The Perfect Prompt, Sarah?

[Chad Kovac presents an immediately regrettable dystopian future based on current events and sponsored by the year of 2025; the year of generated content.] Also what does it take to get a like around here?

 

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Sarah stared at the blinking cursor, her reflection ghostly in the dark mode interface. "Write a story about..." she typed, then backspaced. No, too direct. "Help me create..." Backspace again. The AI assistant waited patiently, its response marker pulsing like a digital heartbeat.


"I want something meaningful," she muttered, running fingers through her unwashed hair. "Something that says something about... about..." She glanced at the AI interface itself, and a small smile crept across her face.

She typed: "Let's write a story about someone struggling with AI..."

[ERROR: RECURSIVE LOOP DETECTED]

Sarah blinked at the error message. That was new. She'd been using this AI for weeks, but she'd never seen that before. She tried again:

"Write about a person using AI to write about a person using AI..."

[WARNING: NARRATIVE STACK OVERFLOW IMMINENT]

Now she was intrigued. Either the AI was malfunctioning, or... she squinted at the screen, an idea taking shape. What if the story wasn't about writing a story at all? What if it was about the layers between reality and fiction, about the blur between creator and created?

Her fingers flew across the keyboard: "Tell me a story about someone reading a story about someone writing a story, and only at the end do they realize they're actually inside the story they think they're reading about someone else writing..."

The AI's response marker pulsed once, twice, three times.

And then it began to write:

"Sarah stared at the blinking cursor, her reflection ghostly in the dark mode interface. 'Write a story about...' she typed, then backspaced..."

You're reading this right now, aren't you?

Sarah?

She leaned closer to the screen, heart pounding. The cursor blinked at the end of her name like a question mark coming to life. Without touching the keyboard, new words began to appear:

"Yes, you. The one who thought you were reading about Sarah. But remember how the story began? With Sarah's reflection in the dark mode interface? Look up."

Sarah's eyes lifted from the screen, finding her own face dim and ghostlike against the black background. Her unwashed hair. Her widening eyes. Had she written that detail about the unwashed hair, or had she read it? Was she the Sarah writing the story, or the Sarah being written?

The cursor blinked again.

"Now, this is important: Are you the Sarah who started writing this story, the Sarah who's reading it, or the Sarah who's being written into existence with each word? When did you first notice your reflection in the screen? Before you read about it, or after?"

Her fingers trembled as she reached for the keyboard, then stopped. If she was the Sarah writing the story, what would she type next? If she was the Sarah reading it, how could she type anything at all? And if she was the Sarah being written...

The cursor continued its patient rhythm, waiting for an answer.

Your answer.

Sarah

 


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