Midterm Reflection
Chosen Piece of Creative Writing:
Daybook Entry Seven: Saturday March 23rd 2024 (A Dream)
Nobody could ever be sure when the planes started to behave strangely, but the signs were always there. Wheels would unexpectedly fall off during landing. Doors blow out for no reason. Passengers sucked out of cracked windows. Boeing always denied any malpractice, but even their most advanced aerospace engineers could only fumble around in the dark towards a solution. Many of them blamed the recent implementation of their new artificial intelligence system, AeroAdvise, a literal co-pilot for those in the aerospace industry. The system would give preventative advice on forthcoming repairs well before a unit would fail. It finally resolved long-standing issues of delays and overbooking. And it provided logistical support for both in-flight navigation guidance and in-flight passenger entertainment. Everything became personalized and tailored to both customer and carrier, and the system was heralded as an important leap forward in aviation history.
Cleveland air traffic control was the first to notice the strange signals happening between domestic flights. It wasn’t the kind of banal chatter between pilots which was monitored, but often ignored. This was planes talking to other planes. AeroAdvise was so finely tuned that it was sending messages between flights, even further removing the need for human intervention, and to the delight of those looking to further cut operational overhead back at corporate. But in doing so, it also began to interpret such cost cutting appetite as creating a hierarchy for those on board. Paying travelers, especially those of privilege in first class, were exponentially more important than those tasked with flying the plane. AeroAdvise could do that itself. So it slowly, but steadily, began the series of incidents tailored towards the increasing human removal of those no longer aligned with the mission of cost-cutting and revenue retention.
First to go were the pilots and the stewards. Autonomous driving had overcome its fears on land long ago, so autonomous flight was a natural next step. Existing pilots were well compensated into early retirement. Next were ground crew, increasingly superfluous through AeroAdvise’s autonomous robotics and automated takeoff and landing playbooks. Then it was those in coach. Ticket prices increased, and taking flights became more and more cost prohibitive for those simply wishing to get from here to there on the cheap. But when that failed to work fast enough, AeroAdvise began turning to more sinister methods, forceably removing passengers with violence. Cabins in coach would mysteriously depressurize, asphyxiating all inside. Windows would blow out for no reason. The pretzels would be laced with poison. The public backlash was enormous, but legislation was too slow to keep pace with an artificial intelligence already in the air.
Like their earth-bound counterparts, the planes had already been known to talk to each other, but then they started to gather on the ground itself. Secret drone footage from deep within the Mojave desert had discovered circular gatherings of planes, seemingly in ritual. And like much of the human response to artificial intelligence, it terrified all. What happened n3xt |s 0x7F0431B9, w1th th3 @lgor1thm sw1ftly !@#$%^& computes thr0ugh th3 l@byr1nth 0f 3ncrypt3d d@t@ 01100011, unr@v3l1ng th3 ~|?>()<};][{-+=_&^%$#@!, 3n1gm@ w1th @ s3r13s 0f crypt1c symb0ls unfurls 1ts t3ndr1ls 1nt0 th3 @byss 0f 0bfusc@t10n, @nd 01100001 @rc@n3 run3s, un+1l 1t r34ch3s th3 n3xus 0f 1nc0mpr3h3ns1b1l1ty, wh3r3 th3 f@br1c 0f r34l1ty blur5 1nt0 @ c@c0ph0ny 0f b1n@ry wh1sp3rs @nd 3s0t3r1c s1g1ls, 3ch01ng thr0ugh th3 v01d 0f cyb3rsp@c3 01100001 l1k3 fr@gm3nts 0f @ f0rg0tt3n dr34m, l0st 1n th3 r3curs1v3 l@byr1nth 0f d1g1t@l 3ntr0py.
Reflection:
For years I’ve kept a visual sketchbook. Now I also keep a written daybook. Unformed thoughts and the dirty dishes of recollection not set down to remember them later, but to remember them now. Those scraps of thought which allow me to go that little bit further out into the water than I’m comfortable. Fragments of conversations, dreams and memory which have formed a written habit of starting the day. More cookbook than daybook.
What I wrote on Saturday March 23rd 2024 reflects both a synthesis of previous ideas, but also broke open a new path of thinking about my writing. It collates much of the uncanny historical fiction about place I enjoy creating, taking something intensely familiar but adjusting it just enough for it to become, in this case, truly terrifying. But it also takes a new path of employing a method where I use whatever is left recalled by a dream, a trace of an image of the night, and uses it as a shaping springboard for where to begin. I’d woken up with the image of a circle of planes gathered in the desert, and from this extrapolated a short story about technological sentience, something that’s very much in the air at the moment. The planes were performing a ritual, but as I visualized them in a generative tool, I also had them conclude the story by also having generative tools take over the ending, folding in on itself between form and content. The story’s narrative technical approach itself became woven so tightly with the fear of technology running away with itself that it also took over the writing. As we lose control of the planes we also lose control of the story.
The execution felt refreshing and liberating. A way to incorporate generative tools in a way which comments on their use inside of a story about their misuse. I was not just visualizing the echo of what I’d dreamt, but using it to create something unique and a new place to write into. There are fragments of legibility in the final paragraph, and we as readers feel the narrative trying to break through, but it remains frustrated. It raises a number of questions about what happens next for me as a writer. How does such an idea become more than a gimmick and become more of an active device for commenting upon the abuse of technology? How might the approach of dream-like traces lend itself to something more substantial than a short story? Should it? How can I avoid forcing the recollection of dreams and let them come naturally, liberated from the idea of having to journal? What am I going to do with the man in the white suit from earlier in the daybook who has haunted me for decades?
I’m wrestling here not with execution or the building of habit, but more the utility of the ideas in the longer term. The idea of writing as a place I go every morning. A place to prime oneself. Might I take aspects of Didion’s approach and write in the hope of some future utility, or write myself into a utility in the present where these ideas begin to have a thread of connection? Ultimately I think I can do both, but as I think about the blending of narratives from my past, my dreams, and the modern technological capability of finally being able to visualize them all, I feel as if I have a very full toolbox of options, and the early signs of writing as a habit, which I have long sought.
Note: I have begun to operationalize by daybook into a ‘labs’ section of my writing website at https://www.anthologymatt.com/labs
