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My heart is heavy, my soul is bruised, yet my mind is empty. For someone whose continued existence in this mortal coil is based on using his mind and words, to link to other minds, this might be considered a mild inconvenience. As I have worked in this trade, I fear nothing more than what I am staring at right now. Pure white. Uninhibited by any dark or shadow, bar the blinking of that one tiny bar that my livelihood rests upon. Beating like a metronome to the beat of wasted time, that makes it harder to pick up the rhythm and momentum needed for this art form.

Even in my exasperation, the words form and twist into such wonderful meanings and aphorisms, yet none seem to want to stick to that snowy, desolate place known as “blank A4”. It is akin to being in sleep paralysis, the mind urging you to action, yet your body fervently telling your mind, “I’ll do it in my own time, thank you very much”.

I rattle off expletives, if nothing else, to beat my rising existentialism to filling my thoughts. Much like the rising deadline that I am facing, money is tight as it is and if I miss this next one, it’ll be tight enough to hang me.

I hold my head in my hands, defeated by my own mind and a blank page.

But before long, an idea spreads across my ailing mind, like the sun caressing the land it rises on. The idea was as welcome as it was dangerous. Just as the same sunfire can warm your day, as much as it burns your skin if exposed to it for too long.

There was a tool that is now available to the masses that can make an author of any mind, just as it can make an artist or administrator. I may be further along the path of life than I’d like but I still have a somewhat decent grip on the comings-and-goings of technology.

Generative Pre-Trained Transformers, at least that’s what the internet told me the GPT in ChatGPT stood for.

I have, like most creatives, espoused the idea that AI in any of its forms would not a Dostoyevsky make. Yet, like most things in civilisation, morals must be put aside when you are staring at the possibility of losing your first layer of Mazlow’s hierarchy of needs. All because my heavy heart is weighing down my brain, drowning it in indecision, I’m putting aside my morals. Maybe it’ll take some of the weight off of my heart.

I have realised in my internal monologue that I am staring at the box that says to me: “What can I help you with?”

In my emotionally compromised state, I only vaguely acknowledge the devil’s deal I am partaking in. The blinking of the bar is like a warning light to my philosophical inner self, warning me like the signs of long term nuclear storage I decoded in my journalist days. What was the one that was translated for me?... Ah yes “What is here is repulsive and dangerous to us”. But alas, the vast silence in my head drowns out the geiger counter in my creative soul.

“Hello ChatGPT” I type, for one must keep their manners even when conversing with algorithms.

“Write me a story, thank you”. The three snowballs appear, telling me it is thinking. Despite their brief appearance, it reminds me of the vast tundra of unwritten words that awaits me on my other tab.

“Sure!” it replies. “What kind of story are you in the mood for? Something adventurous, mysterious, romantic, or maybe a bit quirky?”

Intriguing. In all honesty, I had expected it just to throw out some drivel and move on, and whilst it wouldn’t be useful, it may inspire, but the question gave me pause for thought. What kind of story did I want? Well if I had sold my soul, I might as well go all the way.

“Romantic, please”

There was always a market for romance novels, whether for teenagers, young adults or older, it was almost guaranteed to sell. It wouldn’t be without precedent for me either, I had written a romantic short story when I first put down my press lanyard. It was a derivative piece but I learnt a lot, and it sold just enough to get attention, so let us see if lightning would strike twice.

The snowballs appeared again, making me more apprehensive as it thought, then it began to write.

It wrote about a couple broken up a long time ago returning to the bridge in their old hometown at the same time and confronting their feelings for each other.

Well, that was underwhelming. I could actually feel myself getting angry. This miracle working software that the kids had banged on about was just another bunch of snake oil.

I couldn’t put that to print. It was so generic, that no matter how much I dressed it up that I would rightfully be called a hack. If I was burning my morals at the altar of monetary survival, I was going to get my moneys worth.

Perhaps this was similar to a monkeys paw, I had to be more specific with my instructions. Hmm… I was reminded of some writing advice I had been given when I was in university: “Write what you know”. Maybe I had to give a part of myself in order to make it work. Like a modern day blood sacrifice, convenience for a part of your identity. Thankfully the part of me to sacrifice, had been turning my heart to lead and making my soul struggle to break the surface and breath.

“Write a bittersweet story about a divorced man trying to find love in his older age” Even as I write the words, I feel as if something is wrong. I feel… numb as it writes out its story made of me. Not numb as I was before. The numbness of pressure weighing down on your consciousness, your emotional core bearing a great weight like a soldier and his bergen, carrying on, but unable to drop it. Now it was an absence rather than a pressure. As if this soldier, had not only released his bergen, but as if he was flying through the air, thrown by shooting smoke, dust and blood as he made his last fateful step.

It is then I realised the most terrifying aspect of making deals with the demons, devils and Generative AI: They always give exactly what you asked for, not what you wanted.

As I stared, I watched as the Generative Pre-Trained Transformer, generated a simulacrum of my story and soul.

It wove together a story of a man who married young and loved deeply. Who fought tooth and nail to keep the marriage together, but who did not understand that the marriage was built on broken nails and desperation not to be alone. A man who smothered his wife with his insecurities, his annoying tendencies, his inability to inspire love in anybody but his mother. That despite the missed job opportunities, the missed housing chances and the most bereaved thing of all, the wasted time, he chose her again and again and again.

That the man had made the mistake in believing that he had found his One, just like the church had told him, just as the films told him, just as his own inadequate writings had told him. That through that love he would be redeemed. That despite his flaws, vices and hates, that someone out there loved him unconditionally and that he had found that person. The luck they had to meet so young, and to have their sins washed away in the baptism of their love, just as God’s love was said to do. Yet it did not wash everything. Whilst the love was at first warm and cleansing, it left both of them cold and succumbing to infections of the soul that they had when they were but single entities. But being washed only once in purifying love, were thought to be cured, instead the necrosis took hold until they had rotted from the inside.

Was it any wonder then, when the joint life they had built together had become gangrenous? That her saying “I love you but this isn’t working” was inevitable. That the rot was so deep, so invasive, so wretched that her saying that had been the first time she had said I love you in years.

They had been so convinced that love was the answer, as they had been told, they had never thought to ask what the question had been.

But the story scrolls on, showing the man, after his divorce, somewhat bouncing back. That the rot had been cleaned from the wounds and they had begun to heal, but like the scar tissue forming on said wounds, they are easier to open again. He had never fully recovered from his Kafkaesque revelation on love, and it gave him a noticeable hobble as he walked through life, the legacy of being injured and never trusting to put your full weight on the injured muscle for the fear of the pain you suffered at the wounds first tearing.

Yet as time wore on, and his muscle memory of the pain faded and the urge to run again began to rear its head, he began to stretch and warm up this love muscle that had been so withered.

He then begins to run towards a co-worker. That is the closest label that can be picked for secretary for a publisher that the protagonist frequents. Over time, through talking over a year, his muscle is back in full swing again.

Yet even as the muscle beats burning fire through his veins upon a look of her and the sound of her laugh, he never moves forward. Never takes the initiative. Because despite the fact that time heals all wounds, not all wounds can be fully healed. He still remembers. He still knows. He still feels the broken edges of his soul as they scrape and grind like a broken bone.

He realises, he is afraid. Not the afraid of spiders or wasps, of liberals and conservatives, of academics or of fools. But a primal afraid. An existential afraid. A “Fire” afraid. And a “Fire” afraid runs deep in every being of consciousness because we know how much it hurts to burn, but we also know how cold it is without it. Forced to forever stare at the flame. Wondering how each one starts in your heart and how close you dare to get before it ignites your very being.

So he lets her go. Watches that Sunrise, fade into a sunset and does not even commit any words to its beauty. So as she left, he realised, now it was cold, that he had been burning all that time, no matter how much he had convinced himself that he had been in control.

With the clarity of the cold, he concludes that he didn’t really know her. Of course, he knew the superficial things that all co-workers know of each other. But he did not know how many times she had been burnt, how many digits lost to frostbite, how close she had dared come to the flame. He did not know if their flames were close to combining. He did not know if what he saw of her was the shadow cast by his flame, impressing on her form the things he wanted to see. Or if he was looking at her shadow the whole time, seeing only what she wanted to put out from her flame.

He did know, however, that he did nothing. His shame of that burned brighter than any love. Burned a sickly shade of green rather than the lustful and vigorous Red it had done before. The smoke of the shame polluted his mind, so much that he could not think of how to put words on a page. He could not think of how to do his job. He could not believe he would be ok.

As this algorithm, this 1s and 0s, this collective data of human input laid my soul bare. I found it wanting. Was I destined to repeat this cycle of love and injury? Were we all? This AI could not make anything new, it could not invent like a human could, it could only copy. Copy and copy and copy. With everything it puts out being diluted down minute by minute, second by second.

Yet even its “skimmed” form, without all the fat of human emotion and creativity, it still created me, a version of me. A version of me made of a copy, of a copy, of a copy. It showed that others were being burnt and frostbitten all the same as me. Whilst it didn’t feel like it now, there must be others for this AI to be able rip up the experience of being human and cobble it back together in this Frankensteined reflection of the human soul.

Yet, it posed its most poignant point about this person's proclivity by asking the one question that every human will ever ask. By asking the one thing you ask yourself after being burnt and then frostbitten. By asking the same thing a blank mind, staring at a blank page will ask.

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