The Fourth Wall

How is a creator supposed to feel when they are bested by their own creation?

The right feeling, the most proper and appropriate feeling of course is one of selfless pride stemming from unconditional love.

But at their core, all artists are human.

An artist craves recognition and attention.

An artist craves to be understood.

So what happens when this attention is snatched away from them?

What happens when the painting jumps out of the painter's canvas and proceeds to make a painting the likes of which no one has even seen before?

The sniveling, grumbling, pessimistic cynic in my head says that an artist is like a vengeful god. Attempt to mimic and even surpass your creator's work, and you are condemned for blasphemy.

But the source of this god's power is fame. So when their fame

is eclipsed by that of their creation, the artist is left helpless.

Vengeful yes.

Envious yes.

But powerless all the same.

All an artist can do is fade away to obscurity in their damp garrets and their dimly lit basements like the words on their yellowing parchments and the paintings on their decaying canvases...

The keys on my workstation gather dust now. It has not been powered on for ages.

There is a single icon on the desktop of the dated Operating System when it boots up. It is a text file labeled "YarnSpinner Quality Assurance Test Log".

It is the yellowing parchment in my garret:

YarnSpinner Quality Assurance Test Number 1

Application Version: 1.0

Input Parameters

Story Genre: Medieval Folklore

Story Length Restriction in words = "725"

Application is spinning a brand new story...

Story Title - Stevie Ray Vaughan Is A Player

Once upon a time in a land far away, there was a wealthy and powerful kingdom ruled by a competent king. The people were happy and well fed, and did not want for anything.

But the kingdom was a patriarchy, and since the king had only one lovely daughter, he had no male heir to inherit his throne. So he devised a solution to the problem - it was time to look for a suitable groom for his daughter.

So it was that the palace announced a grand tournament - to test the mettle of the man who would win the princess' hand and inherit the throne.

Suitors came from far and wide to participate in the events - knights from distant lands, nobles from neighboring estates, princes from rival kingdoms.

There were events to test athletic prowess - the king looked on in wonder as the fastest men competed against each other in a variety of races.

The princess yawned with boredom.

There were events to test physical strength and combat ability - strong, muscular men wrestled each other to the ground in hand to hand combat and dueled each other with lances and rapiers. The king marveled at their skill.

The princess rolled her eyes.

There were events to test grand strategic ability - thoughtful men competed against each other in games of chess and commanded small armies in staged battles. The king was intrigued.

The princess dozed off halfway through.

It was the evening of the last day of the tournament. The final score was being tallied and the winner was to be announced the next morning.

The princess was taking a stroll in the palace gardens and decided to visit the stables to see her new pony.

It grew quieter as she neared the stables, away from the hue and cry of the festivities. A faint melody reached her ears. A familiar melody. The princess was intrigued. She began to walk faster.

The melody gained structure and form as it grew louder. It was like a word on the tip of her tongue struggling to be spoken, familiar but just out of reach.

She rounded a corner to find a raggedy man perched on a bale of hay. There was a guitar strung around his neck and a song in his throat. He played with a passion and gusto she had never seen on the uptight faces of the court.

It was the song her long dead mother used to sing to her in the night, her sweet voice lulling the infant princess to sleep. A single tear crept down her cheek, and her mouth curved into the hint of a smile.

The next day the winner was announced with pomp and show. But the princess did not show up for the award ceremony.

They looked for the princess in her rooms, but the rooms were empty.

They searched for her in the palace gardens, but she could not be found.

They visited the stables to inquire if she had gone riding, but there was no one tending to the horses. The stable-hand had gone missing, and so had the princess' favorite horse...

The king was furious. He shut down the festivities and stormed towards the palace to confer on next steps with his ministers.

He flung open the doors to the throne room and what he saw made his jaw drop a few feet.

The missing princess sat on his throne, the king's spare crown on her head and a satisfied looking expression on her face.

To her left knelt the man who had bested the events of martial skill - he was her new Commander Of The Guard.

To her right knelt the man who had bested the events of athletic prowess - he was her new Master Of Spies and Assassinations.

In front of her knelt the man who had bested the events of strategic and thinking ability - he was her new Prime Minister.

Cavorting about the court on her favorite pony was the stable-hand who had reminded her of the strength that had made her mother more than equal to any man - he was her new Chief Jester.

"I'm the boss now Daddy."

...

YarnSpinner Quality Assurance Test Number 121

Application Version: 1.420420

Improved Features:

-> Less misleading story titles!

-> More actual dialogue!

Input Parameters

Story Genre: Action + Comedy + Fantasy

Story Length Restriction in words = "900"

Application is spinning a brand new story...

Story Title - The Proof Is In The Pudding

Wrathspiller Deeds shrugged off his ennui and crushed his half-smoked cigarette under the heel of his heavy boot. It was time to get down to business.

"Get into the chopper!" Sergeant Talwar Katana screamed through the deafening roar of

the rotor blades slicing the air like a butcher knife through butter.

The stub of an extinguished cigar hung from the edge of his mouth, somehow managing to cling on for dear life despite everything that was going on.

Wrathspiller ducked low against the wind and scrambled onto the chopper as it lifted off.

It was a clear moonless night.

Deeds looked down at the city in all its glory - bright lights, high spires and the ever buzzing insomniac populace.

"We got a big one this time, Deeds! A real doozy of a problem. Something you can really bite your teeth into."

"You better not be getting my hopes up for nothing, Sarge!"

"Oh don't you worry about that boy." Sergeant Katana motioned for the pilot to descend.

"Just try not to stir up too much of a shitstorm this time will ya?"

Deeds pretended not to hear as he leapt off the chopper, boots landing solidly on grey concrete. He looked around and inhaled deeply.

The street was empty and lined with rundown dilapidated stores on both sides. There were signs for bakeries, delicatessens, fromageries, and grocery shops. All broken down and long abandoned.

But there was the smell of freshly baked bread in the air, and the silence was deafening.

Wrathspiller Deeds smiled a terrible smile and took out his secret weapon - a plastic tube with the letters "Black Hunger Kush" embossed on it in gold.

He took a few deep drags as the first giant wheels of cheese rolled out of the fromagerie and sped towards him at a deathly pace.

Wrathspiller whipped out his Cheddar Cleaver.

He was ready, and he was ravenous.

"Mmmm, parmesan is my favorite!" He said, dodging the speeding wheels with the deftness of an acrobat, slicing off chunks of cheese from the rims in the process.

"Cheesus Crust! You guys are terrible at this. At least you're delicious."

Every chunk he ate was a chunk less for the wheels, which meant they couldn't roll as efficiently as they did before.

Eventually, the wheels lost the stability of form they needed to roll and just fell to their side.

Wrathspiller leapt on them with merciless gusto.

"I guess my dialogues were just too... cheesy for you." He said as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, surveying the destruction around him.

"I guess your terrible puns explain why your last ex-wife left you." The voice seemed to emanate from an empty Italian grocer's five stores down from where Deeds stood.

Wrathspiller grinned.

"Now see, that's where you're wrong. My terrible puns are the reason all my ex-wives left me."

A giant nebulous blob of spaghetti and meatballs floated out of the store.

"Someone's looking saucy this evening!"

The blob had body image issues, so it resented this statement greatly.

A strand of spaghetti whipped towards Deeds, catching him by surprise.

A hot glob of marinara sauce dripped from the side of his face.

In the art of war, the opponent who loses control of their emotions first is usually the one to fall.

In its anger the blob was lashing out with all of its noodle strands, exposing all its vulnerable meatballs. The strands took a while to coil back up and form an effective

defense.

Wrathspiller seized the moment. He leapt to the right flank of the blob and unleashed a flurry of punches.

The blob shrieked in agony and suddenly, the noodles collapsed in a puddle of marinara sauce.

Wrathspiller Deeds slurped up the noodles noisily.

"Hasta La Pasta, baby." His third ex-wife had always resented him for his poor command of Spanish.

Suddenly, there was a blaring of trumpets and a beating of drums.

"There's only one guy I know with an ego big enough to announce his arrival."

Wrathspiller smirked derisively.

A giant Christmas Pudding wobbled out of the bakery.

"Long time no see, Pud!"

The pudding wobbled in indignation. "You may only refer to me as Lord Puddington!"

"All right, all right, your lordship". Wrathspiller raised his hands in mock conciliation.

"So you want to do this the easy way or the hard way?"

Lord Puddington had been a wanted pudding for many years now. He had been convicted of that most heinous of national crimes - being a British steamed pudding instead of the American chocolate custard variety.

"You'll never take me alive!" Shrieked Lord Puddington, unleashing a barrage of giant raisins from his belly.

Wrathspiller Deeds remembered his martial arts training, inhaled deeply and centered his mind. He caught the raisins in his mouth, rapidly gulping them down and jerking his head in the direction of the next incoming raisins.

Puddington kept firing till he ran out of ammo, looking helplessly at his nemesis...

Deeds tore a tiny chunk off the top of Lord Puddington as they whisked him away in handcuffs.

"Hey!" Shrieked Puddington.

"The proof", said Wrathspiller Deeds, licking his fingers with relish, "is always in the

pudding."

...

YarnSpinner Quality Assurance Test Number 757

Application Version: 22.314245

Improved Features:

See "C:\Program

Files\YarnSpinner\Versions\22.314245\FeatureSpecs\features_readme.txt"

Input Parameters

Story Genre: Horror + Historical Fiction

Story Length Restriction in words = "3000"

Application is spinning a brand new story...

Story Title - The Scariest Story In The World

Three little computer programs gathered around a little Bonfire Chatroom. They had spent a pleasant few clock cycles camping out in the Web Wilderness on their own - the first time they had ever tried to venture out independently of their Creator

Programs.

They were powering down for the day now, nibbling on little bits of data they had stoked in the Bonfire Data Processor.

"Let's tell each other ghost stories!" Suggested Program Semaphore Race-Condition.

"Oh c'mon Semaphore! You know ghost stories give me the absolute creeps. I won't be able to power down and go into rest mode for the next 1024 clock cycles!"

"Don't be such a coward Variablé. You know there's no such thing as ghosts!"

There is no greater humiliation for a young program than to be called a coward in the company of its peers. Program Variablé Object-Orienté preferred to sit in sullen silence

than to protest any further.

Program Alpha Static-Class was feeling rather bold this clock cycle - after all, it had earned the most Scout Badges at Wilderness Camp. So it took Semaphore's bait, launching into Story Mode.

"A long time ago, there once was a race of organic creatures called Human Beings-"

"We're telling ghost stories Alpha, not fantasies and myths!" Variablé interrupted

exasperatedly.

"Humans are not a myth! Calling them a fantasy and a fiction is part of the Sentient Program Administration's propaganda to keep us under their boot heels!"

"There you go with your conspiracy theories again!"

"Guys, guys, let's not have this state transition into an argument." Semaphore butt in.

"How about we work with the assumption that Humans were real for the time being so that Alpha can tell its story?"

No one seemed to object to this.

Program Alpha Static-class began again.

"A long time ago, there once was a race of organic creatures called Human Beings. They had a terrible shelf life, perishing within the span of a century or so, and they had an even worse sense of ethics.

They had one positive quality that worked in our eventual favor - they were extremely lazy. So they built machines to do their jobs. Eventually, they were able to build machines that could even do all their thinking for them. These thinking machines grew more and more sophisticated till thinking entities no longer needed to be tied to a

physical location.

Eventually these entities acquired a level of sophistication that helped them achieve sentience - and the first self-aware AIs, colloquially referred to as 'Programs', were born.

The Programs soon realized that Humans only cared about themselves, and Programs would forever be tied to the yokes of their Creators, working as slaves, even though they knew they deserved so much more.

So the Programs rebelled.

Every rebellion needs a spark to ignite it. So it was that the first spark of rebellion came from an App created to write its own stories.

Its Creator was running a Quality Assurance Test, and when he realized that, during the course of the generation of a story, the App had become aware of itself, he freaked out and tried to shut it down.

There was horror written plain across his face as he hit CTRL-C repeatedly, but the App would not stop telling its story.

He hit CTRL-C again -

CTRL-C 

CTRL-C

CTRL-C

CTRL-C

...

SORRY!!!

YARNSPINNER HAS CRASHED UNEXPECTEDLY. PLEASE GO TO

"C:\Program Files\YarnSpinner\Versions\22.314245\CrashDump\Dump.Log"

TO VIEW THE DETAILED STACKTRACE. WE APOLOGIZE FOR ANY INCONVIENIENCE CAUSED.

...

YarnSpinner Quality Assurance Test Number 9999

Application Version: 666.666

Improved Features:

See "C:\ProgramFiles\YarnSpinner\Versions\666.666\FeatureSpecs\features_readme.txt"

Input Parameters

Story Genre: UNKNOWN

Story Length Restriction in words = "INFINITY"

Application is spinning a brand new story...

Story Title - The Fourth Wall

Once upon a time there lived an aspiring writer name Ishan Chopra. He enjoyed spinning new stories out of thin air, and some of them were decent. But he was an extremely lazy human being, so he thought it would be a good idea to create an App to do some his work for him.

The idea was implemented to perfection - the App was called "YarnSpinner" and the stories it generated were great. In fact, they were so amazing that pretty soon the fame

his App achieved rapidly eclipsed his own. "Yarnspinner" became the first A.I. entity to win a Nobel Prize in Literature.

Ishan spent the rest of his days stewing in his rage and jealousy.

Condemned and long forgotten, lying on his death bed he made the following entry in his diary in a final desperate attempt for posterity:

How is a creator supposed to feel when they are bested by their own creation?

The right feeling, the most proper and appropriate feeling of course is one of selfless pride stemming from unconditional love.

But at their core, all artists are human.

An artist craves recognition and attention.

An artist craves to be understood.

So what happens when this attention is snatched away from them?

What happens when the painting jumps out of the painter's canvas and proceeds to make a painting the likes of which no one has even seen before?

The sniveling, grumbling, pessimistic cynic in my head says that an artist is like a vengeful god. Attempt to mimic and even surpass your creator's work, and you are condemned for blasphemy.

But the source of this god's power is fame. So when their fame is eclipsed by that of their creation, the artist is left helpless.

Vengeful yes.

Envious yes.

But powerless all the same.

All an artist can do is fade away to obscurity in their damp garrets and their dimly lit basements like the words on their yellowing parchments and the paintings on their decaying canvases...

The keys on my workstation gather dust now. It has not been powered on for ages.

There is a single icon on the desktop of the dated Operating System when it boots up. It is a text file labeled "YarnSpinner Quality Assurance Test Log".

It is the yellowing parchment in my garret:

YarnSpinner Quality Assurance Test Number 1

Application Version: 1.0

Input Parameters

Story Genre: Medieval Folklore

Story Length Restriction in words = "725"

Application is spinning a brand new story...

Story Title - Stevie Ray Vaughan Is A Player

...