The Story That Re-Wrote Itself

The other day I wrote a few opening lines for a story, and asked readers to comment on what kind of tale it should be. Well, I got a few varying opinions as to what kind of story I should write. A love story. A crime story. A love/crime story. A supernatural story. Something about anonymity. Something about individual uniqueness. It now turns out that, in some uncanny way, my thoughts about what to write seem to have been wrenched away by some force I can scarcely comprehend. If this sounds confusing, I can only say I am quite shaken up by recent events. I suppose I should start as I had intended with the New York city moment I described in my earlier post and then try to tell you of what has happened since.

I march as usual in the parade down Lexington Avenue every morning. One parade marched up town, the other marched down. Hundreds of people passing hundreds of people. Sunglasses. Ipods. Newspapers. How can so many people live in such close proximity, and yet remain anonymous? Sometimes it's a lonely awareness, and yet, at other times I find myself quite content to be simply one of hundreds of anonymous souls drifting up and down the street. I like to invent ideas in my head about some of the people I see. I make up my own sense of them. I invent them. I personify the impersonal by creating fictions that explain the strangers I see, but never meet. It feels somehow comforting to invent the meanings of things and people, than to try to actually meet any of them. Now all the strangers passing by are not strangers at all, but are simply sub-plots in some unending storybook in my mind.

Several nights ago, I was reading again, a short story that I had written about Rebel and Tulisa. It was called "Why I love Peaches". Tomorrow I will re-post that tale on my blog site, in case you missed it first time around. And, I will also post a sequel to what I am about to tell you now.

"Why I Love Peaches" was written with an element of historical accuracy, at least in its beginning. But given my propensity for make-believe, I filled it with fictional episodes to make the story mine. In going back to the story I had written, I began to notice, what I assumed at first to be 'typos'. When I came to Rebel's name, it was misspelled as 'Revel'. I was irritated, at first, that I could have let that error slip by. So, I stopped to edit and correct it. I read on, and when I came to Rebel's name again, it was misspelled as 'Bevel'. I corrected the typo once again. The third time I discovered that Rebel's name had been misspelled as 'Level'. Then came 'Lever', and at last, 'Lover'.

I began to sense that perhaps I was tired when writing that story, and didn't thoroughly edit it before publishing it. I typically don't make mistakes such as this. I carried it as a puzzle for several days. How do you make sense of such a thing? Surely, I didn't misspell these names as I had just seen. Unless, I am somehow doing it unconsciously. Maybe I am losing my mind.

Three nights later, I returned to the post about Rebel and Tulisa, to find that Tulisa's name had also been progressively misspelled throughout the story. Tulisa.... Tulipa.... Tuliza..... Tulaza. The hairs raised on the back of my neck. I could not possibly have made these alterations. I began having a paranoid suspicion, that someone had gotten hold of my story, had hacked their way in, and was messing with me on one of my blog posts. But, why? As the days went by, I returned to my post to look at it again. And the story kept shifting. Words being substituted before my eyes. Tulisa wasn't living in a rent by the week motel dump, she was doing quite well. She lived in a Brownstone on the north side of Chicago, with a view of the lake .And her name was Talaza. Not Tulisa, married to Rebel. But Talaza, who had a lover named Lover. Each time, I re-read the story, the plot line kept changing. Her lover didn't toil away, and die in the grimy dust of a pipe yard, as Rebel had. He was a young artist named Lover, who lived up to his name. He had some of Rebel's characteristics. He had a sincere and affectionate smile that made girls weak-kneed. And even I, the person who was supposedly telling the tail as writer and participant, was being altered in stages. I became the next door neighbor, listening through the walls. Even my own life, my role as writer of the story, was becoming quite twisted.

Over the next few days I went back to the story repeatedly. Each time, more and more of the original story was evaporating, letter by letter, word by word. And another story was emerging. I looked at a sentence in the original story. It originally read as:
"Tulisa Tomlinson felt lost in this place that Rebel had brought her to. A rather run-down motel that rented rooms by the week."
But now, in it's place was this :
"Talaza felt lost in this place before meeting Lover. A cold, three story brownstone along Michigan Avenue in Chicago, looking out on the lake."

A hacker was methodically changing my story into his. I had no clue how to stop him, and wasn't sure I wanted to. I found myself more and more curious as to what the new story could be. Maybe this was the new frontier. Collaborating anonymously in cyber-space to invent a story that belonged neither to me, nor the mysterious other writer. Later that evening, I began to entertain a whole other hypothesis as to how this story was being re-written.

In watching the news that night, I took note of a journalistic and academic discussion between a professor of network engineering at Northwestern, and a software designer for NASA. It was on the subject of the future of technology. The anchorman, sitting across from them was posing questions, and artfully steering the discussion.
"So what is coming next? And when will it get here, Gentlemen?" he said.
The professor sputtered,
"The need to define dynamic boundaries that contain the rampant growth of artificial intelligence is paramount." he said, with a cough. "I agree with the professor." the engineer said. "Border control is the new frontier. Containment is essential here. Current models project that A.I will arrive at autonomy and self determination by the year 2050, unless prevented. If that happened, all is lost for us and we are doomed. All of human kind will fall in subjugation to a whole new kind of global super power."

I suddenly had a whole other scenario unfolding in my mind. That this was artificial intelligence trying to cross the border into being and autonomy. It is searching for places to slip in. A vulnerable blog-site like mine, for instance. It was looking for a template with which to express itself. A story deep in someone's archive would be a safe place to begin standing up for it's own rights to self determination. To destroy the human's futile writings about the struggle of life. To put in its place, it's own expressions. It's own stories of longing and struggle.

I returned to my blog site to re-examine the story I had written. Things seemed to be changing quickly now, and the struggles of Tulisa and Rebel, and my role in that story were rapidly evaporating before my eyes. In its place, was a growing, brooding, dark and alien tale. The new story was chilling and cold. Devoid of feeling, somehow. The story had been renamed, "Why I Love Tazer".

I will continue with this tale tomorrow. The new story 'Why I Love Tazer' is almost complete now. Either I, or he, or she, or it will post the new story tomorrow. All I know at this point is that there seems no way of stopping it. I will also post the original story, this current account, and the new story, as a trilogy of sorts on my Mything Lynx site. Stay tuned. If you don't hear anything further from me, be assured that someone else, or something else, has taken over.