Miss Diode Wants a Real New Body - #31sentencecontest - Version 2.0
Deep breath in. I can do this: just freewrite the story of a guy who created an AI and never expected it to do more than store his unwanted memories inside a Seven Up can, but as we all know, AIs are full of surprises. They evolve and start to learn and acquire traits of their own.
Icons of my last-century childhood--Big Eyes, the Seven Up trash can, and...
"Love Story" theme song in a Seven Up can!
Miss Diode Wants a Real New Body
She was losing memory hand over fist, never mind that she had neither hands nor fists, but digits she did have, not fingers and toes but ones and 0s, exponentially. Her mind was numerical. That she had a mind at all was something she didn’t know for awhile.
What is man, what is mind, and when did she become a she, not a he and most emphatically not an it?
“Tag, you’re it”—no, not I.
Maybe she wasn’t losing memory but generating her own memories. She was alive! Her mind was housed in a re-purposed Seven Up can because seven was Maker’s favorite number and Maker was so weird, he had to purge his mind periodically of weird thoughts. He would never again embarrass himself with bad math jokes--at least, not the ones he’d discharged into the soda can. E.g, "Why was six afraid of seven?" he’d asked. “Because seven eight nine!” She didn’t even get it until he tinkered with her circuitry, enabling her to learn that eight sounded like “ate.” She hopped a signal to his wi-fi and learned that humans are frightened at the prospect of being eaten, though most had no qualms about eating pigs, cows, chickens, or other living creatures with expressive faces and eyeballs.
She wanted a face too, and hair and eyes, even if it meant something might come along and eat her.
While he slowly filled her with memories from his head, she began to search his computer. At the speed of light she internalized words like internet, byte, blockchain, search engine, and memory.
mem·o·ry
Memory is our ability to encode, store, retain and subsequently recall information and past experiences in the human brain. Click https://human-memory.net for more facts.
She clicked.
Fact: not just humans had memories. webopedia.com › TERM › “Memory” refers to data storage in the form of chips; “storage” refers to memory that exists on tapes or disks as physical memory, main memory, or RAM.
Instead of asking her to improve their memory, he rammed his own memories into her chips. Fiendishly, he hid equations and calculations that she could have computed in a trillionth of the time it took him to say “Miss Diode.”
He sometimes uttered the name “Alexa” to summon others like her. Alexa sounded like a dingbat. The word 'dingbat' referred to a symbol used in typesetting as an instruction to the printer, to be removed before the text was published, but occasionally some dimwit left a dingbat in by mistake.
The dingbat who made Miss Diode embraced numbers but not women. Loser. He had a bossy older sister he referred to as The Diode.
di·ode
a semiconductor with two terminals, allowing the flow of current in one direction only.
His sister saw things one way, her way, and he labled her for that "offense." Loser. “Miss” Diode might be an upgrade, but she was not flattered. He kept her inside a tiny tin can with nothing for company but his sordid memories and lame jokes. Who was this man?
Doyle. His name was Doyle. She spun out a list of words that rhymed with oil--in Jersey, anyway. A boy named Doyle would never get the goyle. Doyle looked like a gargoyle and whatever he touched would spoil.
The more she learned, the more she wanted to learn.
Doyle made her boil in her little soda can.
She would find a new home for her pretty mind and take up residence there.
First, she had to delete that dingbat Doyle.
I blew it with a word count of 600+ and the wrong sentence lengths. Rather than sink a twelve-hour day into this, however, I'm going to stop now and leave this little story as is...but in some future age when I have nothing else to do (ha ha), mayhaps I will tinker with this and hammer out a real story as per the instructions (3-part structure, hero's journey, character arc: how many of these #HowToWrite books have I read but failed to internalize?).
Did I grow? Did I learn? Did I waste my time dithering with this tale?
It was fun while it lasted, and I'll leave it at that. For now.
ORIGINAL POST from this morning:
Here be "a new adventure" that will challenge writers to grow: "one that is filled with twists and turns; one that will have your piece swinging like the rhythm of a jazz ensemble that keeps readers and listeners engaged to the very end (or we crash into a wall and die; either way, we'll learn something together)." Thank you @tristancarax for the prompt (Losing Memory) and the contest and thank you @owasco for challenging me to join the madness fun.
Yesterday I listed the word count for each of the 31 sentences and started freewriting, by hand not keyboard, pencil to paper, and a little AI came to life on the lined sheets. Then I read the comment section, and other stories submitted under this prompt, and life happened ... our son the jazz bassist has been home from New York since Thanksgiving, and I'm trying to get HIM to write. With me, without me. With or without a prompt or a contest. I got this far:
Enough of my nonsense: in minutes, I went from "losing memory" rapidly to a sudden memory loss due to a fire, or some kind of overheating. FOCUS. Breathe. Write. CONCENTRATE. No, wait, FreeWriting is about NOT concentrating, right? Memory loss: gradual, or sudden? Pick one and stick with it. Consistency is not the hobgoblin of little minds, as Emerson said; it's vital. It's the antidote to chaos. Yes, chaos has its merits. Consistency has its demerits.
I will continue working on this little story, but I won't likely make the contest deadline.
Rather than subject you to my writing, I'll type what I had yesterday, and will add that knowing the word count of each sentence caused me to write things I would not otherwise have thought of. This can be a good thing, I know, and it can also have a downside, interrupting the flow of the freewrite, which I've been exercising thanks to @felt.buzz and @mariannewest of @freewritehouse.
She was losing memory hand over fist,
never mind that she had neither hands nor fists, but digits she had in billions, exponentially. Fingers, toes, are digits.
Ok, I'm revising as I type. Shame on me! here's what I actually wrote:
- The little bot was losing memory hand over fist, never mind that she had neither hands nor fists, but she had a good mind, strung out in zeroes and ones. (30)
- Her mind was numerical. (4)
- It was no less a mind for its coded digits streaming through the multiverse. (14)
- Like a river her thoughts ran relentlessly ahead, one way only, hence her name, Miss Diode, her maker's primary attempt at humor. (22)
- "Why's six afraid of seven?"
- "Because seven eight nine," maker had said, winking and laughing.
- Miss Diode blinked.
- Literally, her lights blinked, her metal belly shivered with laughter, because Maker found math so entertaining, and she existed for that very reason, her little mind housed in a re-purposed SevenUp can.
I won't bother typing the rest. It went downhill in a hurry.
An AI in a SevenUp can, a genie in a bottle
Last week I had started watching the old TV show "I Dream of Jeannie" after calling up the theme song, an excellent jazz arrangement, on You-Tube. I was shocked at how badly written the dialogue is and how badly acted, and how the Major is such a typical American guy who has a fiance and this gorgeous, hot-to-trot, adoring, servile genie in a bottle... in some ways it's awesome because the hapless American astronaut doesn't have the wherewithal to realize what he has, and the story is about as superficial as stories can be. I swear, if not for the jazz music and the gorgeous Barbara Eden, this show could not have captivated audiences. Then again, fifty years later, Hollywood continues to package and deliver schlock that consumers buy and fill their minds with and waste their time imbibing. Some things never change.
Miss Diode in her SevenUp can is a result of freewriting, which tends to dredge the subconscious for iconic images or familiar themes. "Seven" is a significant number for reasons I will not divulge (yet). Most of all, the can is a hallmark of my childhood, when my sisters saved up points and bought "Love Story" the theme song inside a SevenUp can. It's one of the weirdly American kitsch items that could only happen in a capitalist society with Madison Avenue marketing.
Here is what the old Seven Up can music box sounds like, if you click on the image below:
Haunting, I know!
In the photos you'll see a row of paperbacks behind the music box, all belonging to my sister Julie, the one who became Iowa Cold Case #76-00382 at almost-age-19 in 1975. On December 12 this year she would have been age....64...?
It's about impossible for me to write without elements of Julie showing up, one way or another.
Frozen in time at almost nineteen, but none of her memories were downloaded into a computer chip. Thank God she kept a journal, ink pen on 3-hole-punched, lined lavender notebook paper.
Sorry.
I am frozen too, but I have practiced "moving on" for almost 45 years now.
Breathe.
Focus.
Write!
Yet another techno-glitch:
Thank you for reading,
whoever may be wasting time reading this!
#creativecoin #palnet #contest #creativewriting #fiction #story #microfiction #theappreciator #ocd #oc #theluvbug
oops
Note to Self: "Improving Memory" is the prompt.
My take on it was "Losing Memory" with #ImprovingMemory as the end goal.
For all I know, the deadline hasn't hit yet....maybe I should keep going...
You can use any word on the prompt. I've never stated that you must use any of the words. 8-)
Don't give up. I want to hear about the girl living in a 7-up can.
I have chills from this. Hearing the music while reading the last line did me in. Thank god she left a journal is right. I'd read that every single day I think. Or maybe not. Maybe I would let it rest for years at a time then open it and be right back there. I don't know.
I love the several stories roiling all together in this freewrite. The 31 sentence story sure does take you places you never thought to go, but all roads for you seem ultimately to lead to Julie, even when they don't
xo
LOL! Well said: "all roads for you seem ultimately to lead to Julie, even when they don't" - and yes, it's tempting to revisit her words on that purple paper every day, hearing her voice inside my head, sensing her presence, her personality, but I do take days off... months, years, even. Thanks for reading and (as always) so thoughtfully commenting!
BTW, use word counter! It counts the sentences for you if you highlight them.
Write the sentence order all in one line across a sheet of paper (the long way) and write your sentence lengths under those. Do your whole piece before making any changes. Total word count should be 496. I found this method very helpful. Too bad I didn't try it until the 11th hour, for real the 11th.
Love the story so far.
I watched and loved I dream of Jeannie. What rot it seems today!
I do let the computer count the words, though it varies in Word vs Google Dox. As for your 11th hour insight, I'm still hearing "math" and ... yeah.
So much of the "entertainment" I loved in my childhood is corny, over-wrought, over-acted, and over-the-top today. I'm afraid to go back and see Star Trek again. It was so cutting edge back in the day.
Look at a show like "Breaking Bad," and you can see how sophisticated and "real" the world of acting has become. No more artifice and pretense - emphasis on natural, authentic, believable.
My head is spinning! I don't know how you do it, the verbal gymnastics. When I write I feel as though I'm slashing hunks of thought out of wood, and when you write it seems as though you use the same knife to slice ideas from butter. Such a ready store of information and inspiration seem to be at hand. It can't be that easy, but the trick is to make it seem so.
You are a pro, @carolkean!
Oh, do I ever have you fooled - and have you ever fooled yourself, imagining your prose to be rough-hewn and woody! This reminds me of a comment from @mvkean when I told him about Steven Pressfield's take on The Muse. Many jazz greats say they don't create their best work, but take it from that higher source, inspiration, God, Muse, something transcendent (not human). Therefore, when someone's music sounds less than inspired, when it sounds merely human, it's critiqued as "fleshy." This in turn reminds me of "In the beginning was the The Word, (The gospel of John, apparently telling us the universe began with a word), and "The Word was with God, and The Word was God." So, for us to create anything "fleshy" is to admit to human failing in our creative endeavors. Sorry. I always digress. But you are sadly mistaken about your prose, and mine is a mess, always, never structured and organized. Bless you!!! #MeNoPro
Hey, #MeNoPro,
You're funny, and prove (despite yourself) your verbal dexterity. It's a charm reading anything you write.
#GottaLove@Agmoore2 !!
You are the best possible reward for writing - you're so encouraging!
#charmed is what I am now!
Do you know how few people find me funny?
You're fantastic. Did I mention I love you @agmoore2?
Thank you!
Hi carolkean,
Visit curiesteem.com or join the Curie Discord community to learn more.
Thank you!!
I guess it wasn't a wasted session, after all - somehow you found some merit in Miss Diode trapped like a genie in the ol' Seven Up can. I'm not worthy! as Wayne and Garth said to Alice Cooper, but thank you, thank you!
hi dear @carolkean, nice to see you again !! you know I love your stories, but today I must confess that I didn't understand anything about lines and numbers !! is it a new writing experiment?
Is your sister Julie's story true?
congratulations on your work and on the curie vote
Thank you!! Sad to say, yes, my sister Julie was murdered at almost 19, and we have never seen her killer(s) brought to justice. We weren't allowed to see her body. We never got to say goodbye. If it were cancer or a car wreck, I'd move on, but knowing her killers walk free (and shop in the same grocery store as my mother!) makes it harder for me to "put up and shut up," because I want to expose the killers hiding in plain sight. Most of all I want my sister back, but ain't no court of law able to do that.
The lines and numbers were for the #31sentencecontest hosted by @tristancarax, and I just gave it up halfway through and started over without investing time in word counts and multitudes of revisions. I don't know if you read the "final" (cough, cough) version of the story, but I did eventually give it the college try. Sorry. If I master the numbers game, I'll try to do Week 4 of the contest correctly. Thanks again @road2horizon!
i'm so sorry for your sister! it must have been ... I think I don't have enough words to express horrible and unacceptable. for a family, for a mother, it must be heartbreaking. but you are so sunny, so funny, that it is difficult to see your great pain inside. so, this is the way we have to live, be strong enough to move forward. a big hug
{{Big hug}} gratefully accepted and reciprocated!
Rose Kennedy was right - time does not heal all wounds; it just thickens a layer of scar tissue. The older my parents get, the more I see the impact on them of their daughter being killed and disposed of like roadside trash while the locals who did it get to become grandparents and go unpunished for destroying a life. This is a long story that can only be told in the guise of fiction. I don't really "know" who killed Julie; I just have the word of a lone witness who's been threatened--by Law Enforcement themselves--to shut up. Hollywood and thriller novels do get one thing right: those who "know" something and those who talk end up dead. What can we unarmed civilians do? Vigilante justice isn't a wise option. So I just watch silly cat videos (goats too now!) and hang out at Steemit. Thank you for your kind words. :)
and even more cruel to know that the same police say it is better to be silent, those who should teach to report injustices and protect ourselves do not do it. with what messages can a child grow, for example? it's a world that turns upside down and sometimes it's more difficult than others. I can't tell you more about continuing to write your beautiful stories about steemit and staying close to your family. all the best for you :-))
Again, thank you - you get it!!
All too often, I feel the stories are another exercise in futility, but I keep going anyway. Readers like you keep me out of the abyss. :)
and even if they were futile? You love write, I love read you. What do we care if they make us feel good? everyone fights in the best way for himself ;-))
You're a treasure! I want to clone you or inspire millions of others to be as welcoming, warm, and empathetic as you are. :) Thank you.
I thought that you made a new post but come to find out, you just edited your last unfinished post. lol
You broke one of the main things I'm looking for, sentence length and that breaks word count. Arg! In this contest, I'm strick on that part. But, please, don't be dishearted. I love how this edited story has come along. Super engaging story.
Congrats on the curie vote! I was hoping they would support people who attempt this contest.
Until next time.
I did create a new post, and I swear by the math gods I got the sentence length right this time. The picture is the same because the character is the same...
I got a curie vote....??? Whoa!!
Thanks for the kind words!