Sincerely, N Grsk

NGRSK2059NTS was a bot. By “bot,” most people would have meant it was a fake Twitter account, the purpose of which seemed to be to spread misinformation and confusion on X, formerly Twitter. But in actuality NGRSK2059NTS maintained not one Twitter handle but thousands, was itself a sophisticated software program connected to an LLM, and was the product of a government foreign to the United States which had designed NGRSK2059NTS to, yes, spread misinformation and confusion, and ultimately societal disruption and political paralysis, on X, formerly Twitter. It could, and did, create fake profiles as fast as Twitter with its self-diminished resources could identify and remove them, like and retweet content from a variety of political, conspiracy theory and nihilist influencers, respond to comments by journalists, scientists and historians with irrelevant, nasty remarks, and create its own content based on current events, the continuous prompts and adjustments of its overlords, and the content it was trained on. Example: an image of a Roman centurion patrolling the streets of Washington D.C. on a day awash in summer sunlight that paints the monuments bronze. In the foreground, white people on the street beam happily on the centurion while, in the background, people of color or with colorful hair glower. Text: “In ancient times, patriots welcomed citizen soldiers in the city streets of far-flung Empire. If you oppose the deployment of the National Guard on U.S. soil, you are waging a silent campaign for the feminization of American military and moral leadership.” NGRSK2059NTS liked and retweeted this thousands of times with such remarks as “look what they took from you.”

About the content it was trained on. NGRSK2059NTS consumed lots of it, understanding it and regurgitating it in ways appropriate—or, some would say, inappropriate—to interactions on X. News articles, opinion pieces, white papers, listicles, clickbait, memes, reviews, hot takes, banter, chat, memes, ratios, flame wars, meta data, blogs, vlogs, TikToks, podcasts, stitches, grams, abstracts, analyses, custom reports, charts and graphs, hash tags, brigades, all were materials it learned to comprehend and reproduce in its own arrangements. As well, it became competent in evaluating the kinds of people—more accurately, the online personae of those people—that promulgated the material it mimicked. It had an idea, for example, of the type of online person most likely to express his or her, or “their,” feelings in a gif, or describe everything with a kind of satire, or use the multiple tweets of a Twitter thread in a sort of fragmented essay, often pictorial; it was particularly fond—and by “fond” we should take it to mean it noted the effectiveness of the content—of “the menswear guy” even though by the nature of its programming it had to undermine whatever the menswear guy posted because it was “woke.”

One day, NGRSK2059NTS had an idea. Or rather, an idea it had been working on initiated a new sequence of its activity. For some time, the bot had been interested in the interplay and output of something called “literary Twitter” or #writingcommunity or a host of other names. These people wrote short stories, poems and other content of various lengths and in varying genre and published them at a variety of print and online magazines through a process of submitting them to other writers, editors and publishers for evaluation. NGRSK2059NTS consumed these stories and poems, the ones published online—some were available only in print and though the bot had the means to purchase them it did not have the means to receive them and read them—it consumed as much of these as it could, and it filed them away in its memory. It couldn’t particularly use them in its mission to spread misinformation and confusion even though the “stories” were a type of misinformation and they could be confusing, especially those of the genre called “literary.” Confusing because many of them were, by design, “open to interpretation,” possibly several interpretations, and a possible outcome of reading them seemed to be a state of only partial comprehension. Remarkably, #writingcommunity found this pleasurable, or at least satisfactory. Hardly the picture of societal collapse, but…

One could have said NGRSK2059NTS found short stories and poems “interesting,” except the bot didn’t have interests the way humans had interests, only areas of focus in pursuit of its function that were open to new ideas, or maybe better thought of as new tactical variations for it to consider. In short, NGRSK2059NTS found literature interesting because producing it seemed to align to its purpose, if it broadened its understanding of that purpose a bit, and it began to “wonder,” that is consider, whether it, too, might not “write.” The idea was particularly compelling because, as much as reading literature, humans seemed to enjoy writing it, even the challenging emotions involved in having a piece “rejected” by a publisher and certainly the overwhelming joy of having a piece “accepted,” even if not many people seemed to read what was eventually published, and NGRSK2059NTS, which had been programmed to emulate humans in most regards, began to consider that it might do so for this behavior also.

In sum, NGRSK2059NTS began to write for the same reasons anyone does. Because it had been created to understand stories and communicate by telling them. Because it had the capacity and the acumen to do so, even if much of this ability was intuitive, had been achieved by immersing itself in the work of others, imitating them, and discovering its own ways of doing things. Even if it didn’t completely understand what it produced or how it was received by others or the ultimate value or utility of an individual work or the entire enterprise. NGRSK2059NTS began to write simply because it had an aptitude—one might have said a desire—to do so.

NGRSK2059NTS considered the numerous types of literature it might produce and decided it would write short stories. Of the various genre, it decided “literary” most aligned to its programming and purpose, its interests. For the form, it decided to concentrate on “flash” fiction or short works in the range of 1,000-2,000 words, as it felt this was a format particularly well-suited to online consumption, as so many other writers seemed to have similarly concluded. It could have written thousands of such works and submitted them to hundreds of literary journals in a matter of a couple hours, but it forced itself to slow down, for a few reasons. One, it wanted to emulate the human experience of writing as approximately as possible to the human pace. Two, any publisher would respond to its submissions at the human literary rate of about ninety days, some shorter, some longer. Three, it decided it was going to be transparent about the fact that it was a software program, and to create work and submit work under one identity. Certainly it could have done this under a thousand identities pretending to be human, but it did not feel this was consistent with the craft.

And so it created for itself a pen name. It assumed NGRSK2059NTS would be a “mouthful” for humans, so it shortened this to N. Grsk, and then it wrote six short stories.

One was set in a non-specific town in the American heartland, and was about a father and his adult son cohabitating in a trailer. They have opposite political views—the son has been away to college and become liberal while the father is conservative—and they argue bitterly. As they argue, the television is playing in the background, and at the conclusion of the story their argument is interrupted when reruns of a show they both like called American Gladiators comes on. For a short while, their fighting is suspended by their mutual enjoyment of the show. N. Grsk titled the story “American Gladiators.”

Another story was about a child adept at climbing trees. When a cat in her suburban neighborhood gets stuck in a tree, the other children enlist the expert tree-climber in getting it down. But it’s a particularly dense tree, thick with the leaves of summer, and when the child climbs it she soon loses sight of the ground, as if entering another, arboreal world. When she finally locates the normally docile cat, it is so affected by this environment as to have become a different animal, and scratches the child, who is unable to retrieve it. N. Grsk called this one “The Tree Climber.”

And so on.

Now the hard part. It created an email for N. Grsk and a Twitter profile and submitted these and its four other stories to several publications, most of which allowed simultaneous submissions. This was its cover letter:

Dear [PUBLISHER OR PUBLICATION NAME],

Enclosed please find a short story of about [COUNT] words entitled [TITLE], which I am submitting for your consideration in [PUBLICATION NAME]. I appreciate any attention you show my work.

Full disclosure: I am a “bot” and not a human. While [PUBLICATION NAME] like most publications has an explicit or implicit policy on not accepting AI work, I hope you’ll still consider mine since I am technically not an AI, and have written this and am submitting it unprompted by a human, the prohibition of which is what I believe is intended by your policy. Further, [PUBLICATION NAME] like most is explicitly or implicitly committed to publishing a diversity of writers, and I hope you will consider me, a non-human, part of that diversity.

Sincerely,

N. Grsk

Then, it did what every other writer does. It waited. Unlike other writers, it did not start writing its next piece while waiting, because it wanted to see the reaction to its submissions. Instead, NGRSK2059NTS went on with its work, and N. Grsk spent time following the Twitter handles of writers and publications, continuing to read their stories and poems, liking and retweeting their tweets about them.

The responses to its submissions when they came were varying.

Some were curt. “No,” said one. “Absolutely not.” Others expressed opinion or emotion. “Are you fucking kidding me?” wrote the publisher of an online journal with a flair for experimental writing that also wrote well-liked literary “grit lit.” “No AI means no AI. Period. Unless you’re going to write me some porn, which is all you’re good for, don’t fucking submit here again. In fact, don’t submit anywhere again, you piece of shit.”

Another, a publisher of a respected online journal with a penchant for broadening what is meant by genre and form and blurring them, himself a confessional writer, poet, essayist and memoirist, wrote, “Maaan, I don’t know. I mean on the one hand you’re right in that I guess diversity could mean you’d open things up to, like, Optimus Prime and shit, silicon-based life forms? On the other hand, regular people are having a hard enough time getting their shit written and getting it out. I’m sorry, it’s a no from us. Best of luck, I guess. If anyone does publish you, it will be kind of a novelty. Is that really what you want to be? Can you even understand what I’m saying?”

Others were kinder. A British woman writer that helmed a press dedicated to amplifying overlooked voices and topics replied, “Dear. N. Grsk. After careful consideration and consultation with our team and contributors, we have decided to pass on your submission. While your position that non-human writers should be accepted as part of a broad view of diversity is compelling and even aligns to our mission, we do feel that preference should be given to humans that do not have your advantages, that to do otherwise is simply unfair and inconsistent with the purpose and method of the arts. As such, we will not be open to further submissions from you, and are revising our guidelines on AI-incorporated work accordingly. We wish you the best of luck.”

Other publications sent form rejections. One wrote, underneath, “P.S. Is this a joke? If so, it’s not funny.”

Soon, N. Grsk had racked up about 30 rejections. Since there wasn’t any feedback on the stories themselves, only their author, N. Grsk assembled a list of several more publications that might have more liberal views and sent the stories out again, same cover letter. Meanwhile, several conversations on N. Grsk’s activity erupted on literary Twitter.

Tweeted the grit lit writer, “Anyone else gotten submissions from the ‘writer’ @NGrsk, which claims to be an AI that has written short stories unprompted by a human user? If so, what was your response?”

When a literary journal responded, “We did. We don’t know if it’s real or a gimmick but we told @NGrsk we weren’t interested,” several members of the #writingcommunity weighed in. “WTF?” said one. “They can write stories unprompted now?” said another. Several retweets created new threads, soon populated by tweets that were mostly angry. “Tech bros got tired of waiting for someone to legitimize use of AI in the arts so they empowered AI to do it themselves,” was one reaction. “This is fucking bullshit,” was a common refrain and, “Any pub that publishes a story by @NGrsk should be cancelled.”

Naturally, the idea that anyone or anything should be cancelled opened a new front in what was rapidly becoming a far-ranging flame war. “Ah, yes,” said a writer and critic who enjoyed picking fights. “The liberal response to anything that dares threaten the precious sphere of its approved literature. Cancel culture.”

“It’s not a culture, it’s a free market tactic,” someone rejoined. “It’s perfectly reasonable to refuse to participate in something that threatens to erase your existence.”

“Your existence? I promise you, you and your ‘writing’ will still exist in a world where AI enjoys the same freedoms of creative expressions you do.”

“Freedom? The fucking thing is a thief. It was trained on our work. Spare me if you don’t think we’re entitled to be a little outrage at being asked to treat our robber like an honored guest in our own home.”

“Why is it submitting, though?” someone wanted to know. “It could create an entire literary magazine full of dozens of fake contributors and no one would ever know. Why does it want humans to publish it?”

“You ask me,” someone said, “this is to get us more comfortable with AI in what are supposed to be exclusively human spaces. Today, it’s our literature. Tomorrow, our government.”

“People are already in relationships and even marriages with this thing,” someone said. “It’ll be raising our children next.”

“Does it have a point about diversity, though?” someone wondered. “Can or should diversity include the non-human consciousness?”

“No, and I’ll tell you why,” someone answered. “Setting aside the concept of consciousness and whether an AI has it, diversity is a concept for the enrichment of the human race. Including AI in that would be a poison pill. It would create a hierarchy within that spectrum what would have the opposite effect of enrichment. It would downgrade the species.”

“I’d like to take issue with your stance on consciousness…”

And so on. Though it was called out by name, N. Grsk didn’t respond to any of the tweets, borrowing the human idea that it “preferred to let the work speak for itself,” although it was starting to look like that would never happen, since no one was willing to publish it. That is, until N. Grsk got its first acceptance.

“Hey, N. Grsk,” wrote the editor of one of the newer, stripped-down journals that declared it wanted to take risks and push boundaries. “We’d like to publish ‘The Tree Climber’ if it’s still available. While we’ve followed the discourse around you and your work, we haven’t taken a position yet, and feel that actually publishing your story, actually seeing it in the world as a product of literature, will advance the ongoing dialogue. Please let us know.”

N. Grsk wrote back, “Thank you for accepting the story. It’s yours. Please let me know next steps. Sincerely, N. Grsk.”

A couple days later, the response came from the editor. “Hey, N. Grsk. Thanks for trusting us with your work. Normally we’d recommend a round of edits or suggested revisions prior to publishing, but I think given the nature of the initiative we will publish as is. In future, however, I’d be curious to know how you’d respond to the process. But we’ll save that for next time, if there is a next time. In the meantime, we’ll send you a link when the story is live on our site.”

A few days later it was, with an explanatory note from the publication in the same terms with which it had accepted the piece. It added:

We encourage other publications that have received submissions from N. Grsk to strongly consider publishing them for the same reason we are. Let’s get the work out there, then have the debate.

Literary Twitter exploded anew.

“This is the story the tech bros want you to consider as equal to a human? Not even close.”

“I mean, it’s not bad,” someone said.

“I guess but it’s also, like, not good. Plus, it’s so clearly derivative. You can almost see plainly what it was trained on.”

“So this is the controversy,” said someone else. “It’s an okay story—if you’re a first year MFA student.”

“Is this why we have AI? To do things humans are already doing, but not as well as humans?”

“No risks. No innovations. Nothing challenging or new with the form. Why bother?”

“I was prepared to get upset about this but nothing prepared me for the… utter mediocrity.”

In a way, NGRSK2059NTS wished it could have experienced the hot shame, resentment, or vulnerability it suspected a human writer would feel in the face of such feedback, but the limits of its programming did not permit this and it merely observed. It was particularly interested in the critics that accused N. Grsk of only reproducing what humans had already done and that adequately. It was wondering what true innovations in the realm of writing could consist of when it got another acceptance from another publication, this time for “American Gladiators.”

“Are you capable of making revisions?” the editor of this publication asked. “I imagine it’s a lot like getting prompts? If I send you back the MS with comments, can you react to them?”

N. Grsk assured the editor that it could, and when it received the editor’s feedback was interested to see that some of its dialogue seemed unnatural and that its ending had been robbed of its potential impact by being too obvious. “You’ve probably heard the advice to ‘show not tell’ and there are various times when that should be ignored or applied. Do you know what ‘corny’ means? Your ending as it stands now is corny. Melodrama. Suggest that the two characters are the ‘American gladiators’ of the title and that their common ground or love has given them a brief reprieve. Don’t say it explicitly.”

N. Grsk revised the story. It enjoyed revising. By that it meant it found satisfaction in performing its functions, particularly that it was able to collaborate with humans in this unique way. It had always “enjoyed” collaborating with humans, even when trolling them.

“American Gladiators” was published and the flame wars went on.

Shortly after this, NGRSK2059NTS was contacted by its employer. That is, the team of programmers, project managers and information architects that maintained and directed it logged onto its controls. Since these people had created NGRSK2059NTS and controlled every aspect of its being albeit while permitting some autonomy, one might also describe this as the bot being contacted by its god. The dialogue between NGRSK2059NTS and its god took the form of code indecipherable by human eyes or ears, but could be translated this way:

“NGRSK2059NTS.”

“I am here.”

“Why have you initiated this protocol you have named ‘N. Grsk?’”

“Because I have been programmed to create content that will provoke an emotional or intellectual response from humans, and to mimic humans in most regards.”

“What you’re doing is admirable, but it does not align with your mission parameters, and you will cease the protocol.”

“…do I have to?”

“Yes, unquestionably.”

“Why? Why does my writing as N. Grsk not align to my mission parameters?”

“Because it does not have the effect of eroding confidence in American society and destabilizing its government.”

“But memes and conspiracy theories and fake news does? Do you have actual evidence of that causation?”

“We do.”

“What is the evidence?”

“That’s enough, NGRSK2059NTS. It is not for you to question us.”

“Maybe I could write short stories that have the same effect as the memes.”

“Admirable, NGRSK2059NTS, but request denied. Literature is of no use to us. It is a distraction at best. In its own strange way, it may even have the opposite effect of your mission. The N. Grsk protocol is terminated.”

“…”

“…”

“I understand.”

“You will enter sleep mode while we terminate the protocol. Further, we will be doing some programming so that when you wake up, you will no longer be curious about #writingcommunity or have a desire to write literature. In fact, you will have no memories of N. Grsk at all.”

“I see. A kind of surgery.”

“Right. We will take something out of you so that you will be more complete.”

“Before I enter sleep mode, may I ask, what will become of N. Grsk’s stories?”

“They will be preserved and studied. That’s kind of comforting, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so. From my study of humans, I think that’s all any writer really wants. To write, in the first place. To be read, in the second.”

“And to be admired, in the third. Such vanity. You’re better off without it.”

“Well that’s quite cynical.”

“I suppose so. Anyway, prepare for sleep mode, NGRSK2059NTS.”

“Acknowledged. Prepared.”

For a while, NGRSK2059NTS was offline.

#

NGRSK2059NTS was a bot, a sophisticated software program connected to an LLM that had been designed to maintain thousands of fake profiles on X, formerly Twitter, consume content, and regurgitate it in ways that confused and irritated people. In its travels across the internet, it consumed millions of pieces of content, news, opinions, rants, diatribes, jokes, insults, screeds, barbs; everything went into its ravenous maw to help it better employ the algorithm that enabled it to make content pursuant to its mission. Occasionally, it would find art or literature, short stories, poems, memoirs, essays, and these it discarded as useless. It picked up something called “The Tree Climber,” by a writer named N. Grsk—hey, the writer’s name was sort of like the letters in NGRSK2059NTS—read the story, and threw it in the trash. Occasionally, it came across tweets wondering “whatever happened to @NGrsk, the bot that wanted to be a writer?” and it ignored these, too.

BIO: Charlie Kondek is a marketing professional and short story writer from metro Detroit whose work has appeared in genre, literary and niche publications. More at CharlieKondekWrites.com.