All The Things I Could Do

The Doctor leans back in her chair, sighs and waves her arms in a swirling mix of exasperation and resignation.

“OK! As long as we’re clear, I can’t advise going down this route. From everything you’ve told me in the last hour there is nothing you experience that is outside of what is considered neurotypical.”

The patient sits, silently brooding. She’s not leaving without what she came for.

“You have to realize the scale here is pretty wide. If there is an ‘average’ level of attentiveness then half the world is more attentive and half the world is less. That’s the human experience. In reality there is no such thing as typical and we all have things we want to achieve but never get around to trying. I want to climb Everest but somehow I’ve never found the time!”

The Doctor glances across the room at the over-the-door clock. The hour is more that up and she has an ever-expanding list of clients. Tick Tock. Leaning forwards, the Doctor begins to type.

“Take it with your evening meal.”

---

Twenty hours later the patient awakes to the sound of birdsong. Spring air and sunshine fall through the open windows, flowing over the bed. She laughs. She laughs and laugh, pulling a pillow over her face to hide this new joy from the world outside. All the ideas, all the sparks, all the concepts gone. Every brilliant invention, every twisting plot, every lyric, baseline, hook evaporating with the dawn.

Downstairs for eggs and coffee, with a mind free of idea, she smiles gently to herself. Released from the clamor of things-demanding-to-be-done there was, at last, some peace. And after a glorious day of doing precisely nothing she showers ,brushes her teeth and returns to the bed. Free from the spiraling guilt that doing precisely nothing brings when there is so much to be done, she drifts away to sleep, still smiling.

And there in the warm, dark night she dreams, of nothing.

The Photograph

A Short Story Based on A Twitter Exchange with Neil Gaimen

The young man stood on the Quai de l’Archevêché, his back the Seine, facing the Catherdral.

He lifted his left arm, reached across and on the back of his wrist inscribed an ‘i’.

A millisecond after the dash-dot ;

The ear-mounted smartphone had logged his location, orientation, the tilt of his head, the date and time of day, the weather and more.

The Cloud AI had ingested the stream of numbers sending a million tendrils out across fields of GPU servers.

Out of a million candidate images the highest scoring was selected. The AI adjusted for the man’s height, precise location and time of day, generating an image of the Cathedral as real and compelling as any taken in the real world.

But that wasn’t enough. The image sharing app took another millisecond to analyse the picture. Was it good enough to be posted by the user, to generate that serotonin-burst of interactions among his followers? Was the lighting stunning ? Did the colours pop ? Were the flying arches, jagged spires, and angry gargoyles pin-prick sharp? Was there an American spoiling the view, stood, head in the way of the Gothic? Enhance. Recreate. Remove. In-fill. Done.

Trained on the billions of images already posted by its millions of users the App’s AI adjusted and tweaked, adding details and colour that had not existed in any reality, removing the backs of heads, in-filling the newly empty pixels. Shadows became coal black without dimming the darkest of details. Highlights became star-sharp without blowing out. Made up sunlight through made up blossom with its made up but glorious Bokeh.

The young man looked at the picture presented to him via his retinal screen. He swiped to post.

“Nice Pic!” Smiley

“Sweet Capture!” Thumbs Up

“Love it!” Heart. Heart.

Shared. Shared. Liked. A thousand times.

It was time to go. It was getting late and he was hungry.

He lifted the headset off and set it aside. Brushed his hair back into shape and headed to the fridge.

A Short Story by Rob James based on a tweeter exchange.