The first chapter of my novel for NaNoWriMo that an AI is helping me write
Look, I’m sure this is going to be terrible, but I’m enjoying it so much. OpenAI has a text playground where you can write text, leave it hanging, and have the AI complete it for you. So I signed up for National Novel Writing Month (which starts today) and I just need to write 1667 words a day and I’ll have a 50K book by the end of it. And the computer is writing about 50% of it for me. So here’s the first 1800 words or so. I would write a chunk, then have the AI complete it for me, and it’s surprising adamant about certain plot elements, so I ended up mostly doing a duo improv scene with an AI as it kept guiding the story back to certain moments and I would take those, try to build on them, and then throw in additional elements (or face the computer into a dead-end which regularly backflipped out of with ease).
Enjoy!
PLAYGROUND (Day One) by Chris Grace (and OpenAI’s DaVinci Text Completion intelligence)
An elderly man in a tuxedo, holding a vodka martini, approached Frank at the gala. "Where have you been?" the man said. Frank suppressed a grimace.
"I've been around, Peter," Frank said. "You know that."
"You've been avoiding me," Peter said. "I know you have. I've called you dozens of times."
"I'm sorry, Peter," Frank said. "I've just been busy."
"Too busy for your old friend?" Peter said. He sounded hurt.
Frank sighed. "Of course not, Peter," he said. "It's just been tough, you know, since Mary passed away."
"I know, I know," Peter said. He patted Frank's arm. "I miss her, too, you know."
"I know you do," Frank said. He took a sip of his own drink.
"Anyway," Peter said, "I should let you get back to your night. It was good to see you, Frank."
"You, too, Peter," Frank said. He watched as his old friend walked away.
---
"Bastard," Peter muttered as he rounded the corner, drink in hand. Frank was the same as he always ways: a self-pitying pretentious fart. Peter had always sought a deeper intimacy with Frank (just as a friend! he would protest to his confidants). Mary's passing, he thought, was an opportunity to, at long last, deepen that relationship. And in one 30-second conversation, Frank had batted that possibility away with a few curt sentences.
"Fuck him," Peter thought, as he sat in an armchair at the gallery that was only half as comfortable as it looked. He wasn't even sure what charity this fundraiser was for, he had only come because Mary was one of the gallery's major donors and he thought he would run into Frank.
"After all these years..." Peter thought. But he didn't know how to finish the sentence. Maybe he had deluded himself into thinking that Frank could ever care for him the way he wanted him to. Maybe this was just the way things were meant to be. Fuck Frank, and fuck this stupid fundraiser. He took another sip of his drink and tried not to think about anything at all.
A few minutes later, he was unconscious.
The other people at the gala filed out, as the night progressed. They barely noticed the old man in the chair, snoring. The personal assistants and caterers, the event planners with their headsets, none of them thought twice about the sleeping old man. They had their own problems to deal with.
And so, overnight, Peter slept in the chair.
---
When he woke up, he was stiff, and his head was pounding. The room was still, and dark; the only light came from the Exit signs.
"What the fuck," he muttered, as he tried to stand up. His legs were wobbly, and his head was swimming. He felt like he was going to vomit. He made it to the restroom, barely, and vomited spectacularly into one of the stalls.
When he was done, he leaned against the wall, trying to catch his breath. He couldn't remember the last time he felt this bad. He staggered out of the restroom, and into the main room.
The main room was empty, except for him. All the chairs were pushed up against the walls, and all the tables were overturned. Peter tried to remember what had happened last night, but his head was fuzzy. The last thing he remembered was sitting in the chair, drinking his martini.
He looked at his watch. It was 8:00 am. The gala was supposed to have ended at 1:00 am. He knew where to go.
---
Frank opened the front door of his apartment and retrieved the brown paper bag placed there. Saturday. Bagel delivery. In the bag were four bagels, three plain, and one onion, and a tub of light cream cheese. He emptied the contents onto the kitchen counter, then turned on the radio.
The onion bagel. That was for Mary. He hadn't changed his order. He hadn't thought about it in months, but there it was. He put the onion bagel on a plate, then put the plate in the oven. It was a ritual he had performed hundreds, maybe thousands, of times.
He toasted the bagels, then buttered and spread them with cream cheese. When the onion bagel was done, he put it on a separate plate, and brought all the plates to the table.
He sat down and bowed his head, then began to say grace. "For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful."
"Amen," said a voice behind him.
Frank froze.
"Amen," the voice said again. It sounded like Peter.
Frank slowly turned around.
Peter was standing in the doorway, leaning on a cane. He looked like he had aged 10 years since Frank had last seen him.
"Peter?" Frank said. "What are you doing here?"
"You know why I'm here," Peter said.
"No," Frank said. "No, I don't."
"You've been avoiding me," Peter said. "You've been avoiding me for years."
Frank grabbed two plain bagel halves, still hot from the oven, and threw them at Peter. They plonked off of the senior citizen's head.
"Worf," Peter grunted, stunned, stung by the heat, cream cheese in his eyes.
"Get the fuck out of here Peter!" Frank shouted. "You're insane! I never wanted you, Mary never liked you, the last twenty years without you were the happiest of our lives!"
Peter was still stumbling, off balance. An older body doesn't recover the way a young body does. Here's the thing about a young body: the joints are supple, the muscles are strong. The balance is good, the reflexes are good. You don't think about these things when you're young, but when you're old, these things become painfully clear.
Peter had been an athlete in his youth. He was still in good shape for an old man, but his best years were far behind him.
Frank charged straight for him, like a bull. Peter tried to brace himself for the impact, but he was too slow, and Frank was too strong. The two men toppled to the floor in a heap.
Frank was on top of him, his hands around Peter's throat.
"Die, you son of a bitch!" Frank shouted.
Peter was struggling to breathe. He couldn't get his hands up to Frank's wrists. He wasn't strong enough.
"You killed her!" Frank shouted. "You killed her, you fucking killed her!"
"No!" Peter gasped. "No, no..."
"You killed her!" Frank screamed. He was sobbing now. "You killed her, you killed her, you killed her..."
Peter's vision was getting fuzzy. He couldn't breathe. He was going to die.
And he did.
---
As Frank stared at the blue-tinted corpse on his apartment floor, Peter stared at Frank. He was standing next to his own body, calm, aware of what happened, still not believing, but also accepting. Two, or three, or an infinite number of things at once. "Look at Frank," he thought. "What an old man. But he did it," Peter thought. "He killed me."
Then:
And:
After a bit: "What now?"
A year had passed for Peter. Five seconds for Frank. He tried to revive Peter. He shook him by the shoulders, but Peter's skull dumbly thudded on the rug, the sound sickening Frank, so he stopped. He stared in Peter's eyes. "Wake up!" he shouted.
Nothing.
Frank, scrambling, got up and grabbed his phone. He dialed 911. "Help!" he shouted into the phone. "I think my friend is dead! I think I killed him! What do I do? What do I do?"
The dispatcher on the other end of the line walked Frank through CPR. He tried, but he couldn't do it. The dispatcher told him to keep trying, but he couldn't. He started to cry. It was too much. All the blood. Mary's blood. Peter's blood. It was all too much.
The dispatcher told him to stay on the line, but Frank couldn't. He dropped the phone, still sobbing, and staggered into the bathroom. He vomited explosively into the toilet, then dry heaved for a few minutes.
Finally, he staggered out of the bathroom, and looked at Peter's corpse.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry."
He grabbed the phone and dialed 911 again.
"I think my friend is dead," he said. "Please send help."
---
"Friend?" Peter thought. Some friend. There went Frank again, putting on a show for other people, but in the dark, in the corner of a room where no one was watching, he was capable of the worst possible actions. A petty dismissal that the receiver would obsess over for decades. Overlooking a creative partner in favor of financial gain. Ruining the esteem of so many potential partners, in so many ways, in so many fields, in so many cities, innocent, instructed, the insidious narcissism that overwhelmed the crevices of what could have been a giving, complex, capable, joyous person, until that ego became everything smoothed over.
Peter was floating. He looked down, where his body was, and saw Frank, still in his own world of shock and denial and pain.
A few minutes later, the paramedics arrived. Frank let them in and led them to Peter. They checked for a pulse, then started CPR.
"Is he going to be alright?" Frank asked, his voice trembling.
"We're doing everything we can," one of the paramedics said.
They worked on Peter for a few minutes, then one of them said, "I'm sorry. He's gone."
Frank collapsed to the floor, sobbing.
"Aware that he's sobbing, no doubt," thought Peter. He was up near the ceiling, seeing the dust on top of the bookshelves. He had a lady he could recommend for that. Well, could have recommended.
Frank excused himself to the bedroom as the paramedics took Peter's body away. Peter followed him there, and watched Frank's crying subside. Frank wiped his face, and the speed of its return to a normal, placid expression stunned Peter.
"Well, he grieved me for all of five minutes," Peter thought. "He'll move on quickly."
And he did.
A year later, Frank was dating a younger woman. They were talking about getting married. Frank had told her about Mary, of course, and how he had killed her. The woman was sympathetic, of course, but also understandingly cautious. They took things slow.
Five years later, they were married. They had a child.
Ten years later, they had two children.
Fifteen years later, they had three children.
And so on.
Peter, meanwhile, was watching from the sidelines. He tried to communicate with Frank, but it was no use. Frank couldn't hear him, or see him. He was a ghost.
But he was also still alive, in a way. He was aware of everything that was happening. He knew every thought that Frank was thinking, every memory that Frank was reliving. He was, in a way, living Frank's life for him.
And it was driving him insane.
Okay I’m back. Thanks for reading this. I highly recommend you check out the OpenAI Playground and make an account!