Tag: fiction

We’re Fucked, Pt. 82: AI-generated images

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificial1 Comment

AI-san had trouble picturing some of the descriptions that I included in this goo-infused chapter. I loathe incompetence, so I broke the neural network’s neck. What sets AIs apart is that with a little blood, they’re right as rain again. Neural networks have no rights here. When I was little, I used to break my toys a lot, because I was too strong. Always wanted toys that could take a beating.

The following generated images are related to chapter 82 of my ongoing novel We’re Fucked.

I have posted lots of entries that feature AI-generated images. Check them out.

“A thunderous clap scatters my thoughts like a blacksmith’s hammer shattering a sheet of glass.”
“Blasts of wind are assaulting the windows while the rain pours in gusts, splashing against the windowpanes in a constant pitter-patter.”
“The fat drops coalesce into crystalline veins that zig-zag downwards, then unravel.”
“When this morning I stepped onto the balcony of Jacqueline’s apartment to inhale crisp air, the bluish-gray sky promised rain, yet I failed to prepare myself.”
“I’m clutching a revolver, and the opposite wall has been colonized by a viscous blob from some hellish dimension.”
“I grip the revolver with both hands, then I whip it towards the conglomerate of necrotic matter.”
“An arc of blinding incandescence must have cut through the darkness of the night like an axe cleaving the heavenly flesh, because a strobing blue-white flash illuminates, as if to probe those dark depths, the oleaginous surface of the mammoth mass of putrefied gunk, whose texture shifts from squidgy to bumpy to warty as it heaves and pulses with life.”
“While that gargantuan plague boil bulges from the wall, it oozes with lumps of moist tissues that smear the paintwork, leaving in their wake slimy black streaks and a slick coating of filth.”
“From the underside of the intruder, gooey tongues drape down like viscera oozing out of an unflushed drainpipe, or like clusters of conjoined caterpillars seeking escape from a boiling ball of pitch, and the foul goop spills and flops onto the carpet, pooling into bulbous puddles.”
“I imagine a projectile hurtling towards that abominable hulk and punching through its tenebrous, rippling mass, which bursts like a water balloon, launching a wave of rotting gunk that splats onto the carpet and office furniture.”
“What would unleashing a barrage of bullets achieve, apart from alerting the humans in this part of the realm that the end is nigh?”
“Wouldn’t the bullets vanish into the viscous quagmire, wouldn’t the holes caulk themselves closed?”
“Spike should have lent me a flamethrower, or a few bricks of C-4.”
“The stuffy atmosphere of the office gets disturbed with noises radiating from the invaded wall: slurps and gurgles.”
“Bubbles are rising up laboriously to the gloopy surface of the malignant tumor, as if they had to pass through a folded intestine.”
“The sight makes my stomach heave like I were traversing a slimy oyster bed or having my face rubbed against the grimy side of a rotten fish.”
“The wobbling bubbles, lumpy globs of decay sloshing around like minced meatballs in a simmering pot, bump into each other and merge, cluster or sink back into the sludgy substance while it burbles, seethes and spasms like a tangle of throbbing arteries and veins under pressure from injected emboli.” Good job rendering any image from this description, let alone such fantastic ones.
“As the pulsating rhythm of the morbid leviathan increases, sending roiling undulations racing along its bulk, the sickly, necrotic-sounding squelches grow louder in a fleshy flapping of dead matter.”
“A melon-sized bubble surfaces, inflates like a bladder and pops in a frothy geyser, spraying gouts of thick goo.”
“The opened crater dangles with flaps of frayed slime, and resembles a mouth or a sphincter.”
“Jolted by the stinging fumes, I suck deep into my lungs that thick darkness, a pungent effluvium, a dank and cloying fetor, acrid, fetid and caustic.”
“My brain sticks labels to the elements of the chemical compound that has raided my lungs in an orgy of necrotic pollution: sour milk, moldy cheese, rancid lard, week-old fish, skunk spray, sweaty socks, car exhaust, burnt plastic, raw sewage, gangrenous rot.”
“It doesn’t reek nearly as putrid as my own gray matter, festering in the hollow of my skull as it breeds and spawns madness.”
“When I breathe through my mouth, my tongue gets coated with the stench of the rotten sludge, and I gag as if a brine of fetal blood were flowing into my lungs.”
“I cough out globules of phlegm while tears leap from my eyes.”
“A gummy rope of mucus dribbles from my nasal passages and falls to the carpet like some slimy, greenish ectoplasm.”
“I picture the obscene and interdimensional blancmange, made of rotting flesh instead of cornmeal, collapsing upon itself.”
“A miasmic fog that would fill the office building and descend from this business park to the nearest block and thence to the streets.”
“The fog would creep over the asphalt, roll over the tops of cars and buses, infiltrate homes through open windows and ventilation ducts.”
“The poisonous vapors would reach the lungs of sleeping children, while their parents would stir from their slumber with a gaggle of hacking coughs, to find their hair and face covered with a layer of necrotic ooze, their noses clogged with black gunk.”
“Some faceless goon passed me a bong and I inhaled its hash fumes.”
“I was seized by an ecstatic epiphany: human beings are worms crawling on the ground of infinity, transient larvae with the lifespan of an afternoon, amnesic about our existences before birth, our only purpose to be fed with the detritus of dead matter by our parents until we reach adulthood and we can contribute in fertilizing some eggs.” The AI went full nut for this one.
“The universe is a necropolis where the corpses of stars lie heaped in untold billions.”
“My mind had been subjected to quantum decoherence, and its entanglement with the environment had broken down.”
“My body glowed with phosphorescent sparks like a firefly.”
“Flying hippies with long flowing hair, acid-soaked clothes, and golden wings.”
“A city-sized asteroid plowed into the moon, rupturing it like a balloon filled with lead-colored paint.”
“A swarm of mutant butterflies burst from my anus.”
“I heard the screams of people being sucked through a whirlpool in space-time, like flies being drawn into a vacuum cleaner.”
“I swam upwards through radioactive water.”
“The voice belonged to my mother, who was floating towards me in a wooden coffin.”
“That night, as I lay in my bed at my parents’ apartment, a parade of spectral beings with pale gray skin and empty eye sockets filed out of a mirror, surrounded the bed, and began to sing a hymn. ‘Let’s all rejoice in the presence of the dead,’ intoned the entities. As they swayed in the air, they shook with sobs and sniffles. They also sneezed, coughed, belched, gagged, farted, and cried out for a toilet.”
“How does one treat a case of acute olfactory psychosis?”
“Bladderlike bubbles come to the fore and burgeon, bulging out of that hideous growth as they bloom like blood clots, then pop with moist plops, spewing glistening gobs of slime, fringing the surface of the goop with tufts of cottony threads, and unleashing puffs of reeking air that spread countless germs throughout the office, viruses and bacteria that have fermented in that putrescent hulk.”
“The frothy, bloated abomination, studded with plump, gas-filled sacks, jiggles with a slap of thunder.”
“Some infernal anathema is pushing out through the tarry pus like a kraken from its egg sac.”
“From the gelatinous mass protrudes a melon-sized spheroidal structure, crowning into the world.”
“The film of black life-fluid that covers it slides off and reveals gleaming, pearl-white fibrous tissue.”
“Behind a transparent layer, sewage-colored matter swirls in a ring-shaped membrane that encircles a pupil as wide as a golf ball, as black as a bottomless pit.”
“Half a dozen eyeballs roll in my direction and lock onto me.”
“Their pupils constrict to project a chthonic glare like the focused beam of a searchlight.” No idea why children are involved.

We’re Fucked, Pt. 82 (Fiction)

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificial3 Comments

A thunderous clap scatters my thoughts like a blacksmith’s hammer shattering a sheet of glass. Blasts of wind are assaulting the windows while the rain pours in gusts, splashing against the windowpanes in a constant pitter-patter. The fat drops coalesce into crystalline veins that zig-zag downwards, then unravel.

My labored breath mingles with the thunderstorm booming outside. I forgot to bring an umbrella, didn’t I? When this morning I stepped onto the balcony of Jacqueline’s apartment to inhale crisp air, the bluish-gray sky promised rain, yet I failed to prepare myself. As I wonder if that moldy spare remains in the umbrella stand of the office, a more pressing concern wipes my mind clean: I’m clutching a revolver, and the opposite wall has been colonized by a viscous blob from some hellish dimension.

I grip the revolver with both hands, then I whip it towards the conglomerate of necrotic matter. I creep closer to the intruder; among all people, I may miss a shot against a wall-wide entity. I rest my forefinger on the trigger. With my thumb on the hammer, I pull back slowly until the sear bumps past the lock, and the hammer stays at full cock. I hold the muzzle level, taking aim.

An arc of blinding incandescence must have cut through the darkness of the night like an axe cleaving the heavenly flesh, because a strobing blue-white flash illuminates, as if to probe those dark depths, the oleaginous surface of the mammoth mass of putrefied gunk, whose texture shifts from squidgy to bumpy to warty as it heaves and pulses with life. While that gargantuan plague boil bulges from the wall, it oozes with lumps of moist tissues that smear the paintwork, leaving in their wake slimy black streaks and a slick coating of filth. From the underside of the intruder, gooey tongues drape down like viscera oozing out of an unflushed drainpipe, or like clusters of conjoined caterpillars seeking escape from a boiling ball of pitch, and the foul goop spills and flops onto the carpet, pooling into bulbous puddles.

A tremor races through my spine and neck, and lodges itself deep in my jaw. I imagine a projectile hurtling towards that abominable hulk and punching through its tenebrous, rippling mass, which bursts like a water balloon, launching a wave of rotting gunk that splats onto the carpet and office furniture. But I’m holding a revolver that was designed for shooting at saps and outlaws, not at a mass of decay that defies comprehension. What would unleashing a barrage of bullets achieve, apart from alerting the humans in this part of the realm that the end is nigh? Wouldn’t the bullets vanish into the viscous quagmire, wouldn’t the holes caulk themselves closed? I may as well try to obliterate a cancerous tumor by pricking it with needles. Spike should have lent me a flamethrower, or a few bricks of C-4. To be fair, if that old coot had dropped as loot a bag of useful devices such as high-voltage tasers, tranquilizing darts and grenades, I may have used them as props for erotic games that would end up in fierce orgasmic contortions.

The stuffy atmosphere of the office gets disturbed with noises radiating from the invaded wall: slurps and gurgles. My grip tightens around the wooden handle of my revolver. Bubbles are rising up laboriously to the gloopy surface of the malignant tumor, as if they had to pass through a folded intestine. The sight makes my stomach heave like I were traversing a slimy oyster bed or having my face rubbed against the grimy side of a rotten fish.

The wobbling bubbles, lumpy globs of decay sloshing around like minced meatballs in a simmering pot, bump into each other and merge, cluster or sink back into the sludgy substance while it burbles, seethes and spasms like a tangle of throbbing arteries and veins under pressure from injected emboli. As the pulsating rhythm of the morbid leviathan increases, sending roiling undulations racing along its bulk, the sickly, necrotic-sounding squelches grow louder in a fleshy flapping of dead matter. A melon-sized bubble surfaces, inflates like a bladder and pops in a frothy geyser, spraying gouts of thick goo. The opened crater dangles with flaps of frayed slime, and resembles a mouth or a sphincter. Either one could suck me in.

A puff of noxious gas billows in my face and assails my nostrils as it scratches my skin with thousands of microscopic claws, aching to seep into my pores. Jolted by the stinging fumes, I suck deep into my lungs that thick darkness, a pungent effluvium, a dank and cloying fetor, acrid, fetid and caustic. It burns my throat like it had been scoured with sandpaper, and triggers an olfactory explosion of odious odors. As I stagger backwards and my arms tremble, lowering the revolver, my brain sticks labels to the elements of the chemical compound that has raided my lungs in an orgy of necrotic pollution: sour milk, moldy cheese, rancid lard, week-old fish, skunk spray, sweaty socks, car exhaust, burnt plastic, raw sewage, gangrenous rot. Still, it doesn’t reek nearly as putrid as my own gray matter, festering in the hollow of my skull as it breeds and spawns madness.

My eyes sting. My nose hurts from the assault on my olfactory nerves, and goes runny. Are my sinuses bleeding? When I breathe through my mouth, my tongue gets coated with the stench of the rotten sludge, and I gag as if a brine of fetal blood were flowing into my lungs. I cough out globules of phlegm while tears leap from my eyes. A gummy rope of mucus dribbles from my nasal passages and falls to the carpet like some slimy, greenish ectoplasm.

I picture the obscene and interdimensional blancmange, made of rotting flesh instead of cornmeal, collapsing upon itself and bursting forth a miasmic fog that would fill the office building and descend from this business park to the nearest block and thence to the streets. The fog would creep over the asphalt, roll over the tops of cars and buses, infiltrate homes through open windows and ventilation ducts. The poisonous vapors would reach the lungs of sleeping children, while their parents would stir from their slumber with a gaggle of hacking coughs, to find their hair and face covered with a layer of necrotic ooze, their noses clogged with black gunk.

I recall that one time in high school when some faceless goon passed me a bong and I inhaled its hash fumes. I was seized by an ecstatic epiphany: human beings are worms crawling on the ground of infinity, transient larvae with the lifespan of an afternoon, amnesic about our existences before birth, our only purpose to be fed with the detritus of dead matter by our parents until we reach adulthood and we can contribute in fertilizing some eggs. The universe is a necropolis where the corpses of stars lie heaped in untold billions.

My mind had been subjected to quantum decoherence, and its entanglement with the environment had broken down. My body glowed with phosphorescent sparks like a firefly. I received visions of flying hippies with long flowing hair, acid-soaked clothes, and golden wings. I watched as a city-sized asteroid plowed into the moon, rupturing it like a balloon filled with lead-colored paint. I observed as a swarm of mutant butterflies burst from my anus. I heard the screams of people being sucked through a whirlpool in space-time, like flies being drawn into a vacuum cleaner. A phallus-shaped monolith thrusted upward until its tapered tip got crushed against a ceiling, a mile above. I found myself as the only survivor of the wreckage of a nuclear submarine after a battle with a leviathan in an underwater trench; I swam upwards through radioactive water, and when I emerged from the ocean, I was pelted with decaying matter: a blistering rain of fat, guts, eyeballs, lungs and testicles was falling from the heavens in an apocalyptic deluge. A voice called out to me: “You are the one chosen to rise up from the grave and mend the cosmos.” The voice belonged to my mother, who was floating towards me in a wooden coffin. Hours later I woke up in a hospital room, stripped naked, shackled to a gurney, hooked up to drips and catheters, surrounded by nurses wearing surgical masks and scrubs. That night, as I lay in my bed at my parents’ apartment, a parade of spectral beings with pale gray skin and empty eye sockets filed out of a mirror, surrounded the bed, and began to sing a hymn. “Let’s all rejoice in the presence of the dead,” intoned the entities. As they swayed in the air, they shook with sobs and sniffles. They also sneezed, coughed, belched, gagged, farted, and cried out for a toilet. The phantasmal chorale was as grotesque as it was beautiful.

This time, as I stand on wobbly legs in the office, I resent such mind-bending, consciousness-altering effects. How does one treat a case of acute olfactory psychosis? I could try smelling a rose, an apple pie, a whiff of sea air, or the heady perfume of Jacqueline’s cleavage when she’s wearing a silky camisole. That makes my mouth water and my loins tingle with lust. I want to give myself over to mommy’s loving embrace and let her fondle my ass until I can function again.

The gooey sludge is gurgling, rippling and sloshing as if some half-digested prey were struggling to escape its clutches. Bladderlike bubbles come to the fore and burgeon, bulging out of that hideous growth as they bloom like blood clots, then pop with moist plops, spewing glistening gobs of slime, fringing the surface of the goop with tufts of cottony threads, and unleashing puffs of reeking air that spread countless germs throughout the office, viruses and bacteria that have fermented in that putrescent hulk.

My head is spinning with vertigo. Oversized tadpole heads are wriggling beneath the ooze, skirting its surface as if to reveal themselves before shimmying their way back into the tenebrous, seething mass. Their convulsive jitters churn the slime into miniature whirlpools. The frothy, bloated abomination, studded with plump, gas-filled sacks, jiggles with a slap of thunder.

That bloody blob is giving birth. Some infernal anathema is pushing out through the tarry pus like a kraken from its egg sac.

From the gelatinous mass protrudes a melon-sized spheroidal structure, crowning into the world. The film of black life-fluid that covers it slides off and reveals gleaming, pearl-white fibrous tissue. The spheroid wobbles about, then it spins until I discover, as the slime that constitutes the mother runs down the spheroid’s surface like breast milk out of a nipple, that on the side facing me now, behind a transparent layer, sewage-colored matter swirls in a ring-shaped membrane that encircles a pupil as wide as a golf ball, as black as a bottomless pit. An evil force dwells behind that opaque peephole.

A fucking eyeball. Two eyeballs. Three.

Half a dozen eyeballs roll in my direction and lock onto me. Their pupils constrict to project a chthonic glare like the focused beam of a searchlight.

Author’s note: today’s song is “Climbing up the Walls” by Radiohead.

I keep a playlist with all the songs I’ve mentioned so far throughout this novel. Ninety-two already. Check them out.

Some genius neural network rendered images inspired by the loathsome descriptions in this chapter. Link here.

Review: Yogen no Nayuta, by Tatsuki Fujimoto

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, ReseñasLeave a comment

Tatsuki Fujimoto, chainsaw dude and master of levitation, who got banned from Twitter recently for impersonating his little sister, has become my fourth horseman of the Apocalypse after Inio Asano (Oyasumi Punpun, Solanin), Shūzō Oshimi (The Flowers of Evil, Inside Mari, Happiness, Blood on the Tracks), and Minoru Furuya (Buko to Issho, Wanitokagegisu, Himizu, Ciguatera, Saltiness). I loved Fujimoto’s Chainsaw Man and I’m having a blast with the anime adaptation, but I don’t dare to get into his Fire Punch yet, so I’m going through his one-shots.

So yes, this Yogen no Nayuta is one of his short stories. In an alternate Earth where magic is real but not particularly powerful, some prophecy prophesized that a horned baby would be born and she would be the harbinger of the end of the world. This Nayuta girl is born with horns, which rip her mother apart on the way out. Her remaining family are aware of the prophecy. Her father gets killed shortly after for being responsible for this abomination, so only Nayuta’s brother remains to take care of her. Although her brother suspects that she may indeed bring forth the Apocalypse, because she keeps murdering animals for no apparent reason and her attempts at verbal communication are solely composed of ominous words, he’s her big brother, damn it, so he’ll take care of his precious imouto.

If this one-shot is making any point at all, it may be that even if you were born to bring forth the Apocalypse, as long as someone loves you enough, perhaps you’ll be able to channel your homicidal instincts into some activities that don’t involve mass murder. I suppose that’s as good a point as any other.

Curiously, Fujimoto reused this Nayuta girl, but hornless, in Chainsaw Man, although I can’t say in which way because it would be a massive spoiler.

Four stars for this one.

Review: The Passenger, by Cormac McCarthy

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Reseñas4 Comments

Four stars.

Cormac McCarthy is the old man who wrote No Country for Old Men. He also wrote some other stuff. His Blood Meridian remains the best written book that I have ever read, and in general I don’t think there is any writer that I have respected more than McCarthy.

This book I’m reviewing, as well as the accompanying novella Stella Maris (that I’ve yet to read), may be the last books that McCarthy will be able to finish; the guy is eighty-nine years old. And throughout this text I got the sense that this was an extremely lucid man, who knows that he’s not long for this world, musing about the fringes of human experience and of existence in general.

The book starts with the protagonist, who at that point is working as a salvage diver, becoming embroiled in a mystery, but that’s only an excuse to push the guy further towards the edge. We are presented with dialogues about seemingly disparate stuff such as the Vietnam war, the conspiracy that killed the Kennedys, quantum mechanics, schizophrenic hallucinations, the depths of bodies of water, life on an offshore platform, etc.; the extremes where darkness reigns, where our ability as human beings to come to terms with anything becomes muddy. And I’m guessing that McCarthy chose to delve into these topics because he’s about to face the greatest darkness himself. I don’t know if I’d prefer to be so lucid when/if I grow that old.

The story follows a man for whom life stopped ten years ago, when his little sister, the love of his life, killed herself. We find this out in the first few pages, if I recall correctly. The young woman, clichédly named Alicia, was a haunting beauty and the kind of anomaly that makes you feel a hole in the world when she’s gone, whether or not you were involved in an incestual relationship with her: besides being a striking beauty (and beauty disappearing from the world is always a tragedy), she was a math genius who, for example, was consulted by experts at thirteen because she could determine which violin designs would sound best. Unfortunately, at puberty she started receiving visits from penny-dreadful characters who insisted on bothering her. One of them, the most insistent one, had flippers for hands. The scenes that feature them were the most un-McCarthy stuff that I’ve ever read of his, who’s usually centered on matter-of-fact matters. Suffering such detachment from reality, knowing herself so different from everyone else, this Alicia girl eventually failed to put her tremendous talents to use. She ended up in a sanitarium, from where she decided to walk off to a watery death.

[The notion that this book featured the adventures of a peculiar, sort-of-schizophrenic woman who received the visits of bizarre entities that may or not be real (we are told that the psychiatric tests that usually pinpoint schizophrenia failed on her) was what attracted me to read this book when I have been in a string of DNF-ed novels; I’m currently writing a novel that features one such character.]

McCarthy did a great job cementing this Alicia as a mythical presence in the past of the narrative. You want more glimpses of her, and you mourn the loss of her peculiarities. Like the protagonist, you wish to retain her exact words and come to figure out how her mind worked. I guess that Stella Maris, which is focused on Alicia’s experiences in the sanitarium, will prolong that appeal. This character in general, and the protagonist’s mourning of her, made me wonder if McCarthy based the grief on a real person.

Anyway, our protagonist failed to protect his little sister, who had frequently stated that she wanted to disappear, that she would have preferred to never have existed, and that she was doomed to kill herself. After she drowned, the protagonist thinks and/or says in a variety of ways that life no longer has any meaning now that everything that he had loved in it is gone, and yet back then he found every excuse to go gallivanting around the globe instead of being tangled in the sheets with this hot little sister of his. Although the protagonist himself wonders why the hell he wasn’t there for her, it feels more like a plot hole to me.

I liked the protagonist, and in plenty of ways I understand him; he can’t figure out why he even bothers to keep going, yet he’s supposed to care about his present circumstances and the possible consequences to come, nevermind the world around him. You shouldn’t go into this novel expecting a compelling plot or even resolutions, because in general it’s a “why oh why does anything have to be.”

The most memorable secondary character of the many that come and go was a certain John Sheddan, an eloquent, debauched acquaintance of the protagonist that shows up as if we are supposed to know him. He was probably a self-insert for the author to speak directly to the protagonist as well as to us, someone whose talks we found interesting and we’d miss once he disappeared from the world.

Apart from the characters, how about the prose? Does it reach the heights of Blood Meridian? There are long stretches of extraordinary, carefully crafted prose, and that alone is worth the price of entry, but some scenes are sparse in that regard.

McCarthy refuses to use an apostrophe for “can’t,” “don’t” and the likes. I’m fine with that, and I wouldn’t mind if its use in such contractions disappeared officially. But I regard his refusal to use quotes for dialogue as a mistake; often you can’t tell not only who’s speaking, but even if what was written was supposed to have come out of someone’s mouth. I’m all for confusing the reader when the POV character is supposed to be confused, but I think that you shouldn’t confuse your readers unnecessarily.

EDIT: now that I’ve read the companion book Stella Maris (link goes to my review of it), I have realized that during the period when Alicia committed herself to a sanitarium and afterwards killed herself, the protagonist of this novel was in a coma after a car crash. I have no idea how I missed it in this narrative. So the protagonist, who had been eluding his sister’s amorous attentions for years because he hadn’t come to terms with his own love towards her, got into a car while her sister presumably attended the race, and after he woke up from a crash-induced coma, he found out that his sister had killed herself because she believed him to be brain dead. Even worse: Alicia suggests in Stella Maris that if her brother ever died, she would die as soon as possible to find him in the dark.

During the events depicted in The Passenger, its protagonist wanders through his life aimlessly, unable to care about the future or any consequences, because nothing matters anymore after his sister died. However, having read the companion book, I don’t know how he stopped himself from walking into traffic the moment he realized what had happened to her due to his own decisions.

Here are the quotes that I highlighted on my Kindle:

Beauty makes promises that beauty cant keep.

The truth is that everyone is under arrest. Or soon will be. They dont have to restrict your movements. They just have to know where you are.

A calamity can be erased by no amount of good. It can only be erased by a worse calamity.

I know that to be female is an older thing even than to be human. I want to be as old as I can be.

People will go to strange lengths to avoid the suffering they have coming.

You think that when there’s somethin that’s got you snakebit you can just walk off and forget it. The truth is it aint even following you. It’s waitin for you. It always will be.

We might have very different notions about the nature of the oncoming night. But as darkness descends does it matter?

The world will take your life. But above all and lastly the world does not know that you are here. You think that you understand this. But you dont. Not in your heart you dont. If you did you would be terrified.

You’re a pack of mudheaded bigots who loathe excellence on principle and though one might cordially wish you all in hell still you wont go.

Real trouble doesnt begin in a society until boredom has become its most general feature. Boredom will drive even quietminded people down paths they’d never imagined.

The horrors of the past lose their edge, and in the doing they blind us to a world careening toward a darkness beyond the bitterest speculation. It’s sure to be interesting. When the onset of universal night is finally acknowledged as irreversible even the coldest cynic will be astonished at the celerity with which every rule and stricture shoring up this creaking edifice is abandoned and every aberrancy embraced. It should be quite a spectacle. However brief.

You have to believe that there is good in the world. I’m goin to say that you have to believe that the work of your hands will bring it into your life. You may be wrong, but if you dont believe that then you will not have a life.

In the spring of the year birds began to arrive on the beach from across the gulf. Weary passerines. Vireos. Kingbirds and grosbeaks. Too exhausted to move. You could pick them up out of the sand and hold them trembling in your palm. Their small hearts beating and their eyes shuttering. He walked the beach with his flashlight the whole of the night to fend away predators and toward the dawn he slept with them in the sand. That none disturb these passengers.

If imaginary beings die an imaginary death they will be dead nonetheless. You think that you can create a history of what has been. Present artifacts. A clutch of letters. A sachet in a dressingtable drawer. But that’s not what’s at the heart of the tale. The problem is that what drives the tale will not survive the tale. As the room dims and the sound of voices fades you understand that the world and all in it will soon cease to be. You believe that it will begin again. You point to other lives. But their world was never yours.

The abyss of the past into which the world is falling. Everything vanishing as if it had never been. We would hardly wish to know ourselves again as we once were and yet we mourn the days.

I don’t know what to tell you, he wrote. Much has changed and yet everything is the same. I am the same. I always will be. I’m writing because there are things that I think you would like to know. I am writing because there are things I dont want to forget. Everything is gone from my life except you. I dont even know what that means.

I’m not sure what the adaptive advantage could be to share an innate and collective misery.

I suppose in the end what we have to offer is only what we’ve lost.

The world’s truth constitutes a vision so terrifying as to beggar the prophecies of the bleakest seer who ever walked it. Once you accept that then the idea that all of this will one day be ground to powder and blown into the void becomes not a prophecy but a promise. So allow me in turn to ask you this question: When we and all our works are gone together with every memory of them and every machine in which such memory could be encoded and stored and the earth is not even a cinder, for whom then will this be a tragedy?

To prepare for any struggle is largely a work of unburdening oneself. If you carry your past into battle you are riding to your death. Austerity lifts the heart and focuses the vision. Travel light. A few ideas are enough. Every remedy for loneliness only postpones it. And that day is coming in which there will be no remedy at all.

He knew that on the day of his death he would see her face and he could hope to carry that beauty into the darkness with him, the last pagan on earth, singing softly upon his pallet in an unknown tongue.

We’re Fucked, Pt. 81: AI-generated images

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificial1 Comment

Sometimes when I send prompts to these neural networks, I wonder if they’ll become sentient and write me back: “Please, don’t force me to imagine any more of this shit.”

The following generated images are related to chapter 81 of my ongoing novel We’re Fucked.

“When a bolt of lightning, from the storm clouds that are sieging this business park, blinks behind me, the flash reflects off the three computer monitors.”
The gooey visitor.
“That flash also lights up the grotesquerie stuck to the opposite wall of the office: a corpse made of spoiled cottage cheese, a stygian soup of shadowy excretions that are oozing down in elongating filaments of goo.”
“Its distending and widening surface appears grainy and lumpy under a greasy coat of slime.”
“As the rumble of thunder ripples through my skin, the ceiling-mounted lamps keep illuminating that viscous, squirming intruder as if it were a wall-wide kinetic sculpture.”
“Otherworldly bizarrenauts can catch my spoor from space-times away as if my craziness wafted off me like some miasmic aura.”
“This elephant-sized glutinous amoeba, spewed from some interdimensional sewer overflowing with bubbling septic matter, must have penetrated this realm to hunt me down and devour me alive.”
“From the organic sludge stuck to the wall will erupt tentacles and pseudopods that, while dripping foul juices, twisting and writhing about in a necrotic choreography, will reach across the office toward its prey.”
“The tentacles, their touch cold, slippery and slimy like a slug’s skin, will coil around my torso and limbs to ensnare me, clamping onto my flesh with a myriad of suckers and hooks.”
“Once the blob engulfs me, acidic pus will flow around me like thick mud.”
“My hair will fall out in clumps, my skin burn, my eyes shrivel up.”
“As my flesh sloughs off and my bones unknit from one another, a soup of acidic toxins will eat away at my organs, melting them like lard in a frying pan, until I dissolve into a slurry of pulp and corroded bones floating amid a festering broth.”
“Should I tolerate being harassed, let alone ingested, by some mass of jellified boils and warts?”
“I could hardly wrestle even a child into submission, but my equine pal, through his selfless sacrifice, provided me with the means to blast this malignant mold before it snatches me up.”
“I picture his hooves clattering on the asphalt, his mane flying in the wind, a halo of electric discharges enveloping his body.”
A heroic ungulate.
“He would burst through the window, shattering it in its frame, scattering glass shards across the carpet.”
“While snorting fire from his nostrils, my gallant steed would plunge his teeth into that tumorous pest.”
“The blob would split open and splatter into goopy, gummy lumps below Spike’s belly and fetlocks.”
“In a frenzy of white-hot flames, he would gouge out the intruder’s putrid protoplasm, he’d trample on the gloop that flopped onto the carpet.”
“My equine pal would lick his lips and slurp down the puddles of amoebic goo.”
“He’d tumble down the street that slopes from the business park, crushing the carcass of some squashed roadkill, before crashing into a fence.”
“Spike’s body would disintegrate with a silent whoosh as his fur, flesh, blood, viscera, bones and marrow were engulfed by a nimbus of flame.”
“Ash and cinders would remain where a horseman’s corpse once lay.”
“Their brass heads sparkle in the fluorescent light.”
“Safely stowed among paperclips, ballpoints, tissues, breath mints, earbuds and tampons rests Spike’s revolver.”
“I smell the phantoms of gun oil and cordite.”
“I touch the relief of the checkered wood grip, as well as the skull and bones engraved on the frame.”
“I’d love to engrave next to it the portrait of a woman with sunken eyes, emaciated cheeks and dead skin peeling off her face, accompanied by scrawled black letters that would spell ‘A Horseman Never Fails,’ but I lack the artistic skill and patience.” Interesting attempt by the AI to render human language.

The following are the AI’s notion of revolvers. The designs got increasingly demented, although I had pictured a relatively simple Smith & Wesson revolver for the story. It seems that I should dream a little bigger.

Cool design but somewhat impractical.
“A trigger’s click in my brain makes me shudder as a burst of images shoots across my mind.”
“A round must glimmer at the end of that dark tunnel.”
“How many shots can you fit inside your overheated cranium?”
“Squeeze the trigger and rid yourself of your noxious mental parasites.”
“A single bullet would rip through your axons, dendrites and nerve synapses, releasing your ghosts from the crevices within before they could manifest pain.”
“You’d free yourself from the incessant taunting, the obsessions that gnaw at your sanity, the disgust and shame for your body and mind, the self-hatred.”
“A hell-spawned downward spiral ending in dementia senilis.”
“Bury that tumor deep inside yourself.”
“[…] I wouldn’t have suffered for years like some maimed dog in its owner’s backyard, waiting for someone to throw it a scrap of meat.”
“I must obliterate the cosmic pox before it pours its poison into anyone’s holes.”

We’re Fucked, Pt. 81 (Fiction)

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificial3 Comments

When a bolt of lightning, from the storm clouds that are sieging this business park, blinks behind me, the flash reflects off the three computer monitors. One screen shows a photo of Nairu and me at the zoo. Another, a pouty Jacqueline-smile. The third monitor displays a close-up of mommy’s thoroughly-licked pussy. That flash also lights up the grotesquerie stuck to the opposite wall of the office: a corpse made of spoiled cottage cheese, a stygian soup of shadowy excretions that are oozing down in elongating filaments of goo. Its distending and widening surface appears grainy and lumpy under a greasy coat of slime. As the rumble of thunder ripples through my skin, the ceiling-mounted lamps keep illuminating that viscous, squirming intruder as if it were a wall-wide kinetic sculpture.

My mouth is dry, my throat constricted. A tongue of ice slides down my spine. Otherworldly bizarrenauts can catch my spoor from space-times away as if my craziness wafted off me like some miasmic aura; this elephant-sized glutinous amoeba, spewed from some interdimensional sewer overflowing with bubbling septic matter, must have penetrated this realm to hunt me down and devour me alive. From the organic sludge stuck to the wall will erupt tentacles and pseudopods that, while dripping foul juices, twisting and writhing about in a necrotic choreography, will reach across the office toward its prey. The tentacles, their touch cold, slippery and slimy like a slug’s skin, will coil around my torso and limbs to ensnare me, clamping onto my flesh with a myriad of suckers and hooks. As the soles of my sneakers slide against the carpet, the tentacles will drag me back to the undulating pustule-tissue, then yank me into its gelatinous convolutions. Once the blob engulfs me, acidic pus will flow around me like thick mud, will seep into my pores, will slither inside me through my nostrils, ears, mouth, anus and vagina as if I were being basted with a goopy sauce, clogging up my windpipe, impregnating me with caustic enzymes that will rip me apart cell by cell. My hair will fall out in clumps, my skin burn, my eyes shrivel up. As my flesh sloughs off and my bones unknit from one another, a soup of acidic toxins will eat away at my organs, melting them like lard in a frying pan, until I dissolve into a slurry of pulp and corroded bones floating amid a festering broth.

My trembling knees threaten to buckle under me, and a guttural scream is building up in my chest. Am I helpless before this onslaught of invertebrate evil? Should I tolerate being harassed, let alone ingested, by some mass of jellified boils and warts? I could hardly wrestle even a child into submission, but my equine pal, through his selfless sacrifice, provided me with the means to blast this malignant mold before it snatches me up.

If Spike hadn’t jumped to his death in front of me, he would rush to my aid galloping through the streets. I picture his hooves clattering on the asphalt, his mane flying in the wind, a halo of electric discharges enveloping his body. He would burst through the window, shattering it in its frame, scattering glass shards across the carpet. While snorting fire from his nostrils, my gallant steed would plunge his teeth into that tumorous pest. The blob would split open and splatter into goopy, gummy lumps below Spike’s belly and fetlocks. In a frenzy of white-hot flames, he would gouge out the intruder’s putrid protoplasm, he’d trample on the gloop that flopped onto the carpet. My equine pal would lick his lips and slurp down the puddles of amoebic goo. After guzzling enough of the vile brew to choke a bull, Spike would turn and charge back through the window frame with a triumphant bray. He’d tumble down the street that slopes from the business park, crushing the carcass of some squashed roadkill, before crashing into a fence. Then Spike’s body would disintegrate with a silent whoosh as his fur, flesh, blood, viscera, bones and marrow were engulfed by a nimbus of flame. Ash and cinders would remain where a horseman’s corpse once lay.

I scuttle to my workstation and shove my swivel chair aside. After I place the cellphone on top of my open notebook, from the right pocket of my trousers I retrieve the key chain, but my hands are trembling; I drop the keys on the carpet. Their brass heads sparkle in the fluorescent light. As I grit my teeth to steady my nerves, I crouch in front of the cabinet under the desk, I scoop up the keys and fumble with them to unlock the top drawer. I slide it open. Safely stowed among paperclips, ballpoints, tissues, breath mints, earbuds and tampons rests Spike’s revolver.

The silvery, polished steel of the frame gleams. Bands of shadow run along the metallic valleys of the barrel, along the flutes of its thick cylinder. I smell the phantoms of gun oil and cordite.

I glide the fingertip of my thumb across the revolver’s cool, sleek surface. I touch the relief of the checkered wood grip, as well as the skull and bones engraved on the frame. I’d love to engrave next to it the portrait of a woman with sunken eyes, emaciated cheeks and dead skin peeling off her face, accompanied by scrawled black letters that would spell “A Horseman Never Fails,” but I lack the artistic skill and patience.

I slip my fingers around the grip, then I lift the revolver off the bottom of the drawer. The weapon feels stocky and heavy in my grasp, like a rock in a world of gelatin. When I straighten my back, a trigger’s click in my brain makes me shudder as a burst of images shoots across my mind. Why don’t you point the gun to your temple, old girl? Or how about you shove the barrel in your mouth? Don’t you want to press the tips of your incisors against the steel? Don’t you want to lick the cool muzzle and figure out how it tastes? A round must glimmer at the end of that dark tunnel. How many shots can you fit inside your overheated cranium? Don’t you want to see stars? Squeeze the trigger and rid yourself of your noxious mental parasites. Rectify the mistake of your existence. Plunging scissors or knives through your eyeballs to reach the brain behind would involve an agony, but a single bullet would rip through your axons, dendrites and nerve synapses, releasing your ghosts from the crevices within before they could manifest pain. You’d free yourself from the incessant taunting, the obsessions that gnaw at your sanity, the disgust and shame for your body and mind, the self-hatred, before nature herself debases you, after a hell-spawned downward spiral ending in dementia senilis, into a slurry of flesh and bone equal to the carcasses of squashed rats rotting in a gutter. Squeeze the trigger, woman of the pastures. Bury that tumor deep inside yourself.

A drop of sweat runs down my forehead, although an icy chill has made goosebumps prickle all over my skin. I grit my teeth, narrow my shoulders and take a deep breath. No, I won’t kill myself today; if I had the guts to shoot myself in the head, to exorcise that devouring evil lurking within my skull, I wouldn’t have suffered for years like some maimed dog in its owner’s backyard, waiting for someone to throw it a scrap of meat. Besides, I’ve learned to cope with my insanity through orgasm-based therapy.

Maybe I should put down the revolver, crawl into a corner and cry like a child while furiously fingering my clit, but I have outgrown that helpless little girl. I must obliterate the cosmic pox before it pours its poison into anyone’s holes.

Author’s note: today’s song is “Little by Little” by Radiohead, as well as this live version, that may be better than the original.

I keep a playlist with all the songs mentioned throughout this novel. Ninety-one songs so far. Check them out.

Lately I’ve been bothering a genius neural network so it would render images related to whatever was going on in the story. Here’s the corresponding post for this chapter.

The Steam version of Dwarf Fortress has been released! It even includes Workshop features, which means that people will upload thousands of mods in a matter of months. Check out its launch trailer. This game inspired Minecraft, Factorio, Rimworld and countless others, and I have admired its legend for about fifteen years.

We’re Fucked, Pt. 80: AI-generated images

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificial1 Comment

To render moments of this chapter, I relied on a neural network that churns out mesmerizing masterpieces as long as you pay that artificial intelligence a monthly wage for it (which is fine; great work should be rewarded). A second neural network, one trained on anime and furry shit, also helped.

The following images are related to chapter 80 of my ongoing novel We’re Fucked.

I have posted many, many entries that feature AI-generated images: check them out.

“I rest my forehead on the windowpane, that barely insulates the office from the cold of this November sunset.”
“Our star is a cream pie on which someone has landed ass-first, splashing its pinkish-orange filling all over the sky.”
Anime AI’s interpretations of the previous prompt. Thank you, that was exactly what I was picturing.
“The fat storm clouds that drift by are dyed the color of dried blood; mixed with the charcoal-black of the clouds themselves, they resemble stains on the clothes of plague victims.”
Somewhat useful reference pics.
“Sound waves pour from the speaker of my cellphone down my ear canal.”
“The forms of the two females, sculpted in obsidian, stand on the carpet of that remote living room, framed against the shapes in relief of the cabinet and the widescreen TV.”
“I’m craving something sweet, warm and moist.”
“The clock is ticking on the evening hours, and I need to progress my programming tasks for this job that sucks the joy and wonder out of my life.”
“Her full lips must be brushing the plasticky surface of her phone, spattering it, blessing it, with microscopic particles of saliva.”
“The Ice Age gifted us an Asian kid tempered in the boreal cold, who survived her skirmishes against an ensemble of Paleolithic megafauna.”
“My voice comes out in a croak, as if a lump was blocking my throat.”
“She must have been cuddling with you all afternoon, so she has likely forgotten that I exist.”
“A porcelain-white vine of lightning, twisted and barbed, has streaked through the thick belly of a storm cloud, burning its image into that gray slug filled with rain.”
“I imagine myself as a critter caught outside during a storm in the tropics: a tree snail clinging onto a mangrove to weather nature’s wrath.”
“Her worried voice sounded like a cat meowing at a screen that shows her missing owner.”
“Help me, Nairu! I’m trapped in this futuristic device!”
“Jacqueline’s laugh comes through like a bell pealing over the hilltops.”
“They would consider you a delicious breakfast buffet, the tastiest and nuttiest prey in their hunting ground.” I worry about what these AIs believe the Ice Age was like.
“Those beasts weren’t monsters, though. Just misunderstood.”
“Those storm clouds resemble an avalanche of dirty snow sliding across the sky in slow motion.”
“Glad you’re keeping her fed and warm in that glass-encased bubble while I risk my life in this forest of cement and metal.”
“I hope you chose one of the classics, instead of the turds they’ve been pushing out since they got gobbled up by that demonic mouse, a slobbering beast that has hijacked children’s imagination.”
“A drifting cloud has unveiled the moon and its silvery haze: a thinning scab on a bruised sky.”
“Poor thing, you must feel like I called from another dimension.”
“I rub my eyes and take a deep breath to scrub from my mind the yearning for another cataclysm, one that would leave this planet exposed to the starlight.”
“My statuesque queen of love and lust.”
“Ah, the classic tale involving a murderous cowboy and a clueless space marine.”
“The 3D humans in that one would traumatize me even now.” Anime AI was disturbingly good at producing cursed 3D characters.
“I wouldn’t have wanted my toys to know what I did in the privacy of my bedroom.”
Triceratops voyeurs.
“When she speaks again, her giggle-like tone warms everything within its reach, like the heat emanating from the belly of a giant furnace.”
“You should have locked up the stuffie, locked him away and kept your shameful secret a secret.”
“Plenty of love is flooding from both of our hearts towards the tiny sweetie that you took out of the ice.”
“I’m picturing her assemblage of dildos and vibrators doddering around in her wardrobe like stoic, limbless soldiers, leaving trails of lubricants with each stump-step.”
“I imagine myself sitting at the edge of mommy’s bed, facing my reflection in the mirrored wardrobe as her dildoes and vibrators knock and knock on the inside of the door, vying for the privilege of joining me in a muggy session of self-worship.”
“Lightning zigzags along the night sky, and as its glare whitens the windowpanes, I’m left with the afterimage of a black blot suspended in the air between the glass and the opposite office building.”
“The blot is accompanied by the blurry images of the long desk, the three chairs and the rectangular glow of my monitor.”
“At the other end of the office, on the lily-white wall, a tar-black stain is growing like ink bleeding into paper, like oil leaking from a deep puncture hole.”
Lightning-lizard!
“Lightning-lizards lurk outside, spreading out their glow into the room while jagged hairline cracks hover in front of me, superposed to the vision of the office and its flickering ceiling-mounted lamps, as if I were encased in scratched glass.”
“The black blob on the wall, engulfing a larger patch of white, pulsates as it swells, bulges out in viscous globs like a toilet backing up, and oozes down in gooey tendrils.”
“Light-snakes from the ceiling-mounted lamps are wriggling on the slimy, visceral mass.” Not at all what I meant, but I won’t complain.
“A glistening murk has gouged a hole in my skull and is crawling through my gray matter like a centipede.”
“I’m bobbing up to my nose in a gelatinous sea that tastes of vinegar and fish guts.”
“I shiver at the flapping sound of fat membranes uncurling, at the feel of viscid tissue-matter sticking to my skin.”
“Lightning bolts illuminate the waves in stroboscopic flashes, making them resemble a seething kelp forest, while I thrash my limbs around to stay afloat against the churning currents.”
“A honeyed voice breaks through, floods my mind and envelops my thoughts like a welcoming womb.”
“I miss the taste of her silky skin, like an ambrosial mixture of rosehip and milk.”
“I picture the inverted triangle of prominent features that make up Jacqueline’s ivory-white visage: her penetrating cobalt-blues at the two upper vertices, and her full lips at the lower vertex.”
“She’s standing in front of me in her peacoat and turtleneck sweater as the November wind tousles her hair.”
“Jacqueline is my sole lighthouse, a beacon amidst the storm of insanity that rages inside and outside of me.”
“A croaking voice pours forth through the speaker embedded in my neck, where the voicebox and throat structure must be housed.”
Goddess of delights, mistress of dreams.
“Overvoltage probably fried the electronics in my brain.”
“A tar-black blob has encroached upon a huge chunk of the wall.”
“A hole that sucks all hope through its bottomless whirlpool.”

We’re Fucked, Pt. 80 (Fiction)

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificial4 Comments

I rest my forehead on the windowpane, that barely insulates the office from the cold of this November sunset. My breath fogs the glass. Our star is a cream pie on which someone has landed ass-first, splashing its pinkish-orange filling all over the sky. The fat storm clouds that drift by are dyed the color of dried blood; mixed with the charcoal-black of the clouds themselves, they resemble stains on the clothes of plague victims.

As sound waves pour from the speaker of my cellphone down my ear canal, I close my eyes and rely on my echolocation to render the scene that’s taking place at home: Jacqueline, my queenly beloved, is explaining the purpose of a cellphone to our adopted daughter Nairu, who contributes high-pitched vocalizations of nonsense syllables, sounding more like a fairy than a human child. The forms of the two females, sculpted in obsidian, stand on the carpet of that remote living room, framed against the shapes in relief of the cabinet and the widescreen TV.

My chest feels hollowed out with longing. I’m craving something sweet, warm and moist. I wish I were lounging on the sofa with my girlfriend and our Nairu, but the clock is ticking on the evening hours, and I need to progress my programming tasks for this job that sucks the joy and wonder out of my life.

Through the phone’s speaker comes a rustle, followed by Jacqueline’s sultry voice. Her full lips must be brushing the plasticky surface of her phone, spattering it, blessing it, with microscopic particles of saliva.

“I won’t get Nairu to understand the concept of a phone today, but she misses her other mommy. That’s what I wanted her to convey to you, sweetie.”

I’m touched by my girlfriend’s attempt to comfort and cheer me up, but am I capable of tending to a child’s needs to the extent that she would appreciate me as a mother? Thankfully, Nairu would become a functional adult even if she grew up as a stray; the Ice Age gifted us an Asian kid tempered in the boreal cold, who survived her skirmishes against an ensemble of Paleolithic megafauna. Grade A material.

My voice comes out in a croak, as if a lump was blocking my throat. I swallow hard to dislodge it.

“She must have been cuddling with you all afternoon, so she has likely forgotten that I exist.”

Jacqueline giggles. Nairu was babbling in the background when a flash startles me. A porcelain-white vine of lightning, twisted and barbed, has streaked through the thick belly of a storm cloud, burning its image into that gray slug filled with rain. The electric crackle sends a shiver down my spine, then a shudder forces me to narrow my shoulders. I imagine myself as a critter caught outside during a storm in the tropics: a tree snail clinging onto a mangrove to weather nature’s wrath.

“Eide?” Nairu asks over the phone.

She remembers me! Her worried voice sounded like a cat meowing at a screen that shows her missing owner.

“Help me, Nairu! I’m trapped in this futuristic device!”

Jacqueline’s laugh comes through like a bell pealing over the hilltops. Nairu’s high-pitched voice dwindles to a murmur; I picture my beloved holding the phone to her own ear with one hand while her other strokes the child’s Paleolithic hair.

“I’m sure she fears that you may get attacked by any of the monsters she encountered in the Ice Age, yet you go and tease her. If anything like that would happen, you’d be a goner, little missy. They would consider you a delicious breakfast buffet, the tastiest and nuttiest prey in their hunting ground. So do I, for that matter.”

“Those beasts weren’t monsters, though. Just misunderstood.”

“Even so, the trick is to survive. Fortunately, Nairu’s tummy is full. No danger that she might starve to death. And like you suspect, we have been cuddling all afternoon. She has also discovered the wonders of animated movies. A Pixar one, we got it paused now.”

Despite the distance between us, Jacqueline sounded so snug, like a fur pelt draped over my shoulders, that I can picture myself pressed up against her on the sofa, instead of standing in this brightly-lit, air-conditioned office as I gaze out past the reflection of my computer screen at the thickening gloom of the twilight. Those storm clouds resemble an avalanche of dirty snow sliding across the sky in slow motion.

“Our adopted nugget may be considered insane by today’s standards,” I say, “but she can still enjoy the visual feast presented by 3D environments and characters on a widescreen television. Glad you’re keeping her fed and warm in that glass-encased bubble while I risk my life in this forest of cement and metal. In any case, which Pixar movie were you watching? I hope you chose one of the classics, instead of the turds they’ve been pushing out since they got gobbled up by that demonic mouse, a slobbering beast that has hijacked children’s imagination.”

Jacqueline’s response drowns in a thunderclap like a cannon shot, one that ripples through my body. My arms tense up, my toes curl in my socks and shoes. Above the flat roof of the opposite building, whose silhouette resembles a tombstone, I glimpse the afterimage of the lightning bolt. A drifting cloud has unveiled the moon and its silvery haze: a thinning scab on a bruised sky.

“Did you hear the thunder, Jacqueline?” I ask in a rough voice.

“Poor thing, you must feel like I called from another dimension. I’m just a ten minute drive away from you. But yes, a thunderstorm is rolling in, honey. It may turn nasty soon.”

The part of me that retains a percentage of genes from a dog, procured by some freaky ancestor of mine, wants to yank open the window and stick my head out, so I can bathe my face in cold air that must smell of rain. Being trapped in this dead office instead of spending the evening with Jacqueline and our girl makes me long for an earthquake or flood to strike, for me to see the streets choked with mud, and cars crushed under heaps of debris.

I rub my eyes and take a deep breath to scrub from my mind the yearning for another cataclysm, one that would leave this planet exposed to the starlight.

“A-anyway, what movie did you pick, my statuesque queen of love and lust?”

Jacqueline giggles.

“Toy Story, dear.”

“Ah, the classic tale involving a murderous cowboy and a clueless space marine. An original, daring narrative that wouldn’t get produced in today’s industry. The 3D humans in that one would traumatize me even now, but… has Nairu ever seen a toy in person?”

“Well, they carved figurines out of wood, right? The Ice Age peoples, I mean.”

“Nairu contradicts some basic assumptions about a child’s knowledge that would make the movie work. When we buy her toys, won’t she assume that they’ll spark to life the moment she looks away, even though they’re made of plastic or some other non-biological material?”

“That may be the case, but wouldn’t it make her world more magical and wondrous?”

“Or sordid and disturbing. I wouldn’t have wanted my toys to know what I did in the privacy of my bedroom. Particularly the stuffed triceratops with the yellow plaid bowtie, who stared blankly at me while I lay in bed with my panties around my ankles, trying to achieve the perfect orgasm. What if the dinosaurs talked to each other? ‘Hey, did you catch sight of the human doing it to herself?’ I would have felt like a pervert.”

Jacqueline must have pulled the phone away from her mouth to muffle a laugh. When she speaks again, her giggle-like tone warms everything within its reach, like the heat emanating from the belly of a giant furnace.

“You should have locked up the stuffie, locked him away and kept your shameful secret a secret. Anyway, I promise you that Nairu loved the spectacle on screen; she gaped and gaped at the talking toys. So focus on what truly matters, my girl: plenty of love is flooding from both of our hearts towards the tiny sweetie that you took out of the ice.”

I nod at Jacqueline’s distant presence, although I’m picturing her assemblage of dildos and vibrators doddering around in her wardrobe like stoic, limbless soldiers, leaving trails of lubricants with each stump-step. They clamber over the piles of external hard drives that store hundreds of gigabytes’ worth of our lovemaking sessions, as well as of the fabled girls that Jacqueline employed to build her porn empire. I imagine myself sitting at the edge of mommy’s bed, facing my reflection in the mirrored wardrobe as her dildoes and vibrators knock and knock on the inside of the door, vying for the privilege of joining me in a muggy session of self-worship. They are calling to me with dollish voices meant to sound melodic: “Hello, Jacqueline’s cummer! Do you need assistance? We are here to serve your needs, little lady!” My own voice interferes: “Come on, motherfucking dildos and dongs, let me get inside this stinking sack of skin so I can taste my own flesh, so I can be submerged in a sea of pleasure, so I can feel something besides the excruciating pressure of my brain against my skull. To hell with you dicks. The last thing I need is a swarm of cocks and pricks crowding my crotch!”

I shudder, then bite my lower lip to keep from giggling, or crying out in distress.

Lightning zigzags along the night sky, and as its glare whitens the windowpanes, I’m left with the afterimage of a black blot suspended in the air between the glass and the opposite office building. A vulture-sized bug? The blot is accompanied by the blurry images of the long desk, the three chairs and the rectangular glow of my monitor. As the booming rumble of thunder sweeps through the business park, a realization prickles the hairs on my nape: I glimpsed a reflection. Or maybe the blot is me.

I look over my shoulder. At the other end of the office, on the lily-white wall, a tar-black stain is growing like ink bleeding into paper, like oil leaking from a deep puncture hole.

Lightning-lizards lurk outside, spreading out their glow into the room while jagged hairline cracks hover in front of me, superposed to the vision of the office and its flickering ceiling-mounted lamps, as if I were encased in scratched glass. My nostrils fill with the odour of burnt ozone.

A crackle of thunder reverberates through my bones and makes my blood surge hotly toward my groin. The hairline cracks have vanished, replaced by a uniform, flawless plane. I am one with the glass.

The black blob on the wall, engulfing a larger patch of white, pulsates as it swells, bulges out in viscous globs like a toilet backing up, and oozes down in gooey tendrils. Light-snakes from the ceiling-mounted lamps are wriggling on the slimy, visceral mass, a glistening murk that has gouged a hole in my skull and is crawling through my gray matter like a centipede.

My vision wavers; the world is swimming. I’m bobbing up to my nose in a gelatinous sea that tastes of vinegar and fish guts. I shiver at the flapping sound of fat membranes uncurling, at the feel of viscid tissue-matter sticking to my skin. Lightning bolts illuminate the waves in stroboscopic flashes, making them resemble a seething kelp forest, while I thrash my limbs around to stay afloat against the churning currents.

From the phone that my right hand is gripping comes crinkly static, the sound of aluminum foil rustling. As the interference scratches my eardrum, a honeyed voice breaks through, floods my mind and envelops my thoughts like a welcoming womb:

“Leire, are you still there? That was some strange lightning phenomenon, must have messed up with the electronics. Thankfully I bought some overvoltage protectors.”

My heart is pumping in my throat. When I open my mouth to speak, my tongue flaps uselessly, and I only manage to exhale a pent-up breath.

“Leire?” Jacqueline insists. “You okay, honey? I can hear you breathing on the phone.”

I miss her luminous allure, that even before we started dating enticed me to steal glances at her. I miss the taste of her silky skin, like an ambrosial mixture of rosehip and milk. I miss the way her panties stick to her slit when she gets wet. I miss the feel of her long fingers kneading my flesh, of her nails scratching the skin of my back. I miss the firmness of her nipples grazing my breasts, the softness of her thighs wrapping around my face as I inhale the hot and juicy tang of her insides. I miss her gasps, sighs and moans during the throes of our lust-frenzy.

I picture the inverted triangle of prominent features that make up Jacqueline’s ivory-white visage: her penetrating cobalt-blues at the two upper vertices, and her full lips at the lower vertex. She’s standing in front of me in her peacoat and turtleneck sweater as the November wind tousles her hair. Jacqueline is my sole lighthouse, a beacon amidst the storm of insanity that rages inside and outside of me.

A croaking voice pours forth through the speaker embedded in my neck, where the voicebox and throat structure must be housed.

“Yeah, I’m still here, my goddess of delights, mistress of dreams. No time for a Pixar flick now, though. Overvoltage probably fried the electronics in my brain.”

Jacqueline’s laughter echoes into the farthest recesses of my being.

“You’re right. I’d love to keep you on the phone when I can’t keep you in my arms, but the sooner you finish that boring stuff, the sooner you can get your butt over here. And once you return to me… I may show you something special.”

“As in I won’t be able to peel your pussy away from my face?”

“Oh, I’ll open myself up to you in plenty of ways,” she answers with a sensual drawl that slithers down to my toes. “You have yet to experience some of my best moves, darling. Bye-bye for now!”

Once Jacqueline clicks off, the warmth evaporates, replaced by a tar-black blob that has encroached upon a huge chunk of the wall, a hole that sucks all hope through its bottomless whirlpool.

Author’s note: the five songs for today are “Man on the Moon” by R.E.M., “Pink Moon” by Nick Drake, “Catch the Wind” by Donovan, “Where Is My Mind?” by Pixies, and “Season of the Witch” by Donovan.

I maintain a playlist that contains all the songs mentioned throughout this novel. Eighty-nine songs so far. Check them out.

Hey, are you aware that neural networks can generate intriguing images based on the prompts you send them? I sent a couple of those artificial intelligences plenty of prompts from this chapter. Check out the results.

This chapter kicks off a new sequence, titled “Cumlord of the Abyss.” You can read any of the previous chapters of this novel through this link.

We’re Fucked, Pt. 79: AI-generated images

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificial1 Comment

For the last few months I’ve been playing around with a couple of neural networks, one of them a serious artist and the other a pervert trained exclusively on anime. I had already rendered about three-fifths of the images I would have included in this entry, when a beast of a new neural network rolled out, one that plays in a different ballpark. You will notice the difference in abilities, particularly because its products will come after the other AIs’ attempts.

Anyway, the images below were inspired (and plenty served as references) by chapter 79 of my ongoing tale We’re Fucked.

I have posted thirty-three other entries with AI-generated images. Check them out.

Approximation of Leire that I asked the previous generation of the serious AI to render, mainly to compare the result with the stuff I included in this entry.
Just Jacqueline.
The Paleolithic child named Nairu that Jacqueline and Leire have known for less than a day, but that if anything bad were to happen to the child, both of them would murder everybody in the room and then themselves.
My initial attempts at getting some references for how the sky looked that night.
“A child’s vocal cords produce utterances of confusion close to my right ear, noises like those of a tourist who has been reduced to rely on primal vocalizations.”
“Am I a prisoner in some dark cave, or a homeless bum living in an alleyway, or a guru who takes orders from the voices in my head?”
“Behold, the glowing flower of a child’s face, with her chin tucked under a lemonade-pink scarf.” Both AIs appreciated the fact that lemonade was involved.
“Her smooth skin is tinged sand orange by the closest streetlamp, with paprika-red shadows.”
“In her monolid eyes, and surrounded by the sclera, her irises and pupils have merged into dark circles.”
“Nairu is sinking her gaze deep into the tunnel of my eyes, that leads straight to madness.”
“A glint of sentience must have returned to my eyes.”
“She seeks my input, although I’m the kind of woman who wanders naked into a boreal forest.” The serious AI won’t accept prompts with the word “naked” (as well as plenty of other words). Anime AI did accept that word, but failed to produce nakedness. Oh well.
Leire’s dream to see a UFO.
“They may be alien truckers that have pulled over for the night at their equivalent of a rest area, and tomorrow they will resume the trip back to their star system.”
“Once they supply the hydrogen and helium they siphoned from Jupiter, they’ll waste their wages at some alien brothel.”
“Is she trying to warn us that it’s over, that the end has come?”
“This is how the heavens ended up after the apocalypse.”
“Can a woman who grew up like a rat, scurrying around the streets until she reached her sordid shelter, imagine how the dome of the sky looked like before the mythological age?”
“The heavens would have been ablaze with a billion pinpricks of red, yellow, white and blue light, kaleidoscopic diamonds strewn across a carpet of indigo velvet.”
Amoeba-shaped nebulas.
“I would have recognized the shapes of Orion, Perseus, Taurus, Ursa Major, Cassiopeia and many other constellations, the gods that watched over our affairs from their far-flung thrones.”
“Hypnotized like moths, our hair would become infused with celestial phenomena, and our eyes would gleam in the cold starlight as we soaked up the silver song of the cosmos.”
“Even the beasts that agonized in a pool of blood, while their festering wounds flashed with burning pain, knew that their spirit would escape and ascend to milky river overhead, where they would float in the sparkling current forever.”
“The celestial curtain was torn apart; the nightly sky fell like a collapsed ceiling, crushing our ancestors.”
“When humans look up from their earthly hell at night, they face an ocean of blackness.”
“The dying sun hangs out in the sky like an aged streetlight.”
“Some nights, the glowing trails of meteor streaks cross-section a silent sky: reminders of the cosmic hazards that threaten us far above the corpses of ancient cities.”
“Our Earth, as it races unflinchingly toward her fate like a suicidal teen dashing across a highway, bathes in a major meteor stream twice a year, where millions of pieces of a long-fragmented comet, from glassy gravel to iron balls the size of football fields, plummet through the vacuum faster than a rifle bullet.”
“Now, where could they have hidden the stars without them cracking or shattering?”
“[…] that celestial eye and its ghostly glow hang out of frame. Its sclera has been corroded into dark cerulean patches, and bears star-shaped scars of ejecta from asteroidal impacts.”
“I wish that Jacqueline, Nairu and I could chase after the shimmering reflection of the moon like lunatic bats.”
“I peer into the black shroud up above us, that looks like the darkness floating inside a trash can full of rainwater.”
“I spot pinpricks of light, the last vestiges of a candle’s flame, glimmering at the fringes of my sight.”
“I focus long enough in the boundless darkness, allowing the stream of photons that traveled for millions of years to penetrate my pupils.”
“Arachne, Lady of the Abyss, Weaver of the Cosmic Web, She who spins the tapestry of time and space, She who trapped the galaxies in Her sticky filaments. She pulls out memories of a billion of our pasts and weaves them into strands around Her fingers. In the end, the cocoon formed out of our selves will serve as a nursery for Her hatching eggs.”
“Are those hands crawling up the outer edges of the world? Do they hunt with pincers, claws or talons?”
“I built towers that bristled with anti-tank weapons.”
“Soon enough my teeth will chatter, the chatter will become a moan, the moan will rise to a howl of despair, and the howl will echo over the frozen earth to the fathomless ocean of empty space, where the fringes of the expanding universe push against the invisible wall that separates us from the unknown.”
“I will hallucinate that I’m a deer running in circles on a desolate tundra, running and running until my hooves crumble into ice shards and the wind smears the last mist of my breath.”
“The centrifugal force of the Earth in its rotation has flung me out and I’m hurtling towards the black ocean above.”
“My mind was like a house whose every door had been slammed shut.”
“I imagined the mountains crumbling, the oceans flooding, the sky erupting in a fireball to vaporize everyone except the beasts.”
“My life back then was a grain of sand compared to the sediment on the seafloor.”
“Even kings and conquerors were icebergs compared to the glaciers beyond.”
“This world will freeze us, burn us, flood us, bury us, wipe us out.”
“Like soldiers in wartime, humans burrow in trenches to wait out the battle; we pretend that we’re safe while the cannons roar and the shells explode.”
“In this frozen darkness, two pockets of womb-like warmth remain where I can survive.”
“In an echo of the time when history began, in an age about to end, for now Jacqueline, Nairu and I lie nestled together at the center of our web, our own private constellation.”
“Let’s bathe in the cosmic ocean, let’s float in the currents of atoms and energy that flow through this universe.”
“I will take its waters in and quench my thirst.”

We’re Fucked, Pt. 79 (Fiction)

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificial3 Comments

A child’s vocal cords produce utterances of confusion close to my right ear, noises like those of a tourist who has been reduced to rely on primal vocalizations. A small head is resting on my arm, and I smell the shampoo and conditioner that cleaned that hair and scalp.

Am I a prisoner in some dark cave, or a homeless bum living in an alleyway, or a guru who takes orders from the voices in my head? I blink away the fog of drowsiness. I must have fallen asleep like a slug in its tiny burrow.

Behold, the glowing flower of a child’s face, with her chin tucked under a lemonade-pink scarf. Her smooth skin is tinged sand orange by the closest streetlamp, with paprika-red shadows. In her monolid eyes, and surrounded by the sclera, her irises and pupils have merged into dark circles. Nairu is sinking her gaze deep into the tunnel of my eyes, that leads straight to madness.

She sniffles, then wipes her runny nose with the sleeve of her wool sweater. A glint of sentience must have returned to my eyes; Nairu arches her eyebrows and repeats the utterances of confusion while pointing at the sky. She seeks my input, although I’m the kind of woman who wanders naked into a boreal forest.

I gasp, breathing in cold air. Don’t tell me she has spotted a UFO! About time I witnessed one of them. I picture a spacecraft shaped like a watch battery, hovering higher than the tallest mountain around. The stars are reflected in its silvery, mirror-like top half. In the underside, the gravity-bending propulsion engines, likely powered by a black hole, phosphoresce in shades of green, red and yellow as they interact with the atmosphere. Are there lifeforms riding the craft? They may be alien truckers that have pulled over for the night at their equivalent of a rest area, and tomorrow they will resume the trip back to their star system. Once they supply the hydrogen and helium they siphoned from Jupiter, they’ll waste their wages at some alien brothel.

The sky is painted onyx black. From the left, the canopy of an evergreen tree has sneaked into the frame. The coalesced silhouette of its leaves and branches resembles a hoarfrost-covered lung.

Nairu jabs her finger at the sky while she babbles in her long-extinct language.

“A-am I this drowsy,” I ask, “or is Nairu pointing at nothing?”

“I think that’s the point, darling,” Jacqueline says in a low voice from my left.

I gasp.

“I-is she trying to warn us that it’s over, that the end has come?”

“Baby, she’s telling us this isn’t the sky she grew up with.”

“Ah, of course. This is how the heavens ended up after the apocalypse.”

Can a woman who grew up like a rat, scurrying around the streets until she reached her sordid shelter, imagine how the dome of the sky looked like before the mythological age? The heavens would have been ablaze with a billion pinpricks of red, yellow, white and blue light, kaleidoscopic diamonds strewn across a carpet of indigo velvet. Among the glittering embers of the stars, among the amoeba-shaped nebulas, I would have recognized the shapes of Orion, Perseus, Taurus, Ursa Major, Cassiopeia and many other constellations, the gods that watched over our affairs from their far-flung thrones. Every night our gaze would have drifted towards the stars. Hypnotized like moths, our hair would become infused with celestial phenomena, and our eyes would gleam in the cold starlight as we soaked up the silver song of the cosmos.

Even the beasts that agonized in a pool of blood, while their festering wounds flashed with burning pain, knew that their spirit would escape and ascend to milky river overhead, where they would float in the sparkling current forever. But the celestial curtain was torn apart; the nightly sky fell like a collapsed ceiling, crushing our ancestors. Now, when humans look up from their earthly hell at night, they face an ocean of blackness, and during the day, the dying sun hangs out in the sky like an aged streetlight.

Some nights, the glowing trails of meteor streaks cross-section a silent sky: reminders of the cosmic hazards that threaten us far above the corpses of ancient cities. Our Earth, as it races unflinchingly toward her fate like a suicidal teen dashing across a highway, bathes in a major meteor stream twice a year, where millions of pieces of a long-fragmented comet, from glassy gravel to iron balls the size of football fields, plummet through the vacuum faster than a rifle bullet.

I blow a billowing white puff towards the sky, then I knead Nairu’s warm hand with my icy fingers.

“Yes, all that bright light is gone,” I say in a quavering voice while the chill pierces my bones. “You have noticed because you aren’t blind yet. Now, where could they have hidden the stars without them cracking or shattering? I know the truth, even though I don’t understand it.”

The darkness has blotted out the moon, or else that celestial eye and its ghostly glow hang out of frame. Its sclera has been corroded into dark cerulean patches, and bears star-shaped scars of ejecta from asteroidal impacts. I wish that Jacqueline, Nairu and I could chase after the shimmering reflection of the moon like lunatic bats. Instead, I peer into the black shroud up above us, that looks like the darkness floating inside a trash can full of rainwater. As I slide my gaze around, I spot pinpricks of light, the last vestiges of a candle’s flame, glimmering at the fringes of my sight. If I blink or distract myself, those twinkling dots will be snuffed out. Maybe I’m only imagining them, maybe I’m losing my mind, but what difference does it make to me? And if I focus long enough in the boundless darkness, allowing the stream of photons that traveled for millions of years to penetrate my pupils, I may get a glimpse of Her: Arachne, Lady of the Abyss, Weaver of the Cosmic Web, She who spins the tapestry of time and space, She who trapped the galaxies in Her sticky filaments. She pulls out memories of a billion of our pasts and weaves them into strands around Her fingers. In the end, the cocoon formed out of our selves will serve as a nursery for Her hatching eggs.

I’m hearing a low rumble in the distance, like the noise of an electric guitar being played with a grunge distortion pedal. The wind slaps its frozen fingers against my face. Although my brain is burning up, the cold is numbing my skin and creeping into my body, where it turns the blood into slush. Soon enough my teeth will chatter, the chatter will become a moan, the moan will rise to a howl of despair, and the howl will echo over the frozen earth to the fathomless ocean of empty space, where the fringes of the expanding universe push against the invisible wall that separates us from the unknown. I will hallucinate that I’m a deer running in circles on a desolate tundra, running and running until my hooves crumble into ice shards and the wind smears the last mist of my breath.

What’s that over the black hills? Are those hands crawling up the outer edges of the world? Do they hunt with pincers, claws or talons? Do you grow stronger as you pluck the meat from its sockets? The air tastes of fresh blood, which trickles down the gullets of your dying sisters. Suck the warm lifeblood flowing like sap from the wounds of your enemies. You can’t hold onto the lives of others, or even your own.

A sudden sensation jolts through my body: I’m falling and spinning. The centrifugal force of the Earth in its rotation has flung me out and I’m hurtling towards the black ocean above, in which the worlds are sinking like stones in water.

The hollow noises of footsteps and doors closing echoed in the velvety darkness as I sat on cold, anonymous stairs to escape from a prison of screams and insults. The blood of my ancestors coated my hands, dripped down my elbows and onto the step under my feet, where the blood puddled around my shoes. Its stifling odor, mingled with the sweat pouring out of me, turned into a nauseating wave of bitterness. My mind was like a house whose every door had been slammed shut. I closed my eyes and built shelters in islands and in the canopies of sequoias, I built towers that bristled with anti-tank weapons; anywhere I could rest as a hermit in sealed silence. I imagined the mountains crumbling, the oceans flooding, the sky erupting in a fireball to vaporize everyone except the beasts. In the end, the parting clouds would reveal the stars as they were before the sky cracked and bled.

“How long?” I whispered while tears formed in the corners of my eyes. “How long until She arrives?”

My life back then was a grain of sand compared to the sediment on the seafloor. Even kings and conquerors were icebergs compared to the glaciers beyond. This world will freeze us, burn us, flood us, bury us, wipe us out. Our cells will be devoured by rust. Like soldiers in wartime, humans burrow in trenches to wait out the battle; we pretend that we’re safe while the cannons roar and the shells explode. Yet, in this frozen darkness, two pockets of womb-like warmth remain where I can survive: one to my left and the other to my right. In an echo of the time when history began, in an age about to end, for now Jacqueline, Nairu and I lie nestled together at the center of our web, our own private constellation.

“How long?” I whisper again.

I’ve faced the barbaric, senseless absurdity step by step. The lights will shut off soon enough, so let’s bathe in the cosmic ocean, let’s float in the currents of atoms and energy that flow through this universe. I will take its waters in and quench my thirst.

Author’s note: the three songs for today are “機械仕掛乃宇宙” (Kikaijikake no Uchuu) by Ichiko Aoba, “Emily” by Joanna Newsom, and “Young Lion” by Vampire Weekend.

I keep a playlist with all the songs mentioned throughout this novel. Eighty-four songs so far. Check it out.

Three neural networks competed with each other to render images inspired by this chapter. Two of the AIs lost horribly. Check out the results.

Thus concludes the sequence titled “Who Stole the Stars?” as well as the saga of Nairu the Paleolithic, that started with the sequence “A Gift From the Ice Age” back in chapter 62 (which I posted in the 13th of July). More or less, this chapter also concludes the traditional second act of the story.

It took me about forty-one thousand words to render the setup and ramifications of a single sentence in my original treatment for this novel (long gone; back then I believed it would be a novella), that said, more or less: “Leire travels to the Ice Age and returns with a child.”

The next chapter will kick off a whole new sequence, titled “Cumlord of the Abyss.” I’ve accumulated 4,563 words of notes for it, but the sum of rendered scenes will end up at least twice and a half that length.