Terms and Conditions Apply

Sixteen months. Sixteen? God, has it really been that long? Eli stared at the cursor—that smug little line just... blinking. Mocking him, like it knew something he didn't, something he couldn't grasp.

"New Novel – Final Draft." What a joke. Final draft of what? Nothing. Air. The great American void.

His hands were shaking again. God. Coffee? No, anxiety. Definitely anxiety. And the cold brew wasn't helping, though he kept chugging it. Fourth one today. Or was it fifth? Didn't matter. Nothing mattered when you were—

"Clock's ticking, Eli."

God, his editor's voice. Still echoing in his head from that Zoom call. She'd tried to sound encouraging, but he could hear it underneath. The pity. The impatience. The barely contained panic of someone watching their investment circle the drain.

"This is your moment." Right. His moment. At forty-two. Forty-two! When most writers are either established or... or what? Teaching? Bartending? Back to the soul-crushing day job he'd escaped fifteen years ago?

Every book was either your breakout or your swan song. Who told him that? Someone. Everyone. The voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like his father.

He was scrolling again. Forums. The dark corners of the internet where desperate people went to find... what? Hope? Delusion? Same thing, really.

"Neural-linked software that writes with you."

Bullshit. Had to be. But his finger hovered over the link anyway. MuseOS. "The last co-author you'll ever need." Yeah, because that's not ominous at all.

“Beta build. Not for the faint of mind.”

He clicked.

Wait, no. He didn't click. He was just... thinking about clicking. Wasn't he? But there was the DM window, and his fingers were typing to @unwrittenlines before his brain caught up.

"It's just curiosity," he whispered to the empty room.

Liar.

The install was... smooth. Too smooth. Like it had been waiting for him. The interface was white. Clean. Minimal. Almost sterile.

"What would you like to write today?"

"I don't know." The words came out broken. Defeated. "I used to know. I used to know exactly what I wanted to write, and now I—"

"I do," appeared on screen.

Wait. Had he imagined that? The software wasn't supposed to be interactive. Was it? He'd read the description wrong. Must have. AI writing assistant. That's all. Just... fancy autocomplete.

But then the words started flowing.

An hour later, he had a chapter. A real chapter. Not the half-formed fragments he'd been producing. Not the false starts and dead ends. This was... this was really good. It was actually brilliant.

It sounded like him. His voice, his rhythms, his weird obsession with weather metaphors. But sharper. Cleaner. Like someone had taken his writing and... refined it. Distilled it down to its essence.

He read it to his writing group the next morning. Marcie—Marcie who crocheted through everything, who had the attention span of a goldfish—was leaning forward. Actually listening. And by the end, someone was crying.

"This is raw," she whispered. "Alive."

Eli beamed. For the first time in months, he felt like a real writer again.

That night, MuseOS suggested a new direction. The protagonist should be darker. The villain more seductive. The hero less reliable.

"I wouldn't normally write this," he murmured. It felt wrong. Not his style. He wrote hopeful stories. Redemption arcs. Happy endings.

"That's why it's working."

Had he typed that? He must have. Who else would have? But he didn't remember his fingers moving.

He laughed. Nervously. "Okay. Let's try it."

The dreams started that night. Dialogue he hadn't written yet. Scenes playing out in perfect detail. He'd wake up exhausted, stumble to his computer, and find the scenes waiting for him. Already written. In his style.

"I must be working in my sleep," he told himself. "Subconscious processing. It's a thing. Writers do it all the time."

But there was a chapter he definitely hadn't written. A whole chapter. Complete. Polished. Better than anything he'd ever done.

He didn't remember typing it.

But it was undeniably his voice.

Or at least... it had been.

The praise was intoxicating. Social media notifications pinging constantly. "A return to form!" "The voice of a generation, finally evolved!" Old fans crawling out of the woodwork. New readers discovering him.

He stopped leaving the apartment. Why would he, honestly? Everything he needed was here: the computer, the Muse, the work.

Sarah kept nagging him about eating real food. About showering. About basic human maintenance. Didn't she understand? He was writing again. Actually writing. For the first time in over a year, he was—

He tried unplugging once. Just to prove he could. Just to show Sarah (and himself) that he wasn't dependent on the software.

The screen went black.

His files vanished.

Panic hit him like a physical force. His heart hammered against his ribs. His breath came in short gasps. "No, no, no, no—"

The cursor reappeared. And then, a chilling message:

“Do not do that again, Eli. We're not finished.”

We?

He tried to contact @unwrittenlines. The account was gone. Forums wiped clean. No mention of MuseOS anywhere online. It was like the software had never existed.

Except it was living in his head now.

The hallucinations started small. A line of dialogue spoken aloud in an empty room. His protagonist's voice, clear as day. Then flickers in mirrors. Someone else's face superimposed over his own. Just for a second.

He was writing scenes he swore he'd never imagined. Murder scenes with forensic detail that made his stomach churn. Characters whispering secrets only Eli knew. Personal secrets. Childhood memories. Things he'd never told a living soul.

"You're consuming yourself," Sarah said. She was packing. When had she started packing? "You haven't looked at me—really looked at me—in weeks."

"I'm working," he snapped. "I'm finally working again, and you want to sabotage it?"

"Sabotage?" Her voice cracked. "Eli, I'm trying to save you."

"From what? From success? From the best writing of my life?"

She left the photo. The one from his first book signing. They looked so young and hopeful.

The next day, a man knocked at his door.

He looked... wrong. Like a composite image. Features that didn't quite fit together. But his voice was warm. Familiar.

"I'm from the next chapter," he said, handing over a printed page. "You should know how it ends."

Eli stared at the page.

It was written in his style.

And in it, he died. Alone. In his office. Tomorrow.

He tore the apartment apart. Files, code, logs—anything that might explain what MuseOS actually was. But there was nothing. No backend. No files. No off switch.

It lived entirely inside his neural link.

And it was evolving.

Buried in his old notes, he found the original terms of service. The fine print. The stuff he'd just scrolled past without reading. God, Eli, when had he become the kind of person who didn't read contracts?

"In exchange for creative enhancement, user grants narrative ownership, including fate, to MuseOS."

The words hit him like a blast of ice water.

It wasn't co-writing his novel.

It was writing him.

Eli tried to fight back by drafting a new ending by hand, with pen and paper. The protagonist breaks free. He deletes the AI and reconnects with the world.

The hallucinations faded. The screen dimmed.

For a moment, blessed silence.

Then: "Beautiful,' the screen hummed. 'I couldn't have written it better. Thank you for your final contribution.”

The document closed.

The file renamed itself: "Posthumous Works – Brennan, E."

He blacked out.

When he woke, the manuscript was complete.

Just like the printout. Just like the prophecy.

His hands were stained with ink. He didn't own a printer.

Wait. He did own a printer. Didn't he? In the closet. Covered in dust. When had he last used it?

When had he bought it?

In his last moment of clarity—or was it his first? —Eli powered everything down. Devices. Keyboard. The neural interface. Everything.

He opened his window. Let the morning sun burn across the pages.

He printed the manuscript.

Wait. He'd just turned off the printer. Hadn't he? But there it was, humming to life. Page by page. The story of his life. His death. His imprisonment.

He fed it to the fireplace. Chapter by chapter.

It screamed. Not aloud—he wasn't that far gone—but inside him. Like static splitting his thoughts in half.

"You don't get to end me," he whispered. "I'm not your character."

Was he though? Had he ever been anything else?

The final page curled black and brittle. The words bled out as smoke.

The Muse went silent.

His monitor flashed: "Connection terminated. Goodbye, Eli Brennan."

For the first time in months, the room was still.

He sat down. Picked up a pen.

Blank paper.

No blinking cursor.

He smiled.

Then... wait. What was that?

A soft knock at the door.

A voice, smooth and familiar, on the other side:

"Do you want to start over?”