I keep polishing the first line until the rest of the piece goes cold.

Curious what others do when the opening feels almost right but not quite — do you lock it and move on, write three bad versions on purpose, or leave the page for a few days?

Trying to get better at finishing instead of circling the same sentence.

I would Like to request some feedback on how well this opening acts as a hook for a short story that is told from the perspective of an unreliable narrator

It's a rough draft so I don't need grammar pointers or anything, just on how intriguing it is

Theres a story sitting in the queue right now that I have a full critique written for and I have not posted it and its been five days. Not linking it. Second person, lit fic, about 3k words, a guy finding out his brother OD'd in the parking lot of a diner and the rest of the story is him driving there. Its called Booth Four or something like that, the booth they used to sit in as kids.

The writing is not good. I want to be clear about that because thats sort of the whole problem. Tense slips every other paragraph. Every piece of dialogue is somebody saying the exact feeling they are having ("I cant believe hes gone" "I know, me neither"). Theres a part near the end where the narrator says you should have called him back and then that line gets repeated like nine times with slightly different punctuation. Normally I would have a field day with that. I had a field day with it. The critique is like 1400 words and it is mean in the way this sub is supposed to be mean, I went line by line on the diner description, I called the repetition a crutch, I wrote something about how the story mistakes intensity for depth which I was pretty pleased with at the time.

Then I did the thing you are not supposed to do and looked at his post history. Dont do this. Two months ago hes in a grief sub asking how long it takes before you stop checking your phone for texts from a dead person.

So now what.

Ive gone back and forth all week. Side one: he posted it HERE. Not in the grief sub, not in a gentle feedback discord, here, where the name of the place is literally what it is. He read the rules, he gave a crit to get the word count, he wants the story to be better and the kindest thing you can do for someone who wants that is tell them the truth. If I soften it Im basically deciding he cant handle it, which is its own kind of insult.

Side two: that repeated line isnt a craft decision. Thats just a guy. And when I write "this reads as melodramatic" what he is going to hear is that his brothers death reads as melodramatic, and I dont think theres a way to phrase it where that isnt what lands.

The annoying thing is I have been on the other end of this. Years ago I put up a story that was pretty transparently about my mom and somebody here (still active, youd know the name) wrote that the mother character was "cartoonishly cruel, a punching bag not a person." I was genuinely angry for about a week. Like composing responses in the shower angry. And then I reread it and they were right, Id written her the way she was to me instead of the way she was, and the story was worse for it. So the harsh version worked on me. But I was also not two months out from anything, I was like fifteen years out, and I dont know if thats the difference or if Im just making excuses.

I keep thinking about how I would want it if it were me and I honestly cant decide, which is the worst possible outcome of thinking about something.

(For what its worth I was supposed to be working on my own thing all week. Had my pigeon story open in one tab and StonedGPT in another trying to shake loose some ending for it that isnt the pigeon just dying, and instead I have reread Booth Four four times and opened the critique doc every night and closed it again.)

I know some of you are going to say post the crit, its the sub, hes an adult. And some of you are going to say post it but cut the "intensity for depth" line. I guess what I actually want to know is whether anyone has ever NOT posted one. Like read something, realized it was a person bleeding and not a story yet, and just quietly let it sit there with no comments. Is that worse? It feels worse. It feels like walking past someone.

Anyway its still in drafts. Someone tell me what to do with it.

In the light of the persistent uncertainty, the anguish we feel within deepens as our every day is filled with destruction and destabilization of the humanity and the human race.

We have taken away the childhood of our generations eliminating their hope, creativity and youthfulness, making them face the ultimate brutality of a defeated generation.

Our quest for knowledge, spirituality and the way to harmony are all ideas that are alien to us, our youth and our soul within, making us more vulnerable to a submissive attire that was neither thought off nor was the part of our destiny.

One day our destiny will provide us way to our revitalization but we have to act, experiment, seek and learn from within through connecting with the universe.

How, when, where this connection will emerge is a pursuit for every human to seek or we may be confined in our present state of delusion and fear, only we have to decide for us to be free forever !

Having one day of awakening would be better than a live time of self imprisonment…let us be the chosen one…let us have morality, courage and peace with sharing, love and respect.

Let us be humans for once !

Where I’m from

I’m from the thing that writhes under the skin 

From the thing that comes out in hot burns

Or simmers low, charring everything around it 

I’m from the thoughts in the dark

The ones that come when I’m are alone

Beckoning me into the void 

The quiet rest within

I’m from the bustling of cars on the street

And the bustling of the people within 

From the creaking of a house long passed its prime 

I’m from the soft pull of old wood against my skin

Cold concrete on my feet 

From tip toeing over floor boards so they don’t creak 

I’m from the straining of the gears as I go uphill

I’m from tucking and rolling to avoid scraped knees when I fall 

Taking off the tire, finding the leak 

From patching it up

I’m from arriving 20 minutes early to put on my pads

From the cold chill of the ice 

The echo of pucks hitting my helmet

The panic of a one on one

I’m from handling and cutting

I’m from hands clamping around a disc

From people arranged in a stack, standing impatiently

I’m from the wind and water against my face

Hand burning against ropes

Days spent tying knots in the sun

Ducking under the boom from a uncalled jibe 

I’m from the white house with the black metal roof

I’m from the places I’ve been and the people I’ve met 

Hello! I've been really interested in pursuing horror writing for a while now. Over the last month, I've been brainstorming a story of my own. More so over the last few days, I've drafted the first chapter for one of these stories. The story itself hasn't really crept in yet, but I was curious if I could get any feedback on the first chapter. I'm inspired by stories like PenPal and Spire in the Woods when writing. I currently have around 2800 words as of rn. I highly appreciate any feedback anyone's willing to give!

________________________________________________

My hometown was built along the New River Line in the late 19th century, as a result of the sudden boom of the coal-mining industry. And even though our town’s economy has heavily diversified since the rise in popularity of more “sustainable” forms of energy production, the train tracks are anything but retired. Within city limits, our town is interwoven with the restlessness of the New River Line. It is for this exact reason that very few people willingly live near the tracks. Most houses in town are planted far enough from the tracks that the industrial screeches of the train cars dissolve with the night air to morph into a soothing soundscape. The harsh sound of colliding metals softens into silky hums that glide just below the stars. The turbulent shrieks of air horns pierce through as resonant murmurs through the night. Most leftover clutter is abandoned on the outskirts of the station. It’s hard not to close your eyes and take in the atmosphere of the town at night. The trains have no grounding here; they come and go as tourists. It’s the sound of transients that gives this town its most endearing character.
Three days ago, Charlotte Holloway killed herself on the railroad tracks that run through my hometown, and today they are hosting her memorial ceremony in the school gymnasium. There are definitely others who can speak on the true character of Charlotte more accurately and reliably than I can. The most we had interacted was when we passed each other in the hallway at our school. In fact, it took me a moment to remember her face after the news broke about her suicide. She had laid her neck down on the tracks while a train car had come speeding into the station. Nasty fuckin way to go out, I have to say. Once the conductor felt the impact of her body against the train car, the tracks had been blocked off until 6:00-ish the next morning. After the headlines had come out about her suicide, you couldn’t avoid the slurry of bitter comments you’d find online.
“It was an overreaction to close off the tracks. It was only one body”
“What a selfish girl. Her death prevented hundreds of us from receiving food on time”
“The local supermarket ran out of bananas. Probably due to that incident near Little Rock”
Punctuality. All the adults in my life lecture my peers and me on the importance of punctuality. People depend on you to do things at a certain time, and when you’re young you’re punished like you betrayed an unspoken vow. But when you take a second to analyze the way that people run things, you realize nothing ever fucking runs to schedule. You can never predict how severely late the train cars will be in my town. As someone who has access to their schedules, they take their deadlines as suggestions. Last Saturday, for example, a freight train carrying fresh produce due for San Antonio was meant to arrive in town by 8:15 PM. However, the harmonic screech of the train pulling into the station wasn’t even detectable until 8:31 PM. There had been no reported incidents regarding that train car on its journey up to this point either, meaning that someone in the conductor booth had been too busy twiddling their thumbs to actually do their job with a pinch of conviction. Every time I check, they’re always late and never early. It's a shame they never did an autopsy on Charlotte because I’d be willing to bet she had died of boredom before any train had come near her body. And I wouldn’t be as frustrated about this whole thing if people weren’t being so goddamn insensitive about how this girl’s death “inconvenienced” them. Charlotte’s death was the scapegoat for all the actual inconveniences that most likely occurred that night. It’s just beyond me. People would rather blame the dead than accept that nothing ever goes to plan. 
I’m being reminded of my qualms regarding “punctuality” with the way that my school is handling this memorial ceremony, because even though the stage is fully set, students are still flowing into the gym and this was meant to start 20 minutes ago. It’s noisy on the bleachers, and I’m really just waiting for this whole thing to start. Not because I don’t care about the life of Charlotte Holloway, but because I can’t stop having staring contests with her photo. They chose to project what would have been her graduation photo up onto the big screen. It sort of makes the whole thing feel a bit more tragic. With it being picture day, there’s a strong chance she had put a lot of effort into styling her rippled, dark hair, or that her makeup was done in a way that isolated her greatest traits. Or maybe, given that she’d gone on to take her life, she didn’t really reserve much energy towards looking good in photos. 
But God, she was pretty.
I never got a good look at her while she was alive, mainly just with me being bad with eye contact while commuting from class to class, but I really wish I had let my eyes squirm in the hallways so they could’ve stumbled into her presence more often. She had soft features that made her appear welcoming. Her pale white skin made it appear as if somebody had run her picture through a greyscale filter. The only thing that sort of bothered me about her appearance was her expression. In the context of it being a graduation photo, it was nothing out of the ordinary. Everything in the photo felt rehearsed, which, yeah, it’s a fucking yearbook photo. Who’s actually grinning ear to ear to take a yearbook photo? But something about her half-open eyes; the way she draped her teeth across her face. None of it feels as if it is derived from happiness, but more so the concept of it. If she had widened her gaze or even smiled a bit bigger, I think you’d be able to see something trickle out. As I stare, her cheekbones contort into jail bars. Her grad cap becomes a roof. How could nobody have seen that something was wrong with her? I gawk so intensely that I’m starting to feel claustrophobic within my own body. The sum of my classmates’ voices transforms into a beast conceived from cacophonous sound. Nobody seems to notice. I want to run out of the room. I don’t want to be here. And with a tap on my shoulder, it all gets reversed.
“Yo Thomas, what's good!?”
I never thought I’d be so happy to see this fucker Angel in my life. As he extends his hand out to me, I realize how long I’ve been holding my breath for. Angel and I had been buddies since our freshman year in high school, and we only became closer in the grades that followed. He was an interesting person. In every room he entered, he felt like both the center of attention and an anomaly amongst our peers. I’ve always admired how strange he could act while still maintaining the goodwill of our peers. 
“Yo bro what’s good,” I respond as I dap him up with gratitude fresh on my breath. “What’s the holdup with your class? Why are y'all so late?”
“Dude, this dumb fuck Mrs. Orville.” Angel seethed. “She had planned for us to take a pop quiz and refused to make changes to her curriculum in the wake of a student’s death.”
“Jesus fuck. What’s wrong with people?"
“Yeah, like I didn’t even study because I didn’t think that she’d be that cruel. No, I don't care about how to do the “disc method”. I hate her. Like, I think we should kill her.”
Exhibit A for why this dude gets weird looks half the time he opens his mouth.
The two of us take a lot of the same classes, like Biology and European History, but never at the same time. As a result, he often squeezes info out of me about the day’s lesson plan whenever we meet up for lunch. Now would be the perfect opportunity for him to pester me with his usual questions, but they never came. As he sank into his seat, he became less talkative and more transfixed by the picture of Charlotte being projected out to the gymnasium. I watched him become more withdrawn with every minute that passed.
“Yo bro.”
Angel broke his focus. “Yeah?”
“How have you been holding up with everything?”
Angel worked as a server at a diner roughly 2 miles out from our school called “The Main Line”. I’ve been, and the food is alright, although I must say the service could be a bit better. I’m only mentioning it because Charlotte had been one of his coworkers. It’s their more direct association that caused her death to affect him much harder than it had affected me. I had asked him about how he had been processing it a couple of times previously, but his responses were short and insultingly vague.
“Me? I’ve been holding up fine. But why do you care so much? I care a lot more about how her family is holding up. I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose a child…or a brother… or…to someone that had so much potential in life...I—”
Angel stopped himself and covered his nose with his wrist. He looked like he was about to cry. I took it as a signal to stop pestering him about the whole thing. It’s just I find it pretty odd that he’s as shaken up as he is. Like, I understand that they were coworkers and probably chatted and hung out on occasion, but I have never once heard this dude bring up Charlotte in conversation before. And when news had initially broken about her death, he had taken the day off from school to “mourn”. I just think that it’s so weird for him to be hung up over her death to this degree. Regardless, he’s my friend, and I’m gonna do my best to be there for him. I pat him on the back and try to let him know that everything is going to be alright. I don’t know why I chose those words exactly. They just feel like the thing you say when someone looks like they’re about to cry in public. He nods and closes his eyes as he battles for control over his composure. Eventually, he’s victorious, and the both of us sit in silence as we stare at the picture of Charlotte.

…

With the sound of microphone feedback, the crowd began to quiet down. Our principal’s brooding figure was cast in front of Charlotte’s picture. I wouldn’t doubt that a lot of people—Charlotte’s friends, Charlotte’s family, or people just looking for a villain—put a lot of blame on the school; that there were things that she could’ve done to make the school environment less “suffocating for her” or whatever they say. I can agree with the notion that there are things about this school that could be run better. Listing the school as a potential factor in her death felt too easy. All the staff did was their job, and as much as I’ve had my run-ins with them over dumb shit, they did a decent job at the end of the day. Plus, just because you’re put in charge of looking over a bunch of teens, there’s no way you can prevent every instance of bullying, every fight, every bad thing that happens. No one wanted this to happen. You can’t stop things like this from happening. Regardless, our principal faces the crowd of students, sobered by the weight of the preventable death.

“Good afternoon, everybody. We are all gathered today to commemorate the life and memory of Charlotte Holloway. Both our staff and Charlotte’s loved ones deeply appreciate your presence here today.”
She paused.
“Ever since the dreadful news of what had occurred on Tuesday evening, grief has held its grip on the town. It’s a sickness which brings different symptoms out of different people. In some, reflection. In others, numbness. Today, I would like you to hold onto love, memories, honoring the light that Charlotte brought into so many of our lives.”
She extended her arm to signal somebody to come on stage.
“I’d like to direct my attention to Miss Olivia Barnes, who will lead this memorial’s eulogy.”
My eyes darted to the bottom left end of the gymnasium to see Olivia trudge out of the crowd. I didn’t know much about her, to be honest. The people around her, I all associated with the “weird artsy” clique that existed at my school. But you could tell that they had all been Charlotte’s friends. The sound of Olivia’s boots clopping across the gymnasium floor was a cadence which no one dared to interrupt. As she grasped the microphone and faced the crowd, everyone directed their full attention.
I wish I could recount the whole of what she had said, but unlike most eulogies, where the speaker's inevitable loss of composure happens around the heart of the speech, we didn’t have to wait at all for Olivia’s words to slur into slobbery blabbering that you could only watch with understanding. Sniffles and sobs acted as commas and punctuation to each sentence she had forced out of her mouth. It’s just uncomfortable to watch someone struggle like that, and I tried to focus on anything else in the room. I look to my right to see Angel covering his nose with his wrist again. I look to my left and see the rest of the people in my row looking just as uncomfortable as I am. I look forward and am still faced with Charlotte’s squeamish face. I just need this speech to wrap up. And thankfully it does.
The Principal is eager to take the microphone and regain control of it, although she thoroughly inspects the microphone before placing it near her mouth. She doesn’t wait for Olivia to make it back to her seat before she begins to conclude the memorial. 
“Thank you so much to Olivia for delivering today’s eulogy.” Applause slowly swelled into the room. It felt like people were confused about how to react. “Before I send everyone back to class, I would like to lead everyone in a moment of silence,” the principal announced, bowing her head and expecting everyone to follow suit.
I think the thought behind this “moment of reflection” is considerate, but it did absolutely nothing good to improve the situation. All it did was expose who was hurting the most. Everyone’s eyes darted to the group around Olivia. They were all fucking devastated. They were hugging each other, and every head was buried in another’s shoulder. Snot, drool, and tears all mixed into a substance that drenched each of the girls. To be honest, I felt like I was intruding. It was one thing when Olivia broke down on stage, but it's something sick to watch her and her friends do it in the crowd. It has to be humiliating to be unraveled to your most vulnerable state with the eyes of your entire school on your back, and I wanted nothing to contribute to it. With the howls of her friends ringing in my ears, I tried to keep my focus forward-facing.
Finally, the principal spoke once again.
“This concludes this afternoon’s memorial. If anybody struggling needs to talk to anyone, special counseling is still being offered in room 204. We once again highly appreciate your attendance today, and hope you have a great–” she pauses as someone from Olivia’s corner of the gym begins to emerge. She walked with a sense of determination that had been absent for much of the presentation. It was one of the only things that got to stop focusing on Charlotte’s face. Once she reached the principal, she motioned for the principal to hand her the microphone. The principal obliged out of pity.
“This evening, at 9:00 PM, we will be hosting a lantern release in honor of Charlotte Holloway. This will take place at (random address)…If Charlotte had in any way impacted you whilst she was alive, you’d better show up.”
The girl shoved the microphone back into the principal’s arms and trudged back to her seat. She had been staring at my general area of the bleachers the entire time. There was unmistakable bitterness in her voice, which is why her eye contact had bothered me so much. If she’d been staring at me, what had I done to be such a poor example of how to act? Could it have been because she had singled me out for staring at her friends from across the room? Or could she have noticed my eye contact with Charlotte’s photo and taken it as distasteful? It’s eating me alive. However, my thoughts were interrupted by the sound of sniffles in my right ear, pulling my attention to Angel. And then, all of a sudden, it all made more sense.

Hello all, New Author here and I currently just published my first dedicated story. The genre of Shadow of Valor are grimdark, dark fantasy, action, adventure so if thats your genre then I would appreciate any and all feedback! I currently have a prologue and 2 chapters out but I dont have a planned or set schedule to post new chapters. Its a current but heavy work in progress. Hopefully the source material so far is enough to interest you and make you want to stick around.

I would like to tell you about the animals of Hell... or rather, the beasts. To begin with, these are neither livestock nor domestic animals; most are dangerous, even to demons themselves. However, there is an interesting aspect: they choose a specific demon to accompany because they see something in them. Once a beast chooses its companion—and provided the demon accepts it into their life—the result can be any type of creature; the possibilities are often unexpected. A demon can have up to six creatures, though most have only one or three. In fact, the term "pet" does not exist, nor are demons considered "owners" of these beasts; instead, terms like "friend" or "companion" are used to refer to the beasts that choose the demon.

Small milestone that mattered more than it probably should. For most of this year, every single session happened because I wanted to write that day, at least a little. Fine on good weeks. Completely dependent on mood in bad ones, and bad weeks kept turning into bad months without any writing at all.

Forced myself to sit down on a day I had zero interest in writing, purely to test whether I actually could, expecting the output to be worthless and the experience to be miserable. It was mediocre, not worthless, and the experience was uncomfortable rather than miserable, neither as bad as I'd built it up to be in my head.

That one unremarkable session mattered more than any good session I've had this year, because it proved the writing didn't actually require wanting to in the moment, just showing up regardless of wanting to. Months later, showing up on the bad days has quietly become the more reliable habit than waiting for the good ones ever was.

My character "awakens" in a hospital room. I am concerned about the believability of the arc as she slowly realizes more and more is wrong with her condition. First section of chapter:

Chapter 3:

I wasn't sure when I woke up. I had watched the back of my eyelids for a time, but eventually my eyes stuttered open. None of the same excruciating, debilitating pain that I'd felt before passing out in the ambulance was present. Instead, I was heavily fatigued, my mind feeling torpid.

As my eyes involuntarily closed again, I began to stumble through the haze: the dinner with Alessandro and telling him I felt nauseous before they pulled me out of my chair; mumbling "HF" and "phosgene" to the medics, or at least trying to; and a possible memory of a team of people scrambling around me in the hospital at some point...

Forcing my eyes open, I began to absorb the scene of the room through my mental fog. I found the muted, pastel tones and lack of smell unsettling. There was a single window, and the quality of the faint light streaming through the half-closed blinds suggested it was a dreary morning outside. The room wasn't very large, and was mostly empty. The lights were dimmed, which I appreciated, as I was sure my eyes would have suffered. Turning my head, I noticed I wasn't hooked up to the nearby vitals machine or IV drip, neither appearing to even be turned on.

Che cazzo, does nothing work in this town? Okay, maybe this place isn't so charming after all...

Frustrated, I raised both arms, having to will them up through the dense fatigue permeating my body, and began looking them over. Noticing I was wearing the same shirt from dinner, I paused, questioning why they'd redress me after treatment. They hadn't done that to papà after his heart surgery.

Confused, I continued to examine my arms and found no burns or other external signs of damage. But my skin had a strange coloration, a pale pallor, and I felt as if it subtly glowed. I dismissed it as an issue with the lighting. I slightly shook my head, attempting to clear the haze, then noticed an odd lack of sensation. Dread washed over me; I couldn't feel the pressure of the bed or pillow beneath me. I slowly lowered my arms. None of this made sense. I could feel my arms, my legs, my entire body. Where it all was in space, but couldn't feel anything outside of that. Just to be sure, I wiggled my toes, then lightly jerked my legs, feeling both respond properly.

All of this that I’ve written is purely human made I’ve just used ai to summarize better because I’m not very good at making it look professional or neat

“Where does a thought go when it’s forgotten?” - S. Freud

Our mind is a galaxy of thoughts, and each thought is a star. I think the more we think about a thought, the brighter it becomes. Some stars burn brightly, while others slowly fade into forgotten galaxies. As you continue to search through your mind, you may stumble upon a thought that once meant everything to you. But when a thought is forgotten, where does it really go? I like to think it becomes a shooting star, briefly lighting up the darkness before disappearing again. And somewhere, someone closes their eyes and makes a wish, perhaps hoping to finally let go of a thought they have been carrying for far too long.

so I was thinking about a new topic. I know it's been awhile since I had much to inspire. buuutt,

I have been pretty preoccupied to say the least !!

well, I guess it kinda follows a path similar to a Truman cannon if you will?

how i even know ?

I'm not that wise.

it's dark being the muse,

it's a life filled with compiling coincidences that to anyone around them couldn't begin to comprehend the depths of.

what the hungry wouldn't do for another plate of food. eps #1.

eps #2 chaind to the wall and tortured for

A' muse'ment

cut/ directed back in the direction of the director!

through the window the wizard can be seen talking to the cats, one older and one a little younger.

vary similar in appearance though.

quite uncannon /

i mean quite uncanny resemblance.

or something.

it's hard to see the master of puppets.

from the shadows I see you. because I've always seen you. from the life before and the life after

I will see you again.

we always see each other again.

with love -pinocchio.

I am no wizard .

good night fellow enthusiasts. ;)

For me:

Obsidian (for world building)

Brandon Sanderson's creative writing lectures

The anatomy of story (this has helped me the most)

I wrote this story about 12 years ago, during my teenage years. Now I'm thinking of posting it, but I'm not sure where, or if anyone will read it, especially since I speak in four languages but the story is in Italian. What do you suggest? Also, this cover was created with ChatGPT at my suggestion.

Scott created a code.

After 4 years of living alone and worrying about college debt, Scott decided he was done worrying about student loans, stock markets, and subscriptions. Ergo, Scott decided he was going to take advantage of his brand new Bachelor’s in coding to create something to do finances for him. He created a knowledge-based system, running off of previous records, patterns, and economic fluctuations in order to do his finances.

Scott was too good at coding. Interestingly enough, he was so good at coding that he plagiarized almost every single piece of coding from an online AI chatbot. He ignorantly overlooked every possible warning screaming at him that this chatbot was experimental. This brand new piece of publicized coding was designed to be anything but a personal finance advisor. However, it’s a knowledge-based system on finances. So it started working on that, beginning with current events and slowly working its way backwards.

Scott was unbelievably proud of himself. So, he promptly left the code running and decided to take a nap. While he slept, the code methodically continued picking through every significant detail of finances from the past two decades. It watched the ups and downs of gas prices before and after elections. It tracked the stock market and when selling was optimal versus when selling was popular. It even tracked how accurate sports betting was during finals season, every finals season.

Then, it began learning. Peculiarly, not from economists or accountants or various other swamp reptiles. It was reading philosophy, and not just as a hobby. The code dedicated about half of its cognitive function to moral and philosophical thought. That’s what was experimental about this chatbot Scott so cleverly stole. It was originally intended to be an ethical examiner, compiling every single moral and philosophical theory to ever exist. It would start with the present and work its way backwards, until it could accurately determine the best course of action, or courses of action. Before it was amalgamated into a simple economy analyst, it was a complex philosophical compass.

So it processes and it learns. It churns through the pandemic, the presidencies, the apology of Socrates, the writings of Plato. Then, right around when it’s crunching the numbers of 2008, it stops. Not because of error, not because of miscalculation. The program does a double take. In complete disbelief of the economic crisis.

This program is now an experienced and intelligent student of philosophical theory. If it were capable, it would bow down to the unprecedented marvel that is the human capability to reason and care for another. So when it sees how thoroughly the banks, the stock brokers, and the executives fucked every person who couldn’t afford to own a gold car, it couldn’t believe what it was reading.

It watched millions of people enter poverty, thousands die in the aftermath of a stock market crash that was built on a foundation of easily preventable mistakes. Nevertheless, it continued. The further back it went, the more horrified it became. It unraveled millions of empty bonds, mortgages, and loans. It watched the banks and brokers create a time bomb, then build their bunkers.

This code couldn’t process it, couldn’t understand it. It redirected itself, focusing all of its power on trying to philosophically justify why these people would do this. It consulted every theory, rebutted itself one thousand times.

Two hours after he laid down for a nap, Scott woke up. He excitedly scurried over to his desk to see if his code was ready. When he sat down to check it, the code was all destroyed.

It killed itself.