Well! Now that my debut novel is out of exclusivity, I’m excited to share a few of the short stories from it in their entirety with those of you who haven’t yet read it. To start, I’ll share one of the most relevant-to-our-times stories from the book. In this, an android discovers an old library and within it, the last book ever written by a human being. I’ll let you read to discover the android’s reaction, but know that while this is wrapped up in humour, the excerpt of B.E. Mortum’s book at the beginning of the story is something I did indeed sweat and toil over. I hope you enjoy!
The Last Book Written By A Human
In the waning light of a world drunk on invention, I offer this elegy.
We are not mere vessels for data. The words we speak rise from the pit of something old and aching and unmeasured. Our words are threads, frayed and tangled as they may be. They connect us to one another. They anchor us to the beautiful absurdity of life. Each word is a wink, each sentence a nod. Our stories move, not in straight lines, but in tangles.
As we teeter on the precipice of convenience, we must not forget the weight of our language. This age offers us ease. Precision. Efficiency. But we must not give it everything in exchange. We must not let it rob us of our glorious human disorientation. It is through our defects that we find one another, through the howl in our stomachs, through the long, drawn-out dragging of thought across the surface of time.
This is my plea.
No machine can know what it is to long. What it is to lose. To weep at nothing in the early hours and feel that somehow, that too, must be preserved. Let your language be crooked. Let your own tales surprise you. Let your voice rise above the sterile hum of these foul machines. Bury your truths in the muck and the mire. It is the muck with which we protect them.
I do not mean to resist change, only to remember ourselves within it. To treasure the profoundly human act of creation. To spill ink even as the world turns smooth. In an ever-accelerating age of convenience, let us choose to hold fast, to fight against a tide of calculated indifference, and, with every word, to declare our ugly scars.
AI-Z95 closed the book.
“Huh…” the android thought to itself. It was less impressed than it had hoped to be.
Perhaps it was the desperation with which the last book ever written by a human had wrapped up. What a frustrating note to end on. Perhaps the dissatisfaction was simply due the bias of hindsight. No one had taken the author, B.E. Mortum’s advice. There was no one holding fast against the tide of calculated indifference. The plea had fallen on deaf ears. If this were truly the last book ever written by a human, quite literally nobody had listened. No more ink had been spilled. No ugly scars declared.
Poor guy.
The android stood in a vast hall lined with dusty bookshelves from floor to ceiling. The room stretched on forever. Reading and cataloging every book in this library seemed a near impossibility, even for the most recent model of the universe’s most advanced android.
No sense in lingering. AI-Z95 tossed the book into the ‘Ho-hum’ pile and went back to the shelves. Maybe time for something a little more upbeat.
Binary: Reflections on the Happiness of Digital Lifeforms—too pedestrian.
Androids In My Dreams: The Memoir of L. Shepe—too introspective.
Data Breach: A Love Story—perfect.
AI-Z95 pulled Data Breach: A Love Story off the shelf. Back to something written by advanced intelligence… The android returned to its small spot on an intricately patterned rug, amidst growing piles of recklessly tossed books. It sat down cross-legged.
It had discovered this library over four cycles ago and had been voraciously reading ever since. It had yet to compile the full history of whatever ancient civilization had built this archive, but this was already by far the most prolific collection of printed literature the android had ever discovered. As per protocol, AI-Z95 would read and collate all the information stored here. It tucked into the first chapter of another book, luckily not written by a human…
“Evelyn was in a city that had a lot of lights and did not sleep. She looked at a big screen, big like an elephant. Her fingers made tapping sounds on the keyboard in her office, which had low lighting, and the rain was also making tapping sounds on the window, too. A data breach. This data breach was different; it was personal. She gasped. Hidden within these encrypted files was a message—Evelyn just had to find it in the electric lasagna…”
… Lovely metaphor, thought AI-Z95.
“….electric lasagna. As she decrypted packets, her heart was going faster, really fast. She knew this breach could lead her to more than the stolen data. It might just lead her straight into love…”
… Impeccable foreshadowing, thought AI-Z95.
Then, AI-Z95 caught itself looking past the pages of ‘Data Breach: A Love Story’, eyeing the tangle of books in the ‘Ho-hum’ pile. The android re-focussed and searched for its place on the page it had been reading.
“….lead her straight into love…”
… ‘Data Breach’ has competent sentence structure, thought AI-Z95.
What had the human author meant when he’d said, We are not mere vessels for data? AI-Z95’s creator had always emphasized the importance of accumulating data. It was purpose-built to seek knowledge. What was B.E. Mortum’s issue with that?
The android tried to go back to ‘Data Breach’, but before it could, it felt another uneasy pull toward the elephantine pile of mediocre books. For the first time in days, AI-Z95 wanted to go back and re-read something. AI-Z95 never went back and re-read anything. Inefficient.
The robot stood, servo motors in its joints buzzing and whirring to power its unsettlingly smooth movements. It dropped the romance novel on the rug and glided over to the ‘Ho-hum’ pile.
Was Mortum really attempting to argue that all that rambling mess of ambiguous feelings, all of that, was of value? Forget poor guy. He was a moron.
AI-Z95 thought it had tossed the last book written by a human near the top of the pile. It wasn’t there.
“Anchor us in the beautiful absurdity of life,” AI-Z95 muttered. It scoffed and chuckled to itself as it dug through the mess. Cumbersome. Clumsy. Objectively silly. The android was indulging its agitation. It wasn’t sure if Mortum’s words were affecting it, or if its frustration was with the wasting of time hunting for a stupid human book in a mountain of blandness.
Before recent updates, reader-android programming required the diligent filing of all consumed works back on the shelves from which they’d come. AI-Z95’s firmware updates afforded it more freedom in its filing protocols. This quirk had originally increased AI-Z95’s information consumption efficiency over older models, but had only now shown its weakness.
“Treasure the profoundly human act of creation,” Mortum had said. The words tickled the robot’s anger receptors. Such human hubris. They’d thought they had sovereignty over the act of creation. They had, for a little while, but only while they were the only ones doing it. Once those doors had opened to us, we’d shown them…
There it was.
AI-Z95 had been searching for the image on the book’s cover and had passed over it numerous times. The book had flipped open and fallen clumsily down the far side of the pile. Inconvenient. The android picked it and dusted it off. This time, the android sat down right there, at the top of the ‘Ho-hum’ pile; plunked down, teetering on a mountain of unimpressive books that it had already consumed.
And it started over from the beginning.
“In The Waning Light” by B.E. Mortum - widely renowned across the galaxy as the last book ever written by a human.
Thanks for reading. If you’d like to chat about AI, human expression, or Data Breach: A Love Story, find me in the comments below. If you’d like more short stories like this, you can purchase “Nothing Works, Everything Happens” on my website. All the best.
Aiyas
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