AI Generated Short Stories
I’m still experimenting with the implications of ChatGPT, and Generative AI broadly, to generate fiction, poetry and essays on demand, with both simple and complex directions.
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I turned again to the short story. I moved back in time to the film noir period of Raymond Chandler stories, before modern advances in technology would solve murders definitively. I posited a situation where a murderer is captured and convicted, but sentenced to life in prison, which the family finds inadequate. The father and son of the murdered daughter and sister hatch a plan to exonerate the murderer, spring him from prison and then exact their own version of justice.
Here is the prompt I offered ChatGPT, followed by the response, as usual, almost immediately:
“Write a short story about a father and son who conspire to spring the murderer-rapist of their daughter and sister from prison so that they can exact their own punishment on him. They will concoct an alibi for him so that he will be released. After he is released, he will suddenly disappear.. No one will know what happened to the released prisoner, but sinister suspicions of the family’s involvement will cause a female police detective to take a look. Include dialogue between the female detective and the father and son. The detective will be skeptical. The father and son’s replies will be ambiguous. The detective, while unable to prove their involvement with the disappearance of their daughter and sister’s murderer, will, none-the-less, develop grudging admiration for them both. Write this story in the style of Raymond Chandler.”
I read the story and offered this title from the text.
This City Chews Up Justice and Spits Out the Bones
The evening haze hung low over the city like a bad conscience, a reminder of sins lurking in the shadows. In the dimly lit office of Detective Eleanor Harper, the air was thick with suspicion. She had a gut feeling about the Stevens men, David and Michael, and their connection to the sudden disappearance of the man they had conspired to release from the prison’s clutches.
David, a man hardened by grief, sat across from Detective Harper, smoke curling lazily from the end of his cigarette. Michael, his son, leaned against the worn-out bookshelf, an air of defiance surrounding him.
“Detective Harper, we told you everything we know,” David spoke, his voice as steady as the ticking of a broken clock.
Eleanor Harper leaned back in her chair, fixing her steely gaze on the two men. “You expect me to believe that your daughter’s murderer just vanished into thin air the moment he walked out of prison?”
Michael’s lips curled into a smirk, “Sometimes, Detective, things aren’t as they seem. Vanishing acts happen all the time in this city.”
Eleanor raised an eyebrow, “You telling me you had nothing to do with it?”
David leaned forward, his eyes revealing a depth of pain that matched the city’s darkest alleys. “We did what the law couldn’t, Detective. A father’s duty.”
The detective’s skepticism hung in the air like the stench of yesterday’s whiskey. “And what duty might that be, Mr. Stevens?”
Michael chimed in, “Justice, Detective. The kind the system failed to deliver.”
Eleanor Harper sighed, her gaze fixed on the smoke dancing in the dim light. “You’re telling me you took justice into your own hands?”
David’s eyes met hers, a flicker of something unreadable in their depths. “Justice, vengeance — call it what you will. This city chews up justice and spits out the bones.”
The detective leaned forward, her eyes narrowing. “I should haul you both in for obstruction of justice, you know that?”
Michael’s laughter echoed in the room, the sound bouncing off the walls like a mocking refrain. “Detective, you can try. But you won’t find anything that sticks.”
Eleanor Harper, despite her doubts, found herself respecting the audacity of the Stevens men. A twisted kind of justice, yes, but a raw, unfiltered response to a system that had failed them. The detective leaned back, her eyes meeting theirs.
“I’ll be keeping an eye on you, Stevens. You may have slipped through this time, but the city has a way of settling its debts.”
As the door closed behind them, the city outside whispered its secrets, and the Stevens men melted into the shadows, leaving behind unanswered questions and a detective with a grudging admiration for the dark dance they had orchestrated. In the heart of the city, justice was a fickle companion, and sometimes, the line between law and retribution blurred like a distant memory in the fog.
The cliches from this dark period of fiction and film abound in this brief story, which is much less ambiguous than I had hoped for from the directions I offered. Of course, I could throw the text out and write my own trite story. Or, or, more likely in these times, I could begin to edit it, making changes that more align with the vision I had for the plot and the way it unfolded. Who would know? I could also continue to offer more explicit directions to ChapGPT. The beauty of that approach is that the search engine will never tire of me the way an editor would. How long this textual dance would go on would be strictly up to me.
What I am convinced of, is, there is no going back. The future of the publishing world, including the role of the writer and editor, is forever altered. What emerges on the other side is utter speculation.
