Tell Me A Story

Archie lowered the book and let out a breath. The world kept spinning, somehow. Towns were full of unaware people that didn’t know what magnificence rested in his hands or what monumental action had just taken place.

The worst part is that Archie knew he couldn’t tell anyone. If he tried, he would be met with “Oh yeah, he is good,” or “I liked that one,” or even worse, “It was decent, but have you read…?” Archie wanted to pull his hair out already at any suggestion that someone might make after he mentioned his book.

Archie felt like he knew Bryan Caldwell now. You could know facts about someone’s life, where they were born, where they grew up, where they went to school, etc. You didn’t really know them. Reading the book was like seeing inside of Bryan Caldwell’s brain, and that was the only way to truly know someone.

There was the question of what to do next. He could start the book over again. Or maybe the author had written something else that was also good.

Archie carefully placed the book on the table next to his bed and stood up, walked halfway across the room, then came back and took the book with him.

With a fresh spot cleared off on his desk, he looked up the author on his computer.

Dead.

He knew that. Well, there were at least the other books he had written.

None?

How was there none? Did he not think that someday, a person would read his book and want, no, need, another? Two more? A dozen? How could anyone be so selfish?

Archie sighed. He knew he would forgive him. He looked at his precious book, the one he had just loved, with lingering anger. There was no other like it. There might be something that at least hid in its shadow well enough that it could be read too.

The library 10 minutes away was open for another 3 hours. That was plenty of time to find another author that was also decent. Archie hurriedly drove there, parked across 2 spots, and ran inside. He went to the science fiction section and froze. He didn’t know where to start.

The covers was as good of a place as any. He spent an hour picking out books that had interesting covers with tall, black buildings lit by neon or the headlights of flying cars. Brains that were shaped like trees or faces that were screaming.

No good.

Well, maybe the covers could be deceiving. It wasn’t time to tear out his hair yet. He still had plenty of time left to find a good book.

If covers didn’t work, maybe he could try authors who had a lot of books? There must have been a reason that so many of their books had been chosen.

He didn’t have trouble finding authors with their share of published books. He did have trouble finding any that were readable. Covers were slammed, dust jackets were torn, and books were almost thrown before they were put back on the shelf, and Archie had to walk away for a minute before he lost his cool.

After 3 hours, the message that the library would soon be closing went out, and Archie had nothing more than nervous glances he had collected from the librarians. They probably wouldn’t let him stay the night, even if it was only one time and if he promised to lock up when he left. He went back to his house and took turns pouting in different positions.

He couldn’t pout all night, though. He had to do something. It was only Saturday evening.

He could watch TV, but all of the shows were mindless drivel.

He could watch movies, but he had seen anything worth watching already.

He could play video games, but they were all pointless.

Archie went from his living room to his bedroom to his bathroom to his bedroom to his living room to his bedroom. Around and around and around until the whirlwind of boredom collapsed onto the floor and stared at the ceiling.

To have something to do, he started cleaning. He didn’t stop until his kitchen was spotless, his bathroom was cleaner than most kitchens, his living room offered him 27 cents, and his bedroom smelled of lemons and bleach.

All that was left was his bedroom closet. He had cleaned everything else; why not that?

Inside, he found old shoe boxes, an old Game Boy Color with Pokemon games that he had saved from childhood, basketball cards that weren’t worth any money yet and probably would never be, and an old laptop in a leather bag.

The Game Boy was the most promising. He tried the power button but found that it didn’t work. He checked, and there weren’t any batteries in the Game Boy. There also weren’t any in his apartment, just a bunch of opened drawers and couch cushions that had been left on the floor.

There goes that idea.

He could read the book over again, or he could see if there was anything still on his old laptop. It was a relic of several years ago, and he thought he was going to wipe the hard drive before getting rid of it but had never gotten around to doing so. The power cord was still in the bag. He plugged it in, sure that it was now dead, pressed the power button, and soon was looking at what greeted him each night a long time ago.

The different applications looked so old. The icons were like those on the family’s old Windows XP computer that somehow still lived.

On the left side of the screen, between Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft, was an icon that he didn’t remember. Blue and green swirled together, but not the Microsoft Edge logo. This was something different. He double-clicked it and was greeted with a prompt and a message that said, “Nice to see you. How can I help you today?”

Archie then remembered it was the old AI he had downloaded and forgotten to learn to use in time for AI to become illegal and the world to move on from them.

He didn’t know what to type, so he tried something basic.

Archie - Hi

AI - Hello. How can I help you today?

How could it help him? He doubted it had the powers of a necromancer or a misty red potion that tasted terrible, but corpses never complained about taste anyway, so it didn’t matter how bad it tasted. But how could it help him?

Archie - I’m bored.

AI - Does this picture help?

The AI sent a picture of a dog riding a unicycle on a mountain road. Archie laughed briefly, then had an idea and quickly typed.

Archie - Can you tell me a story?

AI - Sure. Let me know if I can tell you another story or if this one can be improved in any way.

The story it gave was only about a page long, but Archie didn’t read it. He was already typing his next question.

Archie - Can you tell stories in different genres?

AI - Yes.

Archie - How about imitating authors?

AI - Yes.

Yes. YES! His heart sped up. It could be amazing. It could be terrible. It could be boring. It could be enthralling.

His hands shook as he carefully asked it to give him a story by Bryan Caldwell. It gave him the text of the book he had just written. Helpful, but not what he meant.

He then asked for a story like the book but different, and it gave him a 2000-word short story that seemed like the author had reached onto Archie’s keyboard and typed it himself. The wind was like it blew through the author’s hair. The water was like its waves lapped his skin. The trees were like their sap was still under his fingernails. The mountains seemed like the tears that they elicited were still drying on the author’s cheek.

“Ha,” Archie said, sitting back and putting his hands on his head. “Ha! Ha ha ha!” he cackled. He thought of the Frankenstein movie where the doctor finally brings the body to life.

What was next? A love story? No! Romeo and Juliet as told by Bryan Caldwell. He had tried to read Shakespeare before, but couldn’t finish a single play. He typed the prompt, remembering to specify the length this time, and it gave him back gold. When he had finished reading, he sat back and wiped a tear from his eye. If a million monkeys sat at a million typewriters for a million years, they couldn’t come up with anything better.

What other stories could he try? There were so many others that had a lot of potential. He could try Sleepy Hollow or finally finish Ulysses, either by Homer or Joyce; it didn’t matter. He could ask it for The Last of the Mohicans or a Stephen King novel.

Fingers poised above the keyboard, the world as his oyster, his eyes bugged with excitement, a faint humming coming from him, he began to type.

Archie - Can you give me Moby Dick but by Bryan Caldwell?

He stopped. Moby Dick was a neat idea, but it was old and outdated. He adjusted his prompt.

Archie - Can you give me Moby Dick but in space by Bryan Caldwell?

It took it a while to adjust the 400-page story. Archie stood up and paced around the room, staring at the “working on it” symbol that filled his screen. It finally told him it was done, and the text filled his screen.

Call me Ishmael; it still started. The rest of the story was all different and all amazing. Archie sat in his chair with only a few bathroom breaks until it was all done.

“Wow,” he said to no one.

His hands moved. He had started in the 1800s and moved it to space. He wondered what it would be like to take something that started in space and move it to… the 1600s.

Archie - Give me Ender’s Game set in the 1600s by Bryan Caldwell.

It told him of the squire Ender Wiggum in his new court, and Archie rejoiced. Every word was perfection. Each sentence was a masterpiece. They flowed from one to the next in such a way that he never got tired of reading before the story ended.

“Oh jeez, I wonder what else this can do,” he said to himself.

He bet that A Tale of Two Cities would be better with Harry Potter-style magic. He typed the prompt, and when he finished the story, he knew that he had made the right call.

He tried lifting Dante and Virgil out of their epic poem and found it to be much better, so he did the same with Paradise Lost.

He had always wanted to try Poe and Lovecraft, but their writing style kept him at bay. No longer!

He had Atlas Shrugged shortened, as well as It, and found them to be big improvements.

Everything wasn’t about taking something that existed already and changing it, though. He also tried some original concepts, like a movie theater in a street that appears sometimes that took the cinema goers to a different world.

Then there was a knock at his door. Who could that be? he wondered. He was tempted to ignore it and go back to his story about a portal gun that transported people from a floating city above earth to a fantasy world with magic, but the knock came again, and he knew he had to address it.

“What?” Archie almost yelled at the police officer standing at his door.

The officer in front wrinkled his nose, and then the two behind him did the same.

“Are you Archie Caldwell?”

“Yes.”

“We came to check on you. You aren’t answering your phone, and your coworkers got worried about you,” the officer said.

“My phone? Why should they be trying to get ahold of me on a Saturday?”

“Sir, it’s Thursday.”

“Thursday?” Archie had let a few days get away from him, but that was no big deal. “Sorry, I’ve been sick, and my phone was broken. I’ll call and let them know I’m alright. Thanks for stopping by.”

“Would it be okay if we searched the place?” the officer asked.

“I would prefer not.”

He knew that criminals look after their own interests, but the police pretended to look after the interests of citizens. One was certainly more dangerous.

“I insist.”

“Searched?” They weren’t going away. Archie knew better than to try to resist. His mom had told him it was better to be alive than it was to be right. “Yeah, that’s fine. Give me one second.”

Archie closed the door and then raced to his laptop. He closed the prompt and shoved the laptop back in his closet under some mess and dirty clothes. He ran back to the door and opened it, trying not to pant.

“Please, come in.”

The officers spread out in the apartment, always keeping an eye on Archie, who was frozen in a central location so he could watch them all.

One went through his kitchen, opening all of the cabinets and prying and smelling at anything that looked interesting. Another quickly checked what little there was to check in his living room, then moved to the bathroom. The last, and the one Archie was most worried about, went around his bedroom, lifting each dirty sock he found on the floor, turning over everything, and then putting it not exactly back to where he found it. He then opened Archie’s closet, rummaged for a bit, and brought out the old laptop.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“An old laptop. I don’t even know if it still works.” The first sentence was true, the second a lie.

“It’s warm. Hot even.”

“You know how electronics get.”

The officer opened it, and his vile face was lit by the trusting device.

“What is…” the officer said, moving the cursor around.

Archie felt the two other officers behind him, and he realized he was now standing in the bedroom doorway.

“Find something?” one of them asked.

“Looks like an old AI here. We’ll have to take it down to the station and have our guy check it out to see if it has been used since the law was passed.”

Hands clamped onto Archie’s arms.

“We need you to move out of the way.”

Archie started to pull against the officer but knew it was no use. He stepped aside and watched his laptop get closer to the front door.

“Right now there aren’t any charges, since we aren’t sure you’ve committed any crime.”

“Can I… can I?” Archie wanted to ask if he could use it again but didn’t know how to ask without making it known he had used it originally.

The grips on his arms tightened. The laptop was now at the door.

“No!” Archie shouted.

He tried to pull his left hand free, then his right. He tried again, but the two officers held on. He then worked his feet up, pressed them against the chest of the two officers, and then shoved as hard as he could and sent himself flying forward and the officers falling onto their backs.

The third officer turned his head in time to see Archie running. Archie grabbed the laptop. The officer held onto it. The two tugged.

Archie foamed at the mouth. His eyes bulged nearly out of his skull. For a moment he possessed the strength of Brian Shaw and pulled the officer off his feet.

There was a brief moment of delight on Archie’s face. The tranquility of victory passed over him. He then realized that the laptop was slipping from his grip and already out of the officer’s grip. The laptop flew through the air and smashed onto the ground, with a black piece of plastic falling off and the lid coming open.

“Oh god, look what you’ve done!” he shouted.

He tried to lunge forward but felt hands grab his arms, and his body fell under two other bodies. He landed beside the laptop and felt his hands jerked behind him as the cold steel of handcuffs was put around his wrists.

From his prone position, he could see the cracked screen and its rainbow of death. There was no doubt now; the laptop was ruined.

Archie went limp. An officer scooped up the laptop and carried it away. Two others told Archie that when he calmed down, they could let him go. The ragdoll didn’t even nod his head. The laptop was gone now, so it didn’t matter what they did.

At some point the handcuffs were taken off and the officers left, leaving Archie lying on the floor of his apartment.

He pushed himself up and went to his bedroom.

He sat on his bed and saw the copy of the book sitting in its spot by his bed. He picked it up and slowly ran his fingertips over the cover. He turned to the dedications page.

To my son, Archie Caldwell.

Your being born got me through the toughest times in my life. I wish I could be there to help you through your tough times as well.