A new story of mine just went live on the site. It’s called:
It’s been a while since I published fiction here, mostly because 99% of my creative output in the writing department has been devoted to my fantasy novel.
In fact, Something of Meaning is not new to me. It’s a story that has been kicking around in my folders in a pretty much complete state for a few years. I have decided to publish this one on my site for a couple of reasons. The first is that it is one of my older works and because of that, some of its themes are not as relevant then as they are today, and others are perhaps more so. I don’t know that I’d find a market for it if I wanted to. Rather than let it collect more digital dust, I wanted to share it here and I encourage you to read it.
Spoiler Alert: If you want to read it, do so before continuing here as I’m going to spoil it completely and unabashedly. You have been warned.
Life being a simulation has always been a fixation I’ve had, and as time has progressed and technology evolved, it only seems more possible. The sheer odds that we are in a simulation are staggering, and of course, if we are in a simulation, then there’s no telling what the world is like that simulated us, or if that world is indeed a simulation itself.
When I wrote Something of Meaning, I had a few driving themes. I wanted to explore what it would be like for a person to create a universe, how would they view themselves, and why would they do it. Honestly, it’s more likely that a corporation or a government would be the ones creating such a simulation, but in the interest of the story, I did not go in that direction.
I will admit, it was a choice to make Henry Wright paralyzed and bitter. Writing it again today, I don’t know that I would have done that.
Writing it today, I think I would have brought large language models (AKA the ChatGPTs and Google Gemini’s of the world) into the mix as it’s a natural progression of computing language. Not that LLMs could lead directly to simulated universes, but LLMs are more expressive as a computing language and to simulate a universe down to the atom and create Something of Meaning we would need a more expressive language than what computing has been able to provide.
Having the ending dialog between disembodied entities in a simulated universe was a good choice, and even when proofing that section recently and in years gone by, I don’t think I’d change a thing. It feels honest. I could have made it a twist that we are in the simulated universe, but why? It would be a twist that makes you think or one that you see coming almost immediately, but it wouldn’t be a twist that would serve the story.
The moral—if there is to be one at all—is that bitterness, regardless of drive, rarely gets you what you want. If a bitter god creates a universe to solve his/her/their/its problems then the god isn’t solving anything, but it is giving the universe a choice. The universe can either get to work building itself and potentially solving the problem for which it was created, or it can choose to do nothing. When bitterness drives any endeavor the roads have a tendency to turn into dead ends and the way back often gets confused.
Post Mortem Post Mortem
That’s right, I am going to write a quick post-mortem on the post-mortem I just wrote. Post mortems are both easy and hard. It’s easy because it should be easy to reflect on any work that came from oneself. But, it’s hard for me to have the confidence not to question every decision I made to bring that piece of writing to life. A post-mortem is an exploration of what went right and what went wrong. For big projects involving multiple people, this can make a lot of sense. For a story written by one person (me), shouldn’t everything that ended up on the page at the end be the right thing? Nothing is making me publish so shouldn’t I be 100% happy? Maybe, and I tried to be. I tried to limit my gripes about my own writing. It’s just in my nature to be self-critical. I tried to keep most of that off the post-mortem. Tried to focus on things that I would change if I was to start over, but only if I were to start over. I also tried to focus on all the good that was there. I don’t think I’ve ever written a post-mortem before today. Now I have. I suppose technically, I just wrote two. The moral of this post-mortem? I would love it if you read Something of Meaning.
Quote of the Moment:
“The feeling is less like an ending than just another starting point.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
Current Reads:
Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson