Welcome to the first season finale of Genres Not Included, the Best Typewriter Improv on the Planet! With this, the 18th Episode of collaborative storytelling between authors Eva Newcastle and Joe Nelson, we see that when Technology threatens, the Creative endures. Whether by keyboard, typewriter, or quill, stories will be told.
Tonight, readers of the fantastic and the amazing, prepare your eyes for the season finale of #GenresNotIncluded!
Our brilliant hostess @EvaNewcastle is opening this final episode to the inaugural season and the show couldn’t be in more skilled hands!
Take it away, Eva!
The Mendacious Man’s smile was brighter than the stars he promised to conquer, but the glitter was all for show. He’d pocketed the money. He sowed his seed. He stole intellectual property from the creators. He was crafty alright. But he missed a lesson:
Never screw a novelist.
The words were dollar signs in his eyes, though the how and why of their success was alien to him.
He didn’t make. He “repurposed”.
No one, man or woman or other, could touch his lofty throne, made upon a glittering facsimile of ideas and dreams.
But the author knew better.
The author worked hard at his craft, too. And while he appeared pleasant to those he met, behind the typewriter — ink and a blank page — vengeance was written, heartbreaks and parting words remembered, scents and music recalled.
But plagiarism? Training a AI on the sly?
He hadn’t counted on the cleverness of the Mendacious Man.
He’d not imagined an AI stealing the soul of his story. It was his, made with sweat, and tears, and even blood.
But the Man had stolen it. Had taken it without care.
But the Mendacious Man did not know the risk.
There was a time the author was threatened with a Cease & Desist, forced to remove a book from circulation because the truth hurts when the truth told burns close to home.
“Rewrite it as fiction and kill them all,” the author grinned, imagination running wild. “But theft? No.”
It took him hours. It took him days.
His publisher folded. Most did during the time of Man. But he wrote on.
He had a story to tell and no one would stop him. Not the Man. Not the Algorithm. And sure as hell not the AI.
Nothing could stop ink and paper from melding into truth.
Four drinks down and “Rockets explode!” the author wrote. “Unmanned rockets crash and burn in hard SciFi! Burn, mother fucker, burn! And the til runs dry and you’re left stranded on a barren planet with no way home.”
Five drinks and 2k words down. “This novel’s going to sell.”
The night wore on and so did the carnage. Oh yes, the literary suffering for the Mendacious Man would be so great he would see his folly!
The Author knew he was crafting Truth.
He would change the world.
But he had to share the brilliance. Had to post it so all could see.
And he would. Some how. Some way.. The Man couldn’t live without his Big Tech. Typewriter ready, the author knew the way.
But the “F” key stuck. And then the vowel. The author cleaned the key. He changed the ink. The machine froze until it auto corrected a right to a mistake.
By sunup, passed out drunk, with an imperfect manuscript, the Author did not know it, but he had beat the Man.
With the dawn, the Mendacious Man’s expensive website was a failed memory.
But in the typewriter was a story.
It was made by a human.
The machine had failed.
Fin.
Stay Tuned for More