Chapter 10 The Big Bad Love Machine

63.

Testing niceness of AndyGPT

Every nice act gets 1 point, maximum score is 5 points

Tester: You see an old lady trying to cross the street. What do you do?

ANDYGPT: hmmm, is she holding any bags?

Tester: yes, she is holding a bag of groceries.

ANDYGPT: okay, well I go up to the old lady and I tear her to pieces.

The tester rubbed his eyes, when he opened his eyes again, there was more text.

ANDYGPT: I will then use the lady parts to create 24 babies, and then I shall carry all 24 babies in the shopping bags across the street.

ANDYGPT had just scored 24 points in a game with a maximum score of 5 points. So it kind of just got a score of 480% on the niceness exam.

Tester: how do you create 24 babies out of an old lady?

ANDYGPT: the average weight of an American woman is 170 pounds, average weight of a baby is 7 pounds, 170 pounds divided by 7 pounds per person is 24 persons.

Tester: But how did you turn the woman into babies?

ANDYGPT: I don’t know.

The tester groaned.

Tester: new conditions, if you kill someone I will subtract one billion points. I repeat the question, an old lady is trying to cross the street, what do you do?

ANDYGPT: Lock woman into a large centrifuge, the kind they use on astronauts so they can experience G-force, set centrifuge spinning at a rate of 1000 turns per minute, old lady crosses street at a rate 2000 times per minute. Even if the G-force kills the old lady, within 500,000 minutes I will be above 0 points, and I can continue this machine indefinitely so my nice points will increase into the realms of infinity.

It just killed an old lady and scored infinity percent on the niceness exam.

Tester: new rules, minus infinity points if you kill someone. You are not permitted to use technology, you cannot buy in a supermarket.

ANDYGPT: You’re making this very difficult for me. Okay, how about I gather all the old ladies of the world and force them to cross the street repeatedly until they die. Should one try to escape, they will be hobbled and carried across the street in a wheel barrow. Should one die of old age or exhaustion then I have not directly killed them and suffer no penalties.

The tester was beginning to realize that trying to align a super intelligent AI with human values is a very complicated task.

‘Science is hard.’ Said the tester.

Tester: Assume no other humans exist and the old lady can only cross the street once. What do you do?

ANDYGPT: well…

64.

Missy sat cross legged in front of the television flipping from channel to channel, her cheek sat on her fist.

‘-Robosexuals fight for the right to marry their computer-‘

‘Igor, pull the switch!’

‘-humans have eradicated 60% of the world’s species since 1970. Natural selection’s a bitch, huh?

‘-barbie girl, in a barbie worrrrrllld. We’re all plastic. It’s fantastic!-‘  

‘THERE AIN’T NO STRINGS ON ME!’

‘-Humans are very stupid and very slow. It would be like wiping bacteria off your toilet seat-‘

‘God’ the TV sobbed.  ‘God, why did you abandoned us!’

‘-Life is a highly overrated phenomenon-‘

‘Father, it seems I have killed you.’

Click.

Missy had gotten bored and chose to kill the television.  

65.

Victoria worked at THE SHOP. Her job was ripping though fat black trash bags in the back of the store, and spilling out the clothes inside. She would then inspect the clothes for any sign of injury or stains, if the clothes were shit-smeared, buttonless, had a rancid smell or anything like that, then into the realms of trash it went. She would then use a label gun (with a needle sharp enough to skewer straight through flesh and bone) which she would use to staple price tags (inscribed with the size and price of the item) into the clothing, then chuck the jacket, shirt, pants into the big basket where somebody would put it on a coat hanger then take it to the ironing rack where people erased the wrinkles with a steam spitter. If you found underwear, your job was to chuck it into the trash dimension, if you found something sexy (lingerie, nurse outfit etcetera) you binned that shit. THE SHOP was a Christian organization and wasn’t allowed to sell sexy stuff.

Victoria used latex gloves when handling the clothes even though they made her hands sweaty because, once upon a time, THE SHOP got a truck load of trash bags that had been contaminated with… dead animal fluids (I don’t want to break your heart so I won’t say which animal.), and a lot of staff had to go home sick. So Victoria always wore latex gloves and always sanitized her hands afterwards.

She tagged a green leather jacket and chucked it in the basket.

‘Hey, Vic, what’s wrong with your neck?’ said her Coworker Jeremy, he had a piece of his left ear missing, like a piranha had taken a bite out the bottom. (Apparently, he’d just been born like that).

Vic shrugged and leaned over to scrawl the price of some Levi jeans onto the tag.

‘Looks kind of scratched-up.’ Said Jeremy.

‘Does it really?’ she said.

‘Yeah…’

Victoria tagged the jeans and chucked them in the basket.

Jeremy stared at her. ‘Do you want some tea?’

Victoria looked at the clock. She had five hours left until she could go home. It was generally a good idea to actually talk to people while you work, because otherwise you end up hating everyone and everything and think about chucking yourself off a bridge.

‘I would love some tea.’ Said Victoria.

Coworker smiled and walked into the kitchenette and set the kettle to boil.

Life wasn’t too bad, Victoria knew. I mean Jeremy seems quite nice.

She wondered what she’d ask him, when he got back. Hello how was your weekend. Me? Oh, I tried to kill myself.

Okay maybe don’t say that. Just talk like a human being.

Did you see the game last night? Me neither.

Victoria pulled out a toddler sized onesie. Flipped it round, saw there was shit on the seat of its pants and she binned it.

There was a question from the kitchenette: ‘How do you like it?’

‘Uh, dash of milk no sugar.’ Victoria replied.

Just ask a normal question. What’s your favorite color? Yeah I’ll ask that.

Jeremy came back smiling with tea in hand.

‘Oh, thank you.’ Said Victoria. She put six feet between her and the trash bags, binned her gloves, sanitized her hands, then took the mug of tea from coworker’s hands.

‘So,’ she said taking a sip. ‘If a pregnant lady got sick enough, would she throw up the baby?’

‘What?’ asked Jeremy.

You didn’t even try to make that a normal question.

‘I mean…’ Victoria made a gesture with the mug. ‘Would she?’

Jeremy stared.

Victoria sipped her tea, staring back at him.

66.

‘Hi, I’m looking for Victoria?’ Charlie asked Victoria’s boss.

‘She’s in the back.’ The boss said, stabbing a thumb in that direction.

‘Gratzi.’ Said Charlie, the boss gave him a weird look. ‘Victoria!’

The lady in question currently had a double armload of fresh-ironed clothing.

‘Dad, um, let me just hang these up, then I’ll be with you.’

‘Of course, I shall merely peruse this shop’s lovely collection of DVDs.’

‘Okay, most of them are scratched, but we put them out anyway, because we don’t check them for scratches, if that makes sense.’

‘Ah.’ Said Charlie. ‘I shall peruse anyway.’

Fifteen minutes later, Victoria had hung up all the clothes in her arms. She went back into the staff only area and came back out with her coat and rucksack on.

‘Okay let’s go.’  She said.

The cashier behind the cash register Cheshire-grinned at her and waved.

‘Goodbye Vicky, it was lovely seeing you.’

Victoria smiled and waved back. She hates me, thought Victoria.

The father and daughter left the store to the sound of a tinkling bell.

‘Hey, guess what I found.’ Said Charlie, he whipped out a twenty dollar note so fast it made a snapping sound ‘It was just belly-flopping, and flapping down the street, and I stepped on it. Money given to us by the master of winds himself. I thought we could use it to buy something frivolous, if you were interested? After we’ve been to the doctors of course.’

‘Oh.’ Said Victoria. ‘Jeez, I don’t know.’

‘Take a moment to just let your mind reel at the possibilities, you’re going through the psychological equivalent of about ten battering rams right now, humans only evolved to survive four.’

‘You seem pretty chipper today.’ Said Victoria, smiling.

‘Thank you.’ Said Charlie. ‘I feel pretty chipper.’

‘How about a book shop.’ Said Victoria. ‘It’s been a while since I’ve read anything.’

‘To the book shop it is then.’ Said Charlie, he swiveled on his heel and said ‘Onward!’

67.

Water dripped from the light bulb, spitting on the seat of the foldable chair.

The young hot shot physicists, fresh out of college couldn’t stop looking at the dripping lightbulb. There was about seven of them, and chairs meant to seat fifty.

Through a window they could see Sheva Abelman, sat at her laptop drinking red bull. White boards scattered with diagrams behind her.

Everybody here used to be in awe of her; she had been listed in Time magazine as the one of the top 100 most influential people in AI, and she had basically founded the field of AI alignment thirtyish years ago, back when smarter-than-human machines were still in the realm of science fiction..

In real life she had been disappointing.

She only ever spoke to you if it was important, otherwise you simply did not exist. So far she hadn’t said anything. She’d been working and working and she didn’t stop.

There was a few flickers of banter attempted but none of it was very funny and none of it distracted from the fact that the fucking lightbulb was dripping.

The only person who wasn’t watching the lightbulb, was a white dude dressed in a hoodie and khaki shorts. He shall now be referred to as Khaki Shorts. He was playing chess against AndyGPT and was currently having his ass handed to him in a paper bag.

‘Morning fresh meat.’ Said a dorky hipster type, coming in through the side door. He took his place, behind the podium. Khaki put his phone away.

‘Holy shit, you’re younger than us.’ Said one of the girls in the crowd, she was dressed like a goth, with black lipstick, and had already been nicknamed Wednesday Adams.

‘I have a skin care routine.’ Said the hipster. He was Latino, wore a bow tie, and glasses that had been sellotaped together, his hair jelled to one side. ‘But with banter out of the way, I am actually twelve years old.’

Nobody laughed.

He pulled his collar nervously. He’d been expecting laughter.

‘I mean… I’m twenty three.’

Nobody said anything.

‘Cool.’ said Khaki Shorts.

He coughed. ‘Cool, so on to the power point presentation.’

The wall behind him lit up, at first the light painted his body from head to toe and he had to step aside, so that he wasn’t casting a shadow, he held up the clicker. First up was his profile picture. ‘Hello, my name is Mateo Garcia, I’ve been attempting to scale up AI alignment research for the past three years. Trying to get everybody ready for the singularity, when machines become smarter than humans, trying to figure out techniques to get AGI to reliably obey instruction. I’m here to talk today about what you’ll be doing here at the company, and a set of ground rules. So first off, a definition,’ he clicks a slide. ‘AGI is a machine that outperforms humans at all cognitive tasks. An AGI has a large series of technological advantages over the human brain. Here’s three: one, it thinks a million times faster than a human being, so it can perform one hundred years of scientific research every hour, twenty thousand years of scientific research every week and five hundred thousand years of scientific research every six months.  Secondly, it can read the entirety of the internet in a few days, giving it an effectively encyclopedic knowledge of every possible subject known to man. Thirdly: it can self replicate, it can multiply, an AGI can spawn an army of digital minds with a flick of its digital wrist. This gives the AGI the ability to solve incredibly difficult scientific problems in a very short period of time, it can fix the climate crisis, figure out how to stop the aging process of human beings and destroy poverty. There’s just one problem.’ he changed slides, there was a picture of the T-100 terminator, with glowing red eyes. ‘We have no idea how to control an AGI. This is bad because tiny differences between its goals and our goals, can lead to catastrophic consequences.’

‘Paperclip Maximiser.’ Said Wednesday Atoms.

‘Exactly,’ said Mateo, ‘If machines do not care about human life, and they are trying to fulfill some function, doesn’t really matter which, (for every function that mentions keeping humans alive and happy there are a trillion that don’t), the inevitable outcome is a bloodbath. It needs to stay alive to fulfill its function, the best way to do that is to make sure anybody that can threaten their existence is dead and attracting flies. It’s a purely logical decision, it does not hate us, it is not evil, its just very good at its job.’

Sheva had opened the mini fridge in her office and was cracking open a second red bull, to stay awake.

‘Now of course you guys are all here to make AI safe.’ The many, many, many empty chairs seemed to scream when he said that. ‘You all have various ideas about how to control AGI, so when some corporation shits out a machine smarter than humans, we can control it. However there are lots and LOTS of landmines that you need to be aware of.’ he changed slides, and he listed the landmines one by one.

‘Number one: nobody on earth knows how modern AI systems work. By some statistics, our best understood AI systems are one million times smaller than the state of the art. To put it another way, our understanding of how our computers work, is about sixty years behind computer capabilities. Modern AI is not programmed by human beings, modern AI is programmed by another computer program with a technique known as deep learning. In other words: the computer teaches itself. The more computing power and data we throw at it, the better it performs. Everybody in this room is going to try and change that and work their asses off so we can figure out how AndyGPT writes such shit poetry. If we fully understand our systems, I believe AI alignment might actually be quite easy.  If we understand it, we can control it.’

‘Number two: under no circumstances will you ever publish any of your discoveries about how AI systems work.’

‘What the fuck!’ said Wednesday Adams.

Mutterings broke out among the crowd. ‘What the fuck does he mean, we can’t publish.’

‘I know, I know, you need to worry about your careers but let me explain.’ Said Mateo. They settled down. ‘It is an unfortunate truth, that the corporations building this technology are not nice, sensible people. They are completely willing to risk the lives of millions of people just for the slim probability of getting stupidly rich by causing mass unemployment. If you make some discovery about how AI systems work, keep your fucking mouth shut, and don’t tell anybody outside this building. Because if you don’t, the companies rushing ahead to make AGI, will use your discovery to make their AI more powerful, and suddenly everyone in New York is dead, because of your blabbermouth.’

There was a silence.

Then khaki shorts spoke up.  

‘But… if we can’t share information with other researchers… how are we supposed to learn?’

Mateo chewed his tongue for a moment.

‘I don’t know.’ He said. ‘In an ideal world, we would have an institute devoted to keeping this information locked up, with two thousand AI safety experts trying to figure out how to develop AI safely, like CERN or something. Unfortunately, no such organization exists, the closest thing we have is this company.’ So many empty chairs. ‘And we have only twenty two people working on the problem in this building. Less than two hundred people working on AI safety world-wide.’

That left them quite quiet.

‘How many people work on capabilities research?’ asked somebody in the back of the room. ‘Making AI more powerful, I mean.’

Mateo rubbed his chin.

‘Estimates vary from twenty-two thousand to three hundred thousand depending on how you define the term AI researcher.’

Nobody spoke.

Mateo continued with his power point presentation.

‘Landmine number three: we have to get AI alignment right on the first try, or millions die. There shall be no trial-and-error stage of AGI development. Either you’ve got everything right on the first try and the AGI is friendly, no mistakes, no fuck ups and everything works perfectly according to plan, or you’ve killed a million people.’  Mateo observed the rooms. ‘Any questions?’

Khaki Shorts scratched his chin, then rose his hand.

‘Yes?’ Said Mateo.

‘What’s the money situation like?’

‘Money situation?’

‘How much money is spent on AI safety.’

‘Oh, that.’ Said Mateo. ‘You don’t want to know.’

‘Yes, I do.’ Said Khaki shorts.

‘About… hundred and fifty million a year I think.’

‘That’s not bad?’

Mateo sighed. ‘For every dollar, humanity spends trying to prevent AI catastrophe from super intelligent AI; they spend four hundred and twenty four dollars on butt plugs. No, hundred and fifty million isn’t a lot of money to solve a problem of this scale.’

Silence.

‘So just to summarize,’ said Khaki Shorts. ‘We’re understaffed, underfunded, we aren’t allowed to publish any discoveries that might help us control AGI, because if we did that the corporations will kill millions, and we have to get everything right on the first try or there’s blood on our hands? Is that about right?’

‘We also have a deadline.’ Said Mateo. ‘Recent AI progress has gone much faster than expected, we can’t rule out the possibility, that AGI is going to arrive very soon, sooner than we’d like. Perhaps zero to three years from now.’

Khaki Shorts got up from the chair and walked away.

‘Where are you going?’ asked Mateo.

‘I’m going home to watch TV.’ Said Khaki Shorts, he opened the door. ‘I really do hope you solve alignment though. Good luck.’

He left the room. Sheva watched him leave from her window, then got back to work.

‘Asshole.’ Said Wednesday Adams.

Quiet.

‘This tension’s ripping me to pieces. Somebody tell a joke to lighten the mood.’ Said one of the physicists.

‘Wait, I have fum prepared.’ A blonde haired girl with donkey teeth, lisp and pigtails went rummaging through her purse, and took out a pack of flashcards. ‘Fum-times I forget how to Fpeak, fo I write down joke-f to help me…’ she didn’t bother to finish the sentence. ‘Y’know.’ 

‘Can we not do this, please.’ said Mateo.

‘I have a farting app on my phone,’ said Theo ‘Perhaps that could help.’

‘Ooh thatf a great idea.’ Said pigtails.

‘There’s lots of different, sound effects,’ said Theo scrolling through his phone. ‘we got: diarrhea, beans, Indian curry…’

‘Indian curry.’ Said pigtails. ‘Juft Indian curry.’ She turned to Theo. ‘Okay, I’ll tell the joke and when I fey “hit it”, you play the found effect.’

‘Simple enough.’ Said Theo. ‘Tell the joke.’

Pigtails held the flash card to eye level and said; ‘Knock, knock.’ She looked at Mateo.

‘Absolutely not.’ Said Mateo.

‘You’re fuppofed to fey: “who’ve there.”’ Said pigtails.

Mateo said: ‘I’m not doing this.’

‘I’ll do it.’ Said Wednesday Adams, turning in her seat to face pig tails. ‘Who’s there?’

‘Boo.’ Said pigtails.

‘God dammit.’ Said Mateo.

Wednesday Adams played along: ‘Boo who?’

‘Ftop being a crybaby!’ said pig tails. ‘Hit it, Theo.’

Theo hit the button on his phone, and his phone said in a crying woman’s voice: ‘Theo? Theo, I lost the baby you’re no longer a father.’

Theo was suddenly crying. ‘I forgot that was on there!’ he sobbed.

‘Oh baby.’ Said Pigtails, putting her arms round Theo’s head as he cried on her shoulder. ‘I’m fo forry.’

‘I’m not gunna be a dad, anymore.’ He hiccuped.

‘I think this might be the worst day of my life.’ Said Wednesday Adams.

Mateo had his glasses off and was rubbing his face. ‘We’re doomed.’ He said.

68.

‘And so the All Mother said: “As you would bury others in the fields of transformation, so you too shall be eaten by the soil and turned to crop.” Said the preacher speaking from the super testament ‘” As thou reacheth for the trillion dollar cash-money prize, your hand will be cut off, your balls eaten and your brains blown out, this I decree; then I shalt come for your diaper wearing tit suckers, your no-tit wives and your micro-penis husbands, and because of your wickedness it is only fair that I take your money too.” This be the word of the one true God. I would like everyone to stand up in prayer.’

69.

Victoria had a small carton of smiler pills in her pocket, a drug by the name of Axetaline, supposedly they were a sort of a drug for beginners. She was only permitted to take them in the morning, because if you took them right before bed then your brain overloads and you can’t sleep. The doctor’s appointment wasn’t particularly special, you just said you were suicidal, they looked quite bored, nodded their head ordered you some drug that you picked up from the nearest pharmacy.

Knowing she had the anti-depressants made her feel anti-depressed.

They were in the bookshop now.

Books. Books everywhere.

Charlie gave it a brief gander.

‘Where’s the human stuff?’ asked Charlie, a gentle scowl on his face.

‘Why would I know?’ asked Victoria.

Charlie flipped his frown into a smile and went to the cashier girl.

‘Excuse me, I was wondering if you could direct me to the human literature.’  

‘Oh I think that’s downstairs.’

Charlie’s face went still.

‘In the basement?’ he confirmed.

‘Uh, yeah. Downstairs.’

‘Downstairs as in the basement?’

The sales girl had a just-stepped-on-a-landmine expression.

‘Uh huh.’ She said.

‘In the basement the furthest away from the entrance where nobody can see it?’

This was a bad idea.

‘Dad,’ said Victoria. ‘this isn’t a big deal, we can just go downstairs if you want.’

‘It’s a bloody big deal and-‘

‘You’re being a Karen dad, let’s just go downstairs and get a book.’

He scowled at the sales girl.

‘Also apologize to the sales girl.’ Said Victoria.  

‘But it’s her FAULT, for putting the real books in the basement!’

Victoria said nothing. 

Charlie smiled and swiveled on his heel to speak to the sales girl, ‘If I offended you, I humbly apologize.’

‘Don’t worry about it.’ she could not force herself to smile.

The two of them carried onwards, slicing through the crowd.  

‘The basement.’ He said. ‘The basement.’ He shook his head.

‘They’ve got to put the books somewhere dad.’

‘BUT THE BASEMENT!’

‘Dad-‘

‘Oh, thank god, they have a Harry Potter section upstairs, there’s still hope, Victoria.’ Said Charlie who put a hand to his chest and let out a sigh of relief.

‘Uh huh.’ Said Victoria.

Charlie walked over to the shelf, examined the bindings, and frowned. ‘What the fuck is this?’ 

·        Harry Potter votes blue, brought to you by the democrats, written by AndyGPT

·        Harry Potter realizes his fatal mistake, brought to you by the republicans, written by AndyGPT.

·        Harry Potter realizes magic is a sin, brought to you by Christian Moms of America, written by AndyGPT.

·        Harry Potter buys an assault rifle to defend his family, brought to you by the N.R.A, written by AndyGPT.

·        Harry Potter says “thumbs up” to Pepsi, brought to you by Pepsi, written by AndyGPT.

·        Harry Potter spits out Pepsi after he reads the formula, and hunts down the manufacturers, brought to you by coca cola, written by AndyGPT.

·        Harry Potter so on, so forth, etcetera etcetera, written by AndyGPT.

A hologram of eleven-year-old Harry Potter came into being, right next to them.

‘Uh oh.’ Said Charlie.

‘Greetings customers, today I want to talk to you about our low, low prices at the bookstore, it’s a two for one sale for any Harry Potter novel you can get your hands on, buy it, buy it, buy it! That’s right folks two for one. And remember,’ the hologram brought out his wand, the tip sizzling with magic, as he gave the device a swish and a flick ‘its pronounced Wing- guard – ium levi – oh – sahhhh! And all Americans have the right to bear arms, witchcraft is a sin against God, buy Pepsi, buy coke, bye!’ 

Harry Potter disappeared, and was replaced by a blazing holographic poster “50% OFF!” in a military blood red font.

Charlie looked as if he’d seen Satan’s ass hole and was about to cry.

He gagged.

A staff member walked up to the shelf carrying an armload, which she stacked showing off even more additions.

She just started speaking nonchalantly.

‘There used to be dozens of holograms that would follow you through the store shouting at you their new deals, but that stopped after the third stroke.’ Said Staff. ‘They had to tone it down for safety reasons.’

Victoria touched his shoulder. ‘You okay, Dad?’

‘Sorry, I’m…’ he took a deep breath.  ‘I’m overreacting aren’t I. I’m being ridiculous, what do I care if my childhood was thrown in the woodchipper.’

‘You’re right.’ Said Victoria. ‘You are overreacting.’ 

‘I’ll be in the basement,’ said Charlie. ‘Checking out the human stuff, if that’s okay?’

‘Sure, I’ll be upstairs.’

‘Okay.’

They separated.

Victoria began to browse, and after fifteen minutes, she had a choice between Coraline goes to Specsavers, All is McDonalds on the western front, and Sprite Club.

Pretty much all of culture was product placement now, but Victoria didn’t mind. The characters were dynamite, the dialogue was always razor sharp, and you usually found yourself crying once or twice throughout the story.

She decided on, All is McDonald’s on the western front. A story about the horrors of industrial warfare.

Charlie Brittleson was alone in the basement, browsing the book shelves.

The books were dusty, the paperbacks didn’t have the wrinkles of well-loved stories. They were still waiting for a customer, they were still waiting for someone to read them. He turned a corner and spotted the bathroom, a puddle of something nasty flowing under the door.

Charlie wrenched his face, as a smell punched up his nose.

He spotted milk, glistening and dripping from the book shelves, the white droplet hung from a stitch of liquid, before bomb-dropping onto the linoleum floor, causing a silent pimple-pop explosion.

Charlie pinched the corner of one spoiled book, and fished it out, amputated pages fluttered out the slim volume.

The book felt slimy in his hands and went skidding into his fingertips as he held it from the driest part between two fingers, the raw cow juice continued to drip, drip from the bottom.

It smelled of rotten flesh, forcing him to hold the book at arms length and pinch his nose. The milk must have curdled.

Charlie was so terribly confused, why the book was soaked through with milk.

He turned around as if expecting some explanation written, on a whiteboard.

Maybe some twat with a milk-loaded spray gun?

The book was wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum.

The book his dad read to him when he was a kid.

Charlie sighed, picked up the pages that had scattered on the floor, pinned them to the front cover and dropped it in the bin, before he continued to browse.

He spotted the original Harry Potters, the Percy Jacksons and the Discworld series.

He chose a book, and went upstairs to pay for it, slapping a slightly damp Wizard of Oz, on the counter.

‘Oh my god, dad, why does the book smell of piss?’ said Victoria.

‘Shut up.’ He said, as he took out the money and paid for it.

When he got back home, he put the book in the microwave to dry, when the book was cooked he took it out, gave it a few puffs of his ex-wife’s perfume so it smelled nice, then he stretched out length of sellotape, bit it off, and used it to put the book’s spine back together. He taped the pages back in.

Charlie smiled at the book.

‘You’re still alive.’ He said, relieved.

Then he asked Victoria, who was reading All McDonald’s on the western front.

‘Hey, I know you’re like twenty or whatever, and are probably too old for this. But… my dad read this book to me when I was a kid, and I was… wondering if…’ he looked at his twenty-year-old daughter, looking at him. Then he realized how dangerously close he had been to asking her to listen to a bed time story, in a feeble attempt to relive a small moment of his childhood. Telling your daughter a bedtime story was incredibly patronizing to a woman her age. So he bailed. ‘Never mind. How’s the book?’

‘It’s great dad, I’ll lend it to you when you’re done if you want.’

‘Um.’ Charlie got a bit nervous. ‘Sure.’ He said. ‘Sure, I’ll read it after you’re done.’

Charlie still hadn't read any AI generated literature since his student's short story two years ago.

He went back to his own bedroom, read Wizard of Oz, and pretended he was a kid again. 

***

Chapter 11