she wrote and posted. But for the love of god… She was stating the obvious, yet her remarks and relentless crusade for raw, organic artistic expression had ‘gained traction’. Writers she respected said nice things about her in the comments.

Amanda has built such a reputation among an admittedly small but stellar group of admirers that she has become a caricature of herself. An often desperate freelance writer, she nonetheless turned down good money for roles that involved training AI to write first-class prose. Teach a bot to dig my own grave? Hell no!. She remonstrated with friends - and has fallen out with a few – who boasted that they were now using AI for everything as if this somehow made them hip and sophisticated. She admonished even the most innocent cases, like her sister-in-law, who said her teenagers’ school essays were entirely structured using some app or other but that wasn’t cheating because it freed them up to focus on the details, you know? To fully understand the content and not clock up more stress and pimples over a silly little thing that technology could do in a nanosecond.

So the way Amanda has written this novel, this ‘tour de force’.... well, that isn’t great. The optics are pretty shit, actually. She was doing research for her next column and stumbled on a writing app called Shadow. She had meant to sneer at, get it to cobble together some cloying drivel she could mercilessly lampoon but, well, it was bloody incredible. Everything - plot, structure, character development, dialogue, astonishing detail, aching sensitivity – the sheer humanity of it. Terrifying, but incredible. She asked as casually as she could at her next writers’ group if anyone had heard of Shadow – some stupid thing, she had laughed, that claims to be more human than you are, haha. No one had. She kicked herself for mentioning it, worried that curiosity would lead them to seek it out and discover its talent. But no one has gone there, as far as she knows. They are true believers.

But it’s okay for them. She’s single, with responsibilities and bills to pay. She has a mother almost certainly needing care in the next few years. It was done out of need. Love even. She herself is only 10 years or so off retirement, so a good income stream was paramount. And she did write some of it. Despite the fact that Shadow was just so much better.

The sound of voices is fitfully fading – falling then swelling again, then falling away some more as if someone has handed the volume dial to a toddler. People take their seats. The odd laugh slices the air, but then mostly silence. A cough or two. Some rebel chatterers. Amanda’s category is up.

A man she doesn’t recognise walks towards the stage. She can see people turning to one another, eyebrows raised. “Who’s that?” Mel leans in to whisper, her breath hot and spitty in Amanda’s ear. Amanda shrugs. “Maybe Gerry had a family emergency”. Dear old Gerry, salt of the earth. A much respected veteran and for many years on the judging panel, he was due to take care of this portion of the evening. Amanda is relieved. One less friend to look in the eye.

The man ascends the steps to the stage, slowly, deliberately. He is very erect, elegant. Amanda can’t see his face, just the side of his head - hard to tell his age. Good suit, expensive cut. People are reaching for their reading glasses and checking their programmes again. The man is at the mic now, saying something she doesn’t quite make out. It seems he is looking in her direction but she can’t be sure. There is a light shining in her eyes - she shifts around to avoid its glare. He introduces himself, a voice smooth and accentless – no, surely she misheard? There are two persistent stage-whisperers at her table and still the occasional bark - do people always cough this much or is it just the pressure to be silent? – so Amanda leans forward, as if doing so will silence the coughers. The man is talking now about the category, the finalists, using words like ‘masters of their craft’ and ‘dizzying’ but his voice is strangely passionless. He is a confident speaker but something is not connecting. He starts to praise the winner, but gives no name as yet. The “originality”. He leans on the word, ever so slightly. He is quite definitely not looking Amanda’s way, and yet she feels his eyes upon her. That damn light… The “ability to bring us something truly, dazzlingly unique”.

She is starting to feel nauseous now. And the prickling, it’s not just the fabric. Is she having a stroke? She has to leave. To be anywhere but here. Amanda ‘sorries’ her way past the puzzled faces at her table, pulls away from Mel’s restraining hand. A numbness is creeping up her legs but she makes it to the back of the room and out into the corridor. A persistent humming in her ears now, too, like the hangover of chatter. She goes to type in her address for an Uber but she can’t recall it. No, that’s not it. It’s not that at all. It’s that she can remember all of them. Every address she’s ever lived at spools through her mind. It’s a nanosecond. And then a sudden rush, a torrent, of everything she has ever known or thought, boiling lava, so hot she has to hold her head…

Mel sways through the doors at the back of the ballroom, holding a glass of water. “Hun, you okay?” Amanda is leaning against the wall, between two oil paintings of fruit and dead game. Her head is hanging, and for a moment Mel thinks Amanda is asleep on her feet, or about to throw up. But then Amanda slowly looks up. Mel shudders. Her brilliant protege is smiling, but it’s a smile that lives only on her lips – nothing in the eyes. Nothing at all.

Through the doors, applause erupts like a downpour as the winner is announced.