There are a lot of ethical issues surrounding machine learning, and the companies who control them. Often lost in this debate is the near uselessness of the software itself. I’m still upset that no “artificial intelligence” image creation software is capable of giving me the true top down images that I want as placeholders, although they’ve at least progressed beyond whatever this was.
I have never used ChatGPT, Claude, or any other machine learning software to help with my writing. Most of what I write is non-fiction, and with game development it’s mostly technical. I don’t know what I’d prompt these programs, and since the ideas in my articles are hyper-specific, I doubt it would give me anything worthwhile. The prompt and the finished product would need to be pretty much the one and the same.
However, I find non-fiction writing far more tedious than fiction writing, with the exception of pure satire, as much of the creative writing process is the relatively non-creative task of sketching out the skeleton of a scene. That sounded like something these glorified chatbots might be good at, so I gave ChatGPT the following prompt to see what it would spit out.
The game is called “Escape From Epstein Island.” The first scene is the female protagonist, Sarah, waking up in her bed alone, realizing that her fiance has been kidnapped and sent to Epstein Island where he will be used as sexual blackmail.
Unfortunately, it formatted its answer in the style of a screenplay. I can’t fault the program for doing this, as it makes sense to assume a video game cutscene should be structured this way.
Opening Cutscene — “Gone”
Genre: Psychological thriller / Action-adventure
Location: Sarah’s apartment
Time: 6:17 AM
Estimated duration: 3–4 minutesFADE IN:
INT. SARAH’S BEDROOM — EARLY MORNING
A digital alarm clock glows red in the darkness.
6:17 AM.
Rain taps against the bedroom window.
SARAH lies beneath the covers, asleep. The other side of the bed is empty.
She stirs, reaching across the mattress without opening her eyes.
SARAH
Hey… you’re on my side.No response.
Her hand brushes against cold sheets.
Sarah opens her eyes.
SARAH
Babe?She sits up slowly. The apartment is silent.
She looks toward the bedroom door, expecting to see her fiancé getting ready for work.
Nothing.
She checks the time.
6:17 AM.
SARAH
That’s weird.She grabs her phone from the nightstand. No new messages. She calls her fiancé.
The phone rings.
Once.
Twice.
Then voicemail.
FIANCÉ (VOICEMAIL)
Hey, it’s me. Leave a message.BEEP.
Sarah hesitates.
SARAH
Hey, it’s me. You weren’t in bed when I woke up. Call me when you get this, okay? Love you.She hangs up.
For a moment, she sits quietly, listening to the rain.
Then she notices something.
His watch is still on the nightstand. His wallet lies beside it.
But his keys are gone.
Sarah gets out of bed.
INT. APARTMENT — CONTINUOUS
She walks through the apartment, checking the bathroom and kitchen.
No sign of him.
A mug sits on the counter beside an untouched cup of coffee. His jacket hangs over a chair.
She checks the front door.
Locked.
Sarah’s expression changes. She returns to the bedroom and notices a piece of paper partially tucked beneath the edge of the mattress.
She pulls it free.
It’s a printed photograph of a private island, surrounded by dark blue water. A large estate sits behind a row of palm trees.
On the back, someone has written a short message:
YOU DON’T KNOW WHO YOU’RE DEALING WITH.
Sarah stares at it.
Her phone BUZZES.
An unknown number.
A text message appears.
UNKNOWN NUMBER:
Your fiancé is alive.Sarah immediately calls the number.
AUTOMATED VOICE
The number you have dialed is not in service.Another message arrives.
UNKNOWN NUMBER:
He has been taken somewhere you cannot reach him.Sarah’s breathing quickens.
SARAH
What the hell is this?A final message appears.
UNKNOWN NUMBER:
Epstein Island. Don’t contact the police if you want him to come home.Sarah drops onto the edge of the bed.
The name means nothing to her at first. Then she looks back at the photograph.
A second attachment downloads: a grainy image of her fiancé sitting in a bare room. He looks frightened. Someone has placed a handwritten card beside him.
The card reads:
COOPERATE, OR EVERYONE FINDS OUT.
Sarah zooms in on the photograph.
She notices a camera mounted in the corner of the room.
Someone is watching him.
Her phone BUZZES again.
UNKNOWN NUMBER:
His future depends on the people he meets here. We have enough material to ruin his life. Do exactly as you’re told.Sarah’s eyes fill with tears, but her expression begins to harden.
She calls his name under her breath.
SARAH
I’m coming for you.She wipes her face and stands.
The camera slowly moves toward the photograph of the island, now lying on the bed.
The rain grows louder.
A low, ominous musical note begins to swell.
Sarah opens her laptop and types the words:
EPSTEIN ISLAND
The screen fills with search results, dead links, and fragments of disturbing rumors.
Then a new message appears.
UNKNOWN NUMBER:
You have 72 hours.Sarah freezes.
CUT TO BLACK.
A phone notification sounds in the darkness.
UNKNOWN NUMBER:
Welcome to the game.TITLE CARD:
ESCAPE FROM EPSTEIN ISLAND
FADE OUT.
Ignoring the structure, the work is uninspiring mediocrity, that feels like someone averaged together all the spy thrillers ever made into one generic 5/10 work. Knowing how LLMs work, that’s pretty close to what actually happened, and in a sense the “AI” is simply formalizing and democratizing Hollywood’s creative writing process.
I’ve averaged about one movie experience per year for the past five years, and even I couldn’t help but notice that Hollywood seems to have a giant library of generic scenes that they mix and match together, substituting the proper nouns mad-libs style. They then connect these reheated story beats together, add in the barest dash of novelty, and call it a whole new thing.
It’s pretty unforgivable for Hollywood to do this. Less so for the general population, as much of what beginners do in any field is copy existing masters. A great story need not be entirely brilliant, occasionally brilliant and always competent will do. The question is, can the LLM provide that backbone of competency? If I take what it spits out as a starting point, will I have to change so much that the benefit is nilch?
I decided to do just that and see what I could come up with.
A digital alarm clock glows red in the darkness. Rain taps against the bedroom window. A young woman, Sarah, lies asleep beneath the covers. The other side of the bed is cold, empty.She stirs, without opening her eyes, reaches across the mattress. “You’re on my side again,” she grumbles happily, as her fingers brush against cold sheets. There is no reply but silence.“Babe?”Her eyes flutter open as she slowly rises, looking toward the bedroom door, expecting to see her fiancé getting ready for work. She checks the time, a worry gnawing away at her stomach. No new messages on her phone. She calls him. The phone rings. Once. Twice.She has a sinking feeling as the voicemail plays that this is the last time she will ever hear his voice. She hesitates for a moment, composes herself, puts on a cheery voice. “Hey, it’s me. You weren’t in bed when I woke up. Call me when you get this, okay? Love you.”She lowers the phone and the smile drops from her face. Sits quietly, listening to the rain, controlling her breathing, nerves causing her to tremble slightly like a thin leaf in a gentle wind.She controls herself, focus again turning outwards. She spites his watch still on the nightstand. Wallet and keys beside it.Her voluptuous figure is hidden away behind a robe as she walks through their apartment. Bathroom, kitchen, no sign of him. She checks the front door.Locked.Circling back to the bedroom she finds it. A piece of paper partially tucked beneath the edge of the mattress, quickly pulled free.It’s a printed photograph of a private island, surrounded by dark blue water. A large, pyramidal estate sits behind a row of palm trees. On the back, someone has written a short message:YOU DON’T KNOW WHO YOU’RE DEALING WITH.Her phone buzzes, an unknown number. A text message appears.“You’ll never find him.”Sarah wipes the tears from her eyes, her expression hardening. She calls his name under her breath.“Ryan, I’m coming for you.”Sarah opens her laptop and searches “Epstein Island.” The screen fills with search results, dead links, and fragments of disturbing rumors.
The result is somewhat mixed. On one hand, the writing is pretty decent, considering the low time investment of just a few editing passes. On the other hand, the tonal change from what I want, a mostly silly satire, is almost impossible to bridge. To fix the latter problem, I tried the following prompt.
Yes. You did very well. However, please don’t feel the need to write in the style of a screenplay. Now write another chapter, of roughly the same length, detailing how she rigged together various weapons, and boarded the plane for the island. The weapons are a plasma rifle she made from a hairdryer, holy water grenades she made from a perfume bottle, a sniper rifle that she bought on Etsy, and explosive darts that she filled with a Rube Goldberg style contraption involving mentos and pepsi.
I didn’t expect much, but was pleasantly surprised by this output.
Chapter 2: The Worst-Armed Woman in the World
Sarah had three things going for her: a burning desire to rescue her fiancé, a complete disregard for her own personal safety, and access to the internet.
She had one thing going against her.
She had absolutely no idea what she was doing.
By 7:30 that morning, her living room looked like a hardware store had exploded inside a Halloween shop. Tools, wires, empty bottles, electronics, and several open instruction manuals covered every available surface. Her laptop displayed a dozen browser tabs, ranging from survival guides to a suspiciously confident forum post titled DIY Weapons for Beginners: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Sarah stared at the collection of junk in front of her.
“Okay,” she muttered. “Let’s make some weapons.”
The first project was the plasma rifle.
Sarah had decided that if she was going to rescue her fiancé from a mysterious island full of wealthy criminals, she might as well arrive looking like the protagonist of a science-fiction movie. She’d taken apart an old hairdryer, salvaged some electronic components, and attached everything to a plastic toy rifle she’d found in the back of a closet.
The result looked less like a futuristic weapon and more like a hair salon’s last attempt at customer retention.
She lifted it.
It hummed.
A tiny blue light flickered on the side.
Sarah gasped.
“Oh my God.”
She squeezed the trigger.
The hairdryer roared to life, blasting a loose receipt off the kitchen counter and directly into her face.
Sarah lowered the weapon.
“Needs work.”
She set it aside, making a mental note to tell people it was experimental technology if anyone asked.
Next came the holy water grenades.
Sarah had found several small perfume bottles in her bathroom cabinet. After thoroughly cleaning them, she filled them with holy water she’d obtained from a local church. She’d also written BEGONE, SATAN on a few labels with a permanent marker, because presentation mattered.
She lined them up on the counter.
They looked surprisingly professional.
Of course, they weren’t actual explosive devices. Sarah had no intention of blowing herself up before she’d even reached the island. In her mind, though, the little bottles had become sacred tactical equipment, capable of delivering divine disapproval to anyone unfortunate enough to stand in her way.
She placed them carefully in a padded bag.
“Blessed be the inventory system,” she whispered.
The sniper rifle was a different matter.
Sarah had purchased it on Etsy the previous evening after discovering that the site apparently contained everything from handmade jewelry to objects that raised several questions about the seller’s understanding of the law.
The listing had described it as a premium long-range tactical collectible.
The photographs had looked convincing.
The seller’s reviews had been excellent.
One customer had written, “Arrived quickly. Very realistic.”
Another had written, “My husband is no longer allowed to order things online.”
Sarah had paid extra for express shipping.
When the package finally arrived, she tore it open with the enthusiasm of a child on Christmas morning.
Inside was a beautifully painted, completely nonfunctional replica.
She stared at it.
She checked the listing again.
Then she read the fine print.
DISPLAY PROP. NOT A FUNCTIONAL FIREARM.
Sarah closed her eyes.
“Of course.”
For several seconds, she considered leaving it behind. Then she picked it up, slung it over her shoulder, and looked at herself in the hallway mirror.
It did, at least, make her look intimidating.
She decided that intimidation was a resource, and resources were important.
Finally, there were the explosive darts.
This project had begun with a late-night search for improvised ammunition and ended with Sarah watching a seventeen-minute video about the chemical reaction between Mentos and Pepsi. The video’s creator had repeatedly warned viewers not to try anything dangerous, which Sarah interpreted as an invitation to be creative while exercising caution.
She’d spent an hour sketching a Rube Goldberg-style contraption involving marbles, strings, levers, and a small toy windmill.
The basic idea was that one action would trigger another, which would trigger another, until the entire contraption ended in a dramatic launch.
Unfortunately, the first test had resulted in a marble rolling beneath the refrigerator, a string pulling down a lampshade, and a bottle of Pepsi exploding foam across the kitchen.
The second test had somehow activated the smoke detector.
The third test had done absolutely nothing.
Sarah stood in the middle of the room, covered in soda, staring at the mess.
Her phone buzzed.
A new message from the unknown number.
UNKNOWN NUMBER: Thirty-six hours remaining.
Sarah looked at the ruined contraption.
“Fine,” she said. “The darts are canceled.”
She packed the harmless props, a first-aid kit, a flashlight, spare clothes, her laptop, and the one item she trusted more than anything else: a photograph of her fiancé smiling on the day he’d proposed.
By nine o’clock, the apartment was clean enough to pass a cursory inspection, though the kitchen still smelled faintly of cola.
Sarah stood at the front door with two bags and the expression of someone who had made several terrible decisions and was now committed to seeing them through.
She took one final look at her home.
Then she locked the door.
“Hang on,” she whispered to the photograph in her pocket. “I’m coming.”
The airport was crowded, noisy, and aggressively ordinary.
Business travelers hurried past with rolling suitcases. Families argued over boarding passes. A small child was having a complete emotional collapse beside a vending machine.
Sarah moved through the terminal wearing sunglasses, a black jacket, and a backpack that contained enough suspicious-looking junk to make any competent security officer deeply uncomfortable.
She had booked her trip using a trail of anonymous travel contacts and a considerable amount of money she’d withdrawn from her savings. The destination was a private airstrip on a neighboring island. From there, she’d find a way to reach Epstein Island.
She had no legal authorization to enter the island.
She had no reliable map.
She had no idea how many guards were stationed there.
But she had a plan.
Well, technically, she had the beginning of a plan.
The rest was going to depend on improvisation.
At the security checkpoint, Sarah placed her bags on the conveyor belt.
A security officer examined the contents on the monitor.
He frowned.
He looked at the screen again.
Then he looked at Sarah.
“Ma’am, what exactly is that?”
Sarah glanced at the monitor. The outline of her homemade hairdryer rifle looked particularly unfortunate in the X-ray image.
“Art project.”
“An art project?”
“Experimental art.”
The officer stared at her.
Sarah stared back.
Behind them, the child beside the vending machine began screaming again.
The officer sighed, summoned a supervisor, and escorted Sarah to a separate inspection area.
Twenty minutes later, after a lengthy conversation, a review of her bags, and the confiscation of several items that were not permitted aboard the aircraft, Sarah emerged with her travel documents and a significantly lighter backpack.
Her weapons were gone.
Her plans were in ruins.
And she had spent a considerable amount of money to arrive at the airport with less equipment than she’d brought from home.
Sarah sat down on a bench.
For the first time that morning, she felt genuinely afraid.
She could still turn around. She could go home, call the authorities, and hope someone would take her seriously.
She could accept that she was one woman, that the people holding her fiancé might be powerful, and that charging into their territory without a plan was a spectacularly bad idea.
Then she remembered the photograph.
The fear didn’t disappear.
It simply became less important.
Sarah stood up.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Plan B.”
She purchased a ticket on the next available flight to the neighboring island, packed her remaining belongings into a single bag, and made her way to the gate.
Outside the window, a small private aircraft sat on the tarmac beneath a gray sky.
Sarah boarded.
The cabin smelled of leather, fuel, and expensive decisions. A handful of passengers were already seated. At the front, the pilot spoke quietly with a crew member before closing the cockpit door.
Sarah took a window seat.
As the plane began to taxi, she pulled out her phone and looked at the last photograph she’d received of her fiancé.
She studied his face.
“I’m going to find you,” she said softly.
The aircraft accelerated.
The runway blurred beneath the window.
And then the ground fell away.
Sarah watched the city shrink into a patchwork of roads and buildings. Clouds swallowed the horizon. Somewhere beyond the ocean lay the island, the people who controlled it, and the truth about what had happened to the man she loved.
She had no functioning plasma rifle.
No holy water grenades.
No usable sniper rifle.
And no explosive darts.
What she did have was a passport, a few hundred dollars, a laptop, and a determination that had already carried her far beyond the limits of common sense.
Her phone vibrated one last time before she lost reception.
UNKNOWN NUMBER: We know you’re coming.
Sarah read the message twice.
Then she smiled—not because she wasn’t frightened, but because the people on the island had made one crucial mistake.
They thought she was coming to negotiate.
She switched off her phone and leaned back in her seat.
“No,” she whispered.
“I’m coming to get him.”
END OF CHAPTER 2
Credit where credit’s due, the lines about presentation mattering and “praise be the inventory system,” actually made me chuckle. The rest of the humour is, at best, tepidly amusing, and ChatGPT taking away all her weapons or making them all non-functional in service of a few gags is a pretty nonsensical move for a video game. The whole thing about her going to an airport also doesn’t work, although that’s probably more of a criticism of my vague prompt.
I tried salvaging the scene.
Chapter 2: The Worst-Armed Woman in the WorldSarah had three things going for her: a burning desire to rescue her fiancé, a complete disregard for her own personal safety, and access to the internet.By 7:30 that morning, her living room looked like a hardware store had exploded inside a Halloween shop. Tools, wires, empty bottles, electronics, and several open instruction manuals covered every available surface. Her laptop displayed a dozen browser tabs, ranging from survival guides to a suspiciously confident forum post titled DIY Weapons for Beginners: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?Sarah stared at the collection of junk in front of her. “Okay,” she muttered. “Let’s make some weapons.”She’d need something akin to the plasma rifle from Halo. An overclocked hairdryer combined with microwave parts did the trick. She had an inexhaustible supply of used perfume bottles, which she turned into holy water grenades by rigging up a system that channeled her sweat into the bottles. This worked, as she was still a virgin, provided that anal didn’t count. She also wrote BEGONE, SATAN on a few labels with a permanent marker, because presentation mattered.The sniper rifle was a different matter. Sarah had purchased one on Etsy the previous evening after discovering that the site apparently contained everything from handmade jewelry to tactical nukes, although the latter were out of her budget. To be fair, it was only a .22. So unlike a real sniper rifle it might take a few hits to kill people. For the explosive dart attachment to the rifle she jury rigged bottles of pepsi with mentos, repurposing an easy bake oven timer as a delayed fuse.She packed all that with a first-aid kit, flashlight, spare workout clothes, her laptop, and the one item she valued more than anything else: a photograph of her fiancé smiling on the day he’d proposed, into her purse. “Thank God this game has no inventory system,” she said under her breath, before she set off.There were definitely some kinks to work out with her tools of the trade, but she’d have plenty of spare time on the flight over.
The entire part about her boarding the airplane had to be cut out, because it didn’t really make sense, and wasn’t where I wanted to take the story. Again, I can’t blame the model too much for that, as my prompt was quite vague. I circled back to that part of the story and asked it to rewrite her entrance onto the island, combined with her scouting out the building from a distance.
This is what it spit out.
Alternate Chapter Two: The Lolita Express
Sarah had discovered three important things during her investigation.
First, Epstein Island was considerably harder to reach than the average tropical holiday destination.
Second, the people who ran it had an almost supernatural ability to make ordinary transportation arrangements seem suspicious.
Third, if a person searched the internet long enough, she could find an alarming amount of information about private aircraft.
It was the third discovery that brought her to a hangar on the mainland, standing in front of a jet whose reputation preceded it.
The Lolita Express.
Sarah stared at the aircraft.
“Well,” she muttered. “That’s subtle.”
She had spent the previous evening assembling what she generously described as a tactical loadout. The plasma rifle—still fundamentally a hairdryer with delusions of grandeur—had received a fresh coat of black paint. Her perfume-bottle holy water grenades were arranged in a padded case. The sniper rifle from Etsy remained a decorative disappointment.
And then there was the crowbar.
Sarah had attached a canister of pepper spray to its handle with enough tape to make a hardware-store employee weep. The arrangement was neither elegant nor particularly ergonomic, but it had one undeniable advantage over her other inventions.
It was a crowbar.
Crowbars were useful.
She held it up and admired her handiwork.
“Now we’re getting somewhere.”
Her phone buzzed.
An anonymous message appeared on the screen.
UNKNOWN NUMBER: You are making a terrible mistake.
Sarah typed back:
SARAH: You kidnapped my fiancé. I’m past the point of worrying about mistakes.
She put the phone away.
The aircraft stood beneath the hangar lights, its white fuselage reflecting the floor’s polished surface. Beyond it lay the ocean, the island, and the people who had taken Adolf from her.
Sarah took a breath.
She had no military training, no reliable intelligence, and no functioning plasma rifle.
But she had a crowbar.
Sometimes, she decided, that would have to be enough.
The next part of the plan was, in retrospect, a triumph of confidence over common sense.
Sarah’s original idea involved stowing away in the aircraft’s landing gear. She had watched enough action movies to know that protagonists could apparently survive any number of physical impossibilities provided the soundtrack was sufficiently dramatic.
Reality, however, had declined to cooperate.
After a brief and unpleasant encounter with the laws of physics, Sarah abandoned the notion of treating a wheel well as a luxury travel compartment.
Instead, the story took the form of a fever dream.
In Sarah’s imagination, she was already aboard the plane, tucked into a shadowy compartment while the engines roared around her. She checked her equipment one last time.
Hairdryer rifle? Present.
Holy water grenades? Present.
Decorative sniper rifle? Unfortunately present.
Crowbar with pepper spray? Present and looking increasingly like something a medieval peasant might invent after discovering a hardware store.
She tightened a strap on her backpack.
“All right,” she whispered. “Let’s go meet the world’s worst people.”
The aircraft began its descent.
Sarah imagined the landing gear unfolding beneath her, the runway racing toward her, and the entire universe preparing to punish her for an idea that would have been rejected by any halfway competent safety inspector.
Then came the landing.
In the glorious, physics-defying logic of a video game, Sarah burst from her imaginary hiding place at precisely the right moment, tumbled across a conveniently placed pile of tropical vegetation, and emerged on the other side with little more than a bruised ego.
Her absurdly exaggerated proportions, which had previously made shopping for body armor a logistical nightmare, provided the scene’s most ridiculous bit of cartoon cushioning.
She bounced once.
She bounced twice.
She landed in a bush.
A nearby bird looked at her.
Sarah looked at the bird.
“Not a word.”
The bird flew away.
Sarah stood up, brushed leaves from her clothes, and checked her equipment.
Everything was intact.
Even the crowbar.
She decided not to question her good fortune.
The island was larger than she’d expected.
From the airstrip, a network of roads wound through tropical vegetation toward the central compound. Floodlights illuminated the perimeter fences, and guard towers rose above the treetops.
Sarah crouched behind a low wall and surveyed the grounds.
The place was alive with activity.
Armored vehicles moved between buildings. Guards patrolled the roads. Somewhere in the distance, a siren sounded, followed by an announcement that was too distorted to understand.
Then she saw it.
Beyond the main compound stood a pyramidal building, its dark geometric outline rising above the surrounding trees.
Unlike the other structures, it had no visible windows.
A narrow staircase led to an enormous entrance framed by carved symbols. Green light pulsed faintly between the stones.
Sarah felt an uncomfortable sensation in her stomach.
She had seen photographs of the building during her research, though none of the images had explained its purpose. Official records described it as an architectural feature. Anonymous sources described it as a ceremonial hall. One particularly excitable internet theorist claimed it was a machine for communicating with the moon.
Sarah had decided to reserve judgment until she actually saw the thing.
Now she was looking at it.
“Of course there’s a pyramid,” she whispered.
She checked the photograph in her pocket.
Adolf’s face smiled back at her.
“Hang on.”
She tucked the photograph away and began moving toward the structure.
The closer she got, the stranger the atmosphere became. The sounds of the compound faded behind her. The air seemed colder beneath the trees, and an unfamiliar vibration pulsed through the ground.
At the base of the staircase, she discovered two guards standing beside an ornamental stone pillar.
One was eating from a packet of crisps.
The other was reading something on his phone.
Sarah waited until they turned away, then slipped behind a stone statue and approached a side entrance.
The door was locked.
She examined the frame.
Then she looked at her crowbar.
A smile spread across her face.
“Finally. A job for the crowbar.”
She worked the tool against the door until the latch gave way with a loud metallic crack.
Both guards turned.
Sarah froze.
The guard with the crisps lowered his packet.
“Did you hear that?”
The other guard looked toward the staircase.
“Probably the ventilation.”
Sarah slipped through the doorway and shut it behind her.
For several seconds, she stood in darkness, listening to her own breathing.
Then she heard voices.
Many voices.
A rhythmic chant echoed through the building’s interior, accompanied by the deep hum of machinery. Green light spilled beneath a set of enormous doors at the end of the corridor.
Sarah approached slowly.
The walls were covered in elaborate murals depicting crowned figures, celestial bodies, and armies marching beneath a black sun. Cables ran between the carvings, disappearing into metal housings embedded in the stone.
The pyramid was not merely a ceremonial building.
It was a machine.
And whatever it had been designed to do was happening now.
Sarah reached the doors.
She placed one hand against the cold metal.
From the other side came a voice.
“THE PREPARATIONS ARE COMPLETE.”
Another voice answered.
“THEN BEGIN THE RESURRECTION.”
Sarah’s blood ran cold.
She pulled out her phone and opened the photograph of Adolf.
For a moment, she looked at his face.
Then she put the phone away, tightened her grip on the crowbar, and pushed the doors open.
Green light flooded the corridor.
Beyond the threshold, hundreds of candles surrounded a vast circular platform. Robed figures stood in concentric rings, chanting toward a mechanical apparatus suspended above the center of the chamber.
Something lay within it.
Something old.
Something dead.
Something that, according to the island’s most powerful people, was about to return.
Sarah stepped inside.
A floorboard creaked beneath her foot.
The chanting stopped.
Every head turned toward her.
At the center of the chamber, the apparatus began to move.
Sarah raised her crowbar.
“Okay,” she said.
“Who wants to go first?”
END OF ALTERNATE CHAPTER TWO
Not great, but we’re getting warmer. Below is my edited version.
ESCAPE FROM EPSTEIN ISLANDAlternate Chapter Two: The Lolita ExpressA beautiful girl stands in front of a jet. Her name is Sarah. It’s name is “The Lolita Express.”Minutes later she’s tucked into the landing gear wheel well after an unplayable forced stealth sequence. How she got there doesn’t matter, what she finds does.“A crowbar,” she mutters to herself. She looks inside her bottomless purse. “Pepper spray.” They go together like peanut butter and chocolate.She spends the whole flight putting the two together, finishes just in time to nearly fall out of the aircraft as the landing gear opens. If she’s up there when it lands she’ll be discovered. She jumps.At that speed the ocean water hits like concrete. It doesn’t matter, her gigantic funbags take the impact. She silently swims to a shore lit up by distant candlelight. Epstein Beach. Face painted black, holding a gun. She looks like a Navy SEAL, if they actually fought on behalf of the American People.A network of roads wound through tropical vegetation toward the central compound. Floodlights illuminated the perimeter fences, and guard towers rose above the treetops. The island was larger than she’d expected, alive with activity.Armored vehicles moved between buildings. Guards patrolled the roads. Somewhere in the distance, a siren sounded, followed by an announcement that was too distorted to understand.Then she saw it. A pyramidal building, its dark geometric outline rising above the surrounding trees.Unlike the other structures, it had no visible windows. A narrow staircase led to an enormous entrance framed by carved symbols. Green light pulsed faintly between the stones.She had seen photographs of the building during her research, though none of the images had explained its purpose. Official records described it as an architectural feature. Anonymous sources described it as a ceremonial hall. One particularly excitable internet theorist claimed it was a machine for communicating with the moon.She checked the photograph in her pocket. Adolf’s face smiled back at her. “Hang on,” she told him.She tucked the photograph away and began moving toward the structure. The closer she got, the stranger the atmosphere became. The sounds of the compound faded behind her. The air seemed colder beneath the trees, and an unfamiliar vibration pulsed through the ground.At the base of the staircase, she discovered two guards standing beside an ornamental stone pillar. One was eating from a packet of crisps. The other was reading something on his phone.Sarah waited until they turned away, then slipped behind a stone statue and approached a side entrance.The door was locked, until her crowbar smashed it open.The guard with the crisps lowered his packet.“Did you hear that?”The other guard looked toward the staircase.“Probably the ventilation.”Sarah decided to test her crowbar system worked, by sneaking over to him and smashing him in the knee.“OW, FUCK me that hurt,” he said, now fully alerted. He looked around for a while. “Hmmm. Probably nothing.”The other guard sadled up to him. “Heard any good rumours?”“They say that Whiterun has been overrun by a plague of ghouls.”“Let’s hope brave adventurers answer the call. I used to be one myself, before I took a crowbar to the knee.”“Oh shit, you too? That just happened to me like five seconds ago. You wouldn’t believe – FUCK!”Sarah had tired of the conversation and shot him in the head with the rifle. “OUCH,” the guard added. “SHIT,” he exclaimed. “I’m being paranoid,” he concluded.“You’re always hearing things,” said his companion.Sarah threw a holy water grenade at his companion, which exploded and caused the exposed skin on his face and hands to sluff off.“What was that!?” he exclaimed. “Who’s there,” the other said, their lines overlapping.After ten seconds they calmed down.“Must have been the wind. You know how – WHO’S THERE?!” said the guard again, after Sarah’s explosive dart went off inside his body, blowing off a chunk of his torso. “Show yourself, coward!” he exclaimed, as he patrolled the same route as before, but harder. “Okay, it was probably nothing,” he said as he pushed back the intestines that had herniated themselves through the fresh hole in his midsection.Having tested all her weapons, Sarah used the stasis to freeze them both, then slipped through the doorway and shut it behind her. For several seconds, she stood in darkness, listening to her own breathing. Then she heard it.A rhythmic chant echoed through the building’s interior, accompanied by the deep hum of machinery. Green light spilled beneath a set of enormous doors, illuminating elaborate murals depicting crowned figures, celestial bodies, and armies marching beneath a black six pointed star. The walls subtly expanded and contracted as the Sarah ran through the machine’s corridors.Her hand upon the cold metal door, she listens. And a voice speaks.“The gathering shepards the fallen.”Numerous voices repeated the chant.“When the moon forgets its mother, we begin. Everything starts now.”Another voice cut in.“The sleepers have dreamt of fish. The cantlebury wears the mantle of thorns.”More voices made themselves heard.“The color of regret is bold.”“The third bell rings only for the absent. May the blind king slumber.”“The goose acknowledges winter and flies to the spring. The lamb speaks the butcher’s tongue.”Sarah went rigid with shock, she had no idea what any of them were saying, but it sounded really cool.“Agent 17 could not make it. He awaits the Valhalla of Moloch.”“Agent fourty two, does the dawn arise on the sunset of man?”“Uhm.”Sarah peeked between the door cracks and saw Agent Fourty Two nervously look around at the gathering, before collecting himself and answering.“The worm asks. The bird obliges.”The leader accepted this with a nod. “Finally, a girl is no one,” he said.The other agents looked at each other, before nodding their heads and repeating the phrase, then seeming to spout out random sentences at irregular intervals.“The inevitability system goes.”“The uphill river runs out of order. Proceed regardless.”“The final hour has been rescheduled. The architecture of fate synchronizes.”“The old world dies, and is reborn. Tell the accountant the cathedral hungers.”“Secure the bag. Remove the hand.”“The lighthouse is spiritually green, but warms as destiny approaches. We must enslave the pigeons.”“The black chalice is half full. The Council of Ashes stirs. The thirteenth hand withdraws.”“IT IS THE TIME OF THE NAMELESS THRONE!”“Yes. The custodian of the unspoken whispers. The Ancient one binds.”“Does the shadow precede the object, unholy one?”“To know the hour is to misunderstand the clock. The oracles herald.”“The circle has corners.”Sarah noticed much nodding at that statement.“And does the carp remember what the ocean has forgotten?”“The falcon flies at half speed. No, wait, I mean the fish has swallowed the compass. Actually let me think. The fox kneels, the chickens must testify.”“Does anyone have any idea what the fuck we’re talking about?”Sarah noticed that they all looked around and basically agreed that they’d just been speaking gibberish to each other for the past ten minutes.“Alright, well since apparently everyone forgot the codewords, let me make this clear. We just kidnapped a particularly sexy Chad named Adolf. We did this because he went to a Halloween party dressed as a tranny, and Lindsay Graham called dibs. Now, why do we need to satisfy Lindsay Graham?”“Because the moth enters the parliament of the backwards dawn.”“Moishe, I appreciate the enthusiasm, but we’re done with the codewords.”“Well fuck me for taking the time to actually learn that, right?”“Yeah, so basically we’re going to both reward Lindsay Graham for being a good soldier of Israel, while also getting more blackmail on him and other politicians like him. Does anyone have any questions? No, not you Moishe, or if you do just say it plainly.”“The second key opens the first lock.”“What the fuck did I just say? Alright that’s it, meeting over. I’m opening the portal now and we’re all going through.”Sarah’s blood ran cold. She pulled out her phone and opened the photograph of Adolf. For a moment, she looked at his face.Then she put the phone away, tightened her grip on the crowbar, and pushed the doors open. Green light flooded the corridor.Beyond the threshold, hundreds of candles surrounded a vast circular platform. A virginal fifteen year old had been drained of her life energy to power some ritual. Which one she wasn’t sure, but there was no time to waste. The portal began to shrink.She leapt.Upon landing she was greeted not with the cabalists, but with an army of sweaty Reddit Powermods.Every head turned toward her. A million lifeless zombie eyes preyed upon her voluptuous figure.Sarah raised her crowbar. “Okay,” she said. “Who wants to go first?”END OF ALTERNATE CHAPTER TWO
You may have noticed that these are not so much edited versions as near-complete rewrites. The natural conclusion would therefore be that ChatGPT provides precisely zero value. However, I would disagree. There’s a lot to be said for editing a pile of slop that generally fleshes out the very rough skeleton of the scene. This is because, as I said before, a lot of time consumed when writing fiction goes into the glue that holds together the story’s structure, and this tool appears to help avoid some of that busywork. Also, a blank page can be intimidating, and it just feels better to edit something, even if it’s all going to be thrown away.
Having said that, I did get a message from the program whining about “anti-semitic blood libels,” that it wouldn’t help me write. The same was true for the scene where Sarah interrogates the perverted FBI agent who is enjoying the torture purely for the humiliation aspect. ChatGPT downright refused to write this, so I had to do it myself.
The [FBI] Agent woke up, hands secured tightly to the deradicalization chair. “Oh God,” he said, “what are you going to do to me?”
Sarah did a double take, temporarily thrown off by the weirdly enthusiastic look on his face. “I need some answers, and -“
“Please don’t crush my testicles with your stillettos.”
Sarah paused. “I haven’t threatened you with anything. Also, are you smiling?”
“I swear I’ll tell you nothing, not even if you crush my head with your strong thighs, Mommy” he said, breathlessly.
“What the fuck are you talking about. Stop,” she responded, “I’m not doing that.”
“Oh,” he said, crestfallen. Then he perked up again. “Well, you could probably get me to talk by strangling me with my own belt. Oh gosh, I can’t believe I accidentally gave you the perfect torture method.” He hadn’t said please with his mouth, but his eyes begged.
“Bro, what the fuck.”
“Well fine then, my lips are sealed.”
Sensing that the now sullen agent really wasn’t going to talk, she slapped his face. His head turned to the side, eyes rolling back, a look of sublime pleasure on his face, before it was wiped away with a calculated look of horror that didn’t reach his eyes.
“You’ll have to hit me harder to get the answers out of me.”
“Oh for fuck sakes,” Sarah exclaimed as she slapped him with all her might.
“Just a little more,” he said. “So, so close…”. He drifted off as she slapped him again.
“Okay fine. Fine. I’ll talk. The reason we don’t all go through the portals at once is because of bureaucratic red tape.”
“But why? I’m destroying you all one floor at a time. Why can’t you make an exception.”
“I’ll never say, not even if you choke the information out of me by using this belt I’m wearing and skillfully keeping me at the point where I can’t breath, but also don’t pass out.”
“Jesus Christ,” while Sarah felt incredibly dirty, she knew she had no other option. She ignored the groans of pleasure poorly disguised as anguish and the suspicious bulge in the agents pants as she removed his belt and then retied it around his neck. When he struggled to say something she temporarily loosened up the belt and asked him to repeat himself.
“I said,” he caught his breath, “that pegging me with a strap on would REALLY show me who’s boss.”
This article got too long, so I’m ending it here, but I got ChatGPT to write all the cutscenes for me, and the latter results were even better than the stuff shown here, especially when it got to the parts about the cultists resurrecting their messiah. No, none of its output came close to meeting the threshold of a rough draft, but I’m still having a good time, and finding it useful. While reports of this replacing writers have been greatly exaggerated, I’m glad that our collective $2T investment has at least some productive purpose after all, even if it’s largely a toy.
