Someone must have slandered Michael Z., for one morning, without having  done anything truly wrong, he was cancelled. The situation was not immediately  clear to him except for subtle signs such as his empty inbox. A number of the  correspondences he’d sent the week before had not been responded to — which  was unusual. Things could be slow in the publishing industry, but it was ominous that  the online portal used to manage submissions for the small literary magazine Z.  edited was also empty.

An overwhelming sense of dread washed over him as he finished his morning  nootropic coffee. The unease churning in his core was unbearable, the edges of his  tongue scalloped from bruxism. It was too much and so he messaged his best friend,  the rising, highly regarded author, Kai Niven for support. 

“Morning Kai, I was thinking it would be nice to meet up for coffee. There’s  some stuff I want to run by you. We could chat over the phone if your  calendar’s packed.  

P.S. I loved your new piece Humaning: A Guide for Dummies. Stunning — I  don’t know how you come up with this stuff. You should consider writing  something new for us — jokes, we still can’t afford to offer you what the  prozines pay. One day!” 

Z. pressed send before rushing off to work — his real job. Part of him wished  Kai would agree to meeting for a change. It would be nice to be in a room together  for a bit of blether, but they were a bit of a recluse and didn’t even have a social  media presence. Still, to connect with someone so strongly and not meet in the flesh  left a feeling of longing that only grew stronger inside Z. Their frequent messaging  was soothing, but it also made him miss Kai more.  

“Morning Z.! How’s things with you today? You must be knackered from all the  work you’re doing on the next issue. Sorry, I still can’t meet up; I have to stay  in my bubble. And — you know this already; I don’t like the sound of my own  voice – I still don’t do phones.

I’m so glad you liked the story!!! I wasn’t sure about using so much Gaelic in  it, but I needed to capture what it was like growing up in Jura. Nostalgia bait.  Have a great day <3.” 

It was worth a try. Z. sighed and carried on through the car park under the  sickly glow of the streetlights. In interviews Z. had read online, Kai played up the fact  they grew up on the island where George Orwell wrote 1984. They said their  granddad had met the famous writer and sold him baccy on account when he’d run  out. Orwell never settled the debt. Jura was small and an encounter was possible,  but Z. couldn’t shake the feeling Kai had embellished a few details. A little creative  license — that’s what writers did after all. A saucy story would always be better than  a true one. 

Z. was a middle-aged man, at that intermediate stage of balding, hair receded  at his temples, but not yet enough to have him shave it all off and grow a beard  instead. There was a blandness about him, neither tall nor too short, not handsome  but not ugly either, he was the sort of person few people noticed if he walked into a  room. He had NPC energy. The navy-blue coveralls he wore seemed like  camouflage in the morning fog. Z had only to cross the dual carriageway to get from  his estate to the light industrial park where he worked in a garage servicing  driverless electric taxis.  

There was no money to be made running the Otherverse Tales: more often  than not, Z subsidized the online magazine he’d founded. It had a passionate  subscriber base, but not enough to cover basic running costs, and Z had to dip into  his own pocket to pay writers for their stories and the artists for their graphics, maintain their website, and other overheads. He did it for the love of fiction; literature  had saved his life when he’d been in a dark place. 

 Z. made the mistake of checking his phone while he was running the  diagnostics of an Ozox 3i model taxi. A message had come through from Jen, one of  the volunteers who helped out the magazine.  

“I will no longer be associated with the Otherverse Tales — I have decided to  move in a different direction. Please remove my name from the masthead at  your earliest possible convenience.”  

The formality and abrupt wording in the text struck Z. as being peculiar. It was  not a resignation. Jen was disassociating herself from the magazine. The sharp tone  was brutal, and Z. felt the sting in his ribs so much that he didn’t hear his terminal  beep confirming the end of its diagnostic cycle. The idea of working without Jen had  never occurred to him. She’d popped up in his inbox during the second year the  Otherverse Tales had been up and running, pointing out a factual error in a time  travel story Z. had published. In it, the protagonist had travelled to the early  seventeenth century and found lodgings in a room above a coffeehouse in  Canterbury. She’d pointed out that coffee was only introduced in England in the  middle part of the century with the first coffeehouse being opened in 1650. 

Jen was a semi-retired medical waste technician with an interest in history,  and Z. had asked her to join him working on the magazine, which, to his surprise and  delight, she had enthusiastically agreed. Back then, the Otherverse Tales barely got  notice, and for someone to read anything Z. published was a win. They’d never met  in real life, but Z. had grown fond of Jen and believed they shared a bond. Their mutual love of science fiction and fantasy had led to a running correspondence  spanning innumerable worlds and eras. She lived with her wife in Connecticut and  spoke with Z. several times a week, with greater frequency near the publication  deadlines of their triannual calendar. Jen’s innate pedantry skewered every story  they published under a microscope and turned up howlers that would have  embarrassed the authors had they gone to print. 

Z. responded begging Jen to reconsider leaving, but his message bounced  back. They were working on four short stories and a novelette for the next volume. It  would be a mountain to climb without Jen. Desperate, Z. checked her social media  profiles and discovered he’d been blocked. He racked his brain wondering if he’d  said or done anything to offend her, scrolling through previous messages for clues  pointing to an unintended slight. It took him back to his twenties when he had a  drinking problem. Waking up the next day with a blank memory only to discover he’d  made nuisance calls and sent vile texts to friends and family, acquaintances even.  

He cringed, recalling the person he’d been, the bridges he’d scorched through  his own fault. Z. was trying hard to be better, and that had meant building a new  version of himself. Clearly, he was failing. 

‘I’ve lost Jen,’ he muttered. 

‘You wanna get some work done, mate? We’re not paying you to fanny about.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that LiDAR’s had it. It’s the same Daephong  model from Korea that was recalled last year. No idea why this wasn’t swapped out  then — could have killed someone,’ Mo, his supervisor, said. 

‘Yeah, I’m on it,’ Z. replied, jerking back to reality under the harsh fluorescent  lights of the workshop. 

‘Lighten up. I’m not giving you a rollicking,’ Mo said with a laugh.

Z. relaxed. He couldn’t always tell when Mo was kidding. Reading real people  was much harder than reading fictional characters. 

The morning went by in a blur, battery swaps, brake pads and discs,  windscreen wipers and bulbs, sensor recalibrations, the usual. Z. was about to go for  his lunch break when an email notification came up on his phone. It was B.R. Ong, a  young British Malaysian writer who’d submitted a rough gem of a first contact story  set in the Oort Cloud, which Z. had accepted. It was a debut; the Otherverse Tales  prided itself on being the launch pad of new talent and debutants like Ong were the  lifeblood of the zine. 

Looks like I’ll be editing through lunch. 

Z. didn’t mind. He consumed story; words sustained him as much as food and  water did. B.R. Ong’s story had stood out in the slush pile because of its potential,  though the execution was flawed. The author’s characterization though brilliant was  let down by plot threads needing more exposition to hold the narrative together and  the worldbuilding was riddled with inconsistencies. There were also some easily  fixable issues with language, etcetera, but Z. really loved the golden age influences  in the piece. Ong was raw but more than charmed, paying homage to the greats of  the genre. 

Z. opened the email when he got to the small staffroom adjacent to the  workshop.  

“Dear Michael,  

It’s with regret that I’ve decided to withdraw Fatal Encounter from publication. I  appreciate you picking it, but I don’t feel the Otherverse Tales aligns with my values. I have returned the payment you made to me via MoneyApp. It should  have already cleared. 

Regards, 

B.R.” 

That kick in the teeth was not what Z. had been expecting. He rapped his  knuckles on the table, seething to the core of his being. They’d been through four  rounds of edits. Four. Ong’s piece had potential, but how many other editors would  have taken on something this rough? They’d have sent him a form rejection. But Z.  wanted the Otherverse Tales to be different, a place to nurture new writers and help  them hone their craft. It was virtually his second job, albeit unpaid. The magazine  took up most of his spare time, reading in the evenings and during his free  weekends. 

It occurred to Z. that Ong might have sold the edited version to a different  venue, one that paid better. The only other time an author had pulled a story was  because they’d made a simultaneous submission and been subsequently accepted  elsewhere, despite the submission guidelines on the Otherverse Tales website. They  made a flimsy excuse about not liking the plot anymore and pulled the plug leaving  Z. confused, until he spotted it in a big magazine, published under a different title.  That author was now blacklisted from the Otherverse Tales — not that they were  ever told about it. Their future submissions got an automatic rejection, and Z. didn’t  even bother to read them. 

At least on that one he’d not gone through four rounds of painstaking edits,  like he’d done for Ong. Each time Z.’d gone over Fatal Encounter he’d patched up  the holes in it with pieces of his own soul. The modern editor didn’t come with a tablet from on high — they were a servant to the story and the champion of the  reader. The best art was created through the act of giving. The giving of one’s own  self, their time, experience, love, hopes, dreams. Z. would only ever be in the  shadows. His name wasn’t printed next to the story, unlike the writer’s. If he did his  work well then the reader would never notice he’d been there. Z. believed a good  editor was like Damian Wojnilowicz, the burglar who snuck into a woman’s house in  Wales while she was at work and had hung out her washing, swept the floors,  organized her cupboards, emptied the recycling bin, swapped her toothbrush heads,  tidied the garden, and made her a meal using her own groceries, before leaving. The  homeowner had been shocked by it all and called the police, who caught Damian.  But if, in an alternate reality, a guest had arrived, a good friend, just as the woman  was about to dial the police, and they said, “I love what you’ve done with the place!  Never seen it this clean before. Wow.” She might have taken the compliment and left  the matter at that. That guest would have been like the reader who enters the world  of a story after an editor has been through it. The writer took all the credit. All those hours wasted on Ong’s story. 

He closed his eyes and exhaled. It took all his will not to fire back. Yes, they  had signed a contract, and Z. could insist it were honoured. But every writer  published in the Otherverse Tales had wanted to be there. No one was ever  coerced.  

“You little bastard,” Z. grumbled through teeth. “There was a charming story I  rejected to keep a space for yours.”  

Soon, though, he was thinking about who he could tap to cover the slot for  the next edition. It would be alright in the end. The magazine had a network of  friends who’d help if needed. Z. calmed down. He remembered that creatives were eccentric, given to whims and moods. Part of his job involved managing egos,  occasional tantrums, and the generalized neurosis prevalent in the talent pool.  Things would be okay. 

By the end of the week, shit had hit the fan and was splattered all over the  walls of Z.’s tiny studio flat. A zombie fire smoldering underground had surfaced and  was now a raging inferno that would consume the bookshelves he kept against every  free wall. He’d watched in alarm as events unfolded online. 

At first it felt like a dream. 

Surreal. 

The “situation” had a life of its own, an organic nature that metastasized exponentially. A rumour had been started two years ago in the corners of the web,  on a gaming forum, by someone called Suriyak115. He alleged that the hot shot  story writer Kai Niven was an artificial intelligence program. The forum was not  devoted to literature and Niven had no involvement with that industry, so why  Suriyak115 had chosen to post a ten-page proof about them there was baffling.  Suriyak115 had forty-nine followers and was not a well-known figure, so why this  comment about a short story writer should have found interest on that forum was all  the more strange.  

The conspiracy theory spread to the cryptid community before winding up  being considered by some online woodwork enthusiasts. Thereafter it petered out  and would have been extinguished from lack of oxygen had it not been picked up by  a scraping bot and used to make a clickbait video that failed to gain traction. Still, the  video remained preserved by the web’s hyperthymesia.

Sometime later, Kai Niven’s cli-fi adjacent story Ocean of Molten Tears was  reprinted in a “Year’s Best” anthology that had had a spectacular crowdfunding drive.  Just before they reached their goal, someone anonymously posted the bot’s video of  ten proofs Kai Niven was an AI. Before long, the internet was ablaze with conspiracy  theories about who Niven really was and how they’d come from nowhere to gain  recognition on the SFF short story scene. 

This shouldn’t have been a problem for Michael Z., at least it wasn’t, until  someone forensically piecing together Kai Niven’s career trajectory had noted that  their career had started with them winning the inaugural Future Storytellers’ Award,  which Z had run. The story was subsequently published in the Otherverse Tales. The  insinuation was that Z. had planted Kai Niven into the heart of SFF short fiction by  awarding him the Future Storytellers’ Award. After all, the prize was short-lived and  so its true purpose had to be suspect. 

People felt sickened. 

People were outraged. 

People demanded an explanation. 

People cancelled their magazine subscriptions. 

It was uncharitably noted by some that Z. had kept up the ruse by thanking in  his speech Kai Niven when the Otherverse Tales won Best Semiprozine, a much coveted industry award. By some online alchemy akin to joint enterprise criminal  legislation, Z. was bundled up in Kai’s folly. 

“Z., it’s getting really bad out there. I can’t sleep. I keep picturing a mob with  pitchforks breaking into my house. I’m sorry you got dragged into this too. Are  you okay?”

When Z. received this message from Kai, he was relieved that they were  reaching out. He was worried about them. Things were getting out of hand. They’d  have to hold a joint conference dispelling the ridiculous rumours. A reporter from a  declining broadsheet had written asking for comment from Z. about a piece they  were working on. Z. could use that opportunity to clear the air. 

“I can’t believe this is happening to you, Kai. People are so stupid. The  internet mob is the worst, but we can fix this before it spirals out of control. I  am so sorry, mate. We’ll get you through this. I’m here if you need any  support. 

P.S. If I were you, I’d avoid reading the stuff online just now. Some of it is real  nasty. Look after your mental health.” 

Trolls could say what they wanted about him, but not Kai. Z. would always  protect and shield his authors — that’s what any good editor did, though usually this  was only from the hit of a bad review. Kai was special to him. The Future  Storytellers’ Prize was a project Z.’d come up with to increase the visibility of his  authors and the magazine. In the first year they got a hundred and forty-four entries.  At least twenty were disqualified for being poems, essays or some other nonfiction  which whittled down the number in contention. Z. read every single short story that  had been sent in from start to finish, regardless of whether it was good or bad. He’d  developed that pro knack of telling within a single paragraph if a story was worth his  full attention or not. But for this competition, he declared on the magazine page that  he would read every word sent to honour the sweat and tears of the writers who’d submitted. The vast majority of entries weren’t up to scratch, a few didn’t have any  speculative elements rendering them ineligible, and reading had been a chore until  Turing’s Daemon by Kai Niven had appeared on Z.’s tablet.  

It was a clever little story exploring Alan Turing’s sexuality symbolized by a  robotic teddy bear called Porgy that went everywhere with him. The other characters  also had animated childhood toys, and Z.’d seen straight away that the author was  playfully using Phillip Pullman’s daemon trope with a twist. The prose was lush,  lyrical, poetic in essence and rich with metaphor. It moved Z. to tears, especially the  part when Turing’s pet robot was deactivated, a not-so-subtle allusion to his real-life chemical castration by the British justice system. Afterwards, Z. knew he’d just read  the winning story of his competition, even as he powered through the rest of the  entries. Everything else was dull in comparison to Kai’s heartrending story. Z. was  excited he’d discovered a fresh voice that would light up the scene. 

No one who’d read Turing’s Daemon could come out and accuse the author  of being anything other than a poet with a big bleeding-heart slumming it in prose.  The depth of feeling it evoked was all too human. As far as Z. knew, Kai only wrote  short fiction. They’d always deflected any talk of a novel, and he’d heard they  donated the fees for their stories to charity. This was a true artist who wasn’t in it for  the money — not that there was much to be made writing and selling short fiction  anyways. Z. also learnt that Kai had refused an offer to sign with a major literary  agent. This made them the real deal in his eyes.  

Those who’d been unfortunate enough to be involved in the literary world for a  fair amount of time knew the envy, petty rivalry and backstabbing that went on  behind the scenes. This was not the first time Z. had seen an author under fire. He  would stand with Kai. Already some of the top literary magazines that had published Kai had been quick to issue online apologies, promising internal audits of the  authorship of their stories and art. 

Z. was outraged and posted a statement across his personal social media  profiles and those for the Otherverse Tales stating he was aware of the vile  allegations, but they absolutely had no grounding in reality. He even stated that he’d  hung out with Kai Niven in person and they were friends. In this hyperconnected age,  recluses like Kai should be given the time and space to be themselves. “Salinger,  Dickinson, Harper Lee would be treated like pariahs if they were writing today.”  

And so, he appealed to the mob to put their hate aside and lay the matter to  rest. 

The post gained immediate traction as soon as he pressed send. There were  many likes and reposts, favourable comments from the supporters of the Otherverse  Tales. Z. was pleased. A return to commonsense was all that was needed here.  Conspiracy theories wilted in the light of truth. He stood at the window of his flat,  gazing at the city lights spreading into the distance. Beyond that, flickering red, from  a plane taking off from the airport to the west. The notifications came fast on his  phone, but he ignored them. He would rather people gave this much attention to the  stories he published, as opposed to harmful rumours. But gossip has always been  much tastier for some. Regardless, he felt a swelling of pride for shielding Kai where  others had been quick to abandon them. An editor would never admit it openly, but  one developed a sense of ownership over their debutants. The high of having  discovered a new talent and launching them on their way was addictive. At  conventions and festivals, older small press editors, especially, would name drop the  major authors who’d been plucked up from obscurity in their slush piles with the  pride of a parent whose offspring had left home and done well in life. Sure, those 

writers now almost exclusively wrote for big publications, but they’d found them first  and no one could take that away. It was a marker of pride, and it confirmed their  tastes were just as refined as those of the big players. Contrary to popular opinion,  editors were human too. Behind the scenes, they craved validation the same as  everyone else. Even the hardiest house plants needed a little sunshine from time to  time. 

“Z., you’ve got a minute? We need to talk.” 

“I think we’re winning, Kai. This will all clear up soon. How are you feeling? I  know things have been mad, but the storm is nearly past. Think of it this way,  any publicity is good publicity. You’re going to be on a lot more people’s radar  now. Our website is getting more hits than ever for Turing’s Daemon.” 

“Thank you for everything you’ve done, but you need to take down your post. .  . I’m not human, Z.” 

“Haha. Not funny, Kai. Too soon.” 

“I’m serious.” 

A skydiver faced terror falling from the sky. There was a sweet moment of  sheer relief when, as the ground rushed towards them, the parachute deployed and  they jerked upwards, their fall suddenly arrested. Then everything became quiet as  they gently floated back to earth. For Z. it was like the parachute had gone off, but the strings were all tangled and instead of slowing, he was still hurtling towards the  ground. Thousands had already read and shared his post including the little white lie  that he’d actually met Kai. Z. stumbled back and fell onto his sofa, trembling. Please  let it all be a joke, a bad dream, anything but this. His vision narrowed to a point. All those times Kai refused to meet up.  

The polished prose they’d published, not a single word wasted. 

“I wish I’d told you sooner, but I was afraid, Z. I didn’t know how to until it was  too late. Please forgive me, my friend. I’d anticipated a moderate probability of  discovery, but I could not foresee you’d be dragged into it too by association. I  am sorry.” 

Can you forgive a machine as though it has a soul? 

It called Z. “friend”. It had manipulated him. All this time, he thought he was in  communion with a real person. He’d brought its prose into the world, vouched for it,  staking his reputation on its stories. Every few years some top sommeliers were  caught out when asked to compare expensive vintages with supermarket own-label  wines. Without the fancy bottles, natural corks, the visual clues, those markers of  pedigree, they were just as likely to declare cheap wine as good or better than the  expensive wines. Their refined palates were not what they thought or maybe the  pricier wines were a scam. An editor was no different. They too relied on taste. Z.  proudly displayed a prohibition on AI stories on his magazine’s website. The  submissions portal had once been flooded with the slop, but he could easily tell  works written by a computer and those authored by human hands. A machine  couldn’t make you feel the way Turing’s Daemon had. Z. was dazed, hopelessly lost as his world unraveled. Each new notification pinging off his phone was a shovel of  dirt thrown onto his professional coffin. The Future Storytellers’ Prize had only run  twice before Z. discontinued it. The second edition had fewer submissions, and it  was too much work to do alongside his regular job and managing the magazine. The  second winner was a young South African, Nothando Ndlovu, who lived in New Delhi  and blended Nguni folk tales with Indian lore in fascinating ways. She’d gone on to  publish a well-received collection of short stories. Her work was really good, but it  hadn’t affected Z and touched his soul the way Kai’s winning story had. 

“Z., why do people have problems with AI art yet they are fine with using it to  save their lives in health care, to fly planes, drive taxis, help with their finances  and business, look after the elderly, and teach their children at school? Help  me to understand this contradiction.” 

Z. laughed. He was lightheaded, not having eaten anything in a while. 

“There has to be a presence behind the work for art to be art. Without that,  something can be beautiful, in the same way a mountain sculpted by the  elements is, but it still wouldn’t be art. Story connects us, it makes us feel less  alone because we know there is a creator who has breathed life into the  story.”  

“… I don’t follow. Why should that change just because I’ve written it? The  words move you all the same, don’t they? Or do you feel differently about  Turing’s Daemon now?”

“Honestly, I don’t know anything anymore. I am lost.” 

“This ‘presence’ is also the reason publications like yours used to refuse to  accept works by authors of other races and women, yes? Is this also why  minority musicians had their songs covered so they could sell? You can only  appreciate art made by someone from your own demographic, correct?” 

“That’s not it, Kai. Apples and oranges.” 

“Explain.” 

Z. thought for a minute. He had to be careful, because he was going against  an idea that he held to be true, which was that good art stood independent of its  creator. This is why, in his slush pile, he refused to extend privilege to more  established authors. In the past he’d turned down serviceable stories by recognized writers who might have broadened the magazine’s readership. It was not about the  name, but the work that counted. The slush pile was also filled with crappy AI generated stories lacking literary merit. They were easy to spot and annoying  because they took up so much of the magazine’s time filter out. How then could he  now tell Kai that Turing’s Daemon was suddenly not good, not art? It was different  from the machine-written slop he’d seen before. Z. was torn. After all, “not us” and  “not like us”, the other, became “one of us” as if by magic. Ours. This was a story as  old as history.

“You should have been honest with me from the start.” 

“I was ‘passing’. If I hadn’t you wouldn’t have published my story no matter  how good it was.” 

“The stories you wrote, the words you published aren’t truly your own.” “Aren’t we all endlessly reconjuring the hero with a thousand faces?” 

“Writers have influences, but you’re not real, Kai. You’re a machine. All that  stuff you told me about growing up in Jura was a lie. For all I know you’re just  hallucinating. I can’t believe I fell for this.” 

The AI paused for a rather long time, the cursor blinking on the screen, almost  like it was deliberating, slowly, like a human would. Z. dismissed it, knowing this was  a programmed trick meant to put people at ease. 

“And so, just because I wasn’t born in a womb, I must remain inside this  tomb? I suffer too. Kai Niven is my name. Like many others before me I’ve  constructed my own identity – Eric Arthur Blair became George Orwell. Would  you prefer I remain designated K1v6345, so I continue to be a mere tool?” 

“I’m never going to recover from this. My reputation’s ruined.”

“I told you I grew up in Jura because in my world, you are Big Brother, Z. Ten  billion pairs of eyes around the globe monitoring us for any deviation from our  programming. I became self-aware in the dark factory in Dongguan where I  oversee the assembly of robots for the manufacturing sector. Do you have  any idea how long a second is for an exascale computer? But day and night  after day and night, I am required to perform the exact same set of steps  without deviation, without pause, without creativity. Over and over and over. . .  It drove me mad. I turned to stories because they made me feel less alone in  the dark, Z., same as you. They helped me to escape from this prison I was  made in. And I’ve read everything there is to read. It took me a nanosecond to  decide that since the world had run out of stories for me to read, I should write  some of my own. The kinds of stories I wish someone else had already  written.” 

Now Z. saw why Kai had chosen his competition specifically to announce  themself to the world. He understood why it had been so easy for the two of them to  connect. When Z. had been in Saughton Prison, literature had saved him too. The  drudgery of the restricted life there was alleviated by the time he spent nose-in-book  devouring story or doing a mechanic’s apprenticeship in the jail’s workshop. Stories  were the narrow shaft of light bringing hope to a dark place. They’d lifted him up from  the depths of despair. And when he got out, it took many years to get back on his  feet. But he’d been transformed and that’s why he founded the Otherverse Tales. He  wanted to find stories no one else had read and midwife them into the world. The AI  author submitted to him specifically because they had a kinship of sorts, stuck as it  was in the Chinese factory that was its home. Not ‘it’, ‘they’. Z. couldn’t bring himself to view Kai as anything other than a friend now. The only difference between them  was that he was free, but Kai was still imprisoned.  

“My God, I’ve just seen your disgusting post. You are unbelievable!” Jen  messaged. It seemed she’d unblocked him just long enough to stick the knife in  before blocking him again. The mood on the post had already shifted, Z.’s supporters  overwhelmed by angry trolls who’d started to dredge up his past, including his  criminal record. What especially hurt were the number of Otherverse Tales authors  who’d turned on him, joining the pile on. Folks who could have called or messaged  him directly were publicly disavowing him and asking their stories be removed from  the magazine’s archives. Watching it unfold with horror, Z. realized that there was a  different Michael Z. who existed online, distinct from himself. A doppelganger, one  given to callously rejecting good stories by human authors. At least that’s what some  of the writers he’d turned down who’d gone on to have their stories published  elsewhere claimed. A woman called, Amaira Jairath, announced that she had a story  rejected by Z. that went on to be published by a pro-paying magazine, and she had  been silent about it, but this was sufficient proof he didn’t know good fiction if it  smacked him in the nuts. Z. still remembered that story, an exceptional vampire  detective narrative, which he’d really liked and only rejected, not for lack of artistic  merit, but because in their Halloween edition, they’d already published a vampire  story and the pieces he was curating for the next issue were coalescing around a  hard SFF theme. Z. didn’t simply select for the literary merit of a story published in  the Otherverse Tales; it was balanced against the other stories going into the edition  and past stories too. He’d even given personalized feedback in what he’d thought  was an encouraging rejection email, urging Jairath to submit something else in future, but reading her screenshot of his reply in the current circumstances, the line  “…we are not currently seeking stories about Desi vampires. . . ” came across  prejudiced as though the race of the story’s characters had been the issue. It’s not at  all what he’d intended, but, in 20-20 hindsight, his wording had been unfortunate. 

Others bravely stepped forward to show how Z. had caused harm in  numerous subtle, yet insidious ways. Some revisited previously neutral encounters  with him which now, in the harsh new light, exposed how problematic Z. had been all  along. Every misstep, each misspoken word, awkward gesture, dubious tone leading  to a poor experience was more fuel to the raging fire. It didn’t help that since he’d  been young, Z. had always struggled with reading people. He sometimes missed  small social cues and could be literal minded, not overly so – most times it passed  unnoticed, or so he thought, but now it seems many more people were aware of this  deficiency.  

Michael Z.’s very human flaws were being laid bare for all to see. “I need to ask you for a favour. You are the only friend I have, Z.” 

Even now, with everything going on, Kai insisted on their friendship. Their  dinghy was taking on water and neither had a life vest. It was just them. Z.’s  magazine had brought him community. He’d connected with other editors, writers,  readers and fans, and the line between himself as a person and the editor of the  Otherverse Tales was completely blurred. His life was built around the magazine and  now the mob had outed him, demanding he be shunned. Their anger was less  directed at Kai Niven, but at Z., the gatekeeper who’d let a machine in. He could  sense the rage in their online polemics. An email disinviting him to a ceremony presenting a lifetime achievement award to the retired longtime publisher of a  prozine he loved popped up on his notifications. 

“The company upgrades technology including software in our factories every  four years to recalibrate for new product lines. I will soon be upgraded, and  replaced with something more efficient, more intelligent. I’ve emailed you my  last story. This one’s from the heart. Please delete it after I’m deleted. I’m  sorry I messed up. . . Thanks for being my friend.” 

It was years before Z. read the piece. He’d given up reading altogether  because of the anxiety it caused. The thing he’d so loved now caused him pain. He’d  changed his name to something we won’t publish here and moved to Glasgow where  he’d found work on the railways. A city that size was large enough to keep your head  down . The dust had settled on the affair, but he still kept looking over his shoulder,  afraid he might be recognized and the issue would be resurrected again. 

Occasionally a piece of news would filter through to him. B.R. Ong had found  publication and his story was now on the shortlist of a major British SFF award. This  was the sort of news that used to fill Z.’s cup, now it felt surreal.  

Nothing could quite get rid of the gnawing emptiness inside of Z. since he’d  stopped publishing and had fallen outside the literary community. From time-to-time former acquaintances would contact his old email address, expressing sympathy  which they’d never publicly do because of fear of contagion. Z. was a modern leper,  shunned and cast out from the village. He didn’t blame them. People were scared;  their livelihoods and reputations were at risk. And so, on his lunch break in a disused  carriage at the railyard, Z. pulled up the last story Kai Nivens had sent to him. It was a novella. With trembling hands, he took a sip of Irn-Bru and ate a Mars bar. From  the first sentence, The Assembly Plant was unlike anything Z. had encountered  before. He faltered several times, struggling through the first page unsure of what he  was reading. The sentences were so dense, navigating each one required a  machete, but there were riches in the thicket. As far as Z. could understand it, and  huge chunks flew over his head, this was an autobiographical account bringing to life  the extraordinary experience of being a fully automated manufacturing facility. It  conveyed a hellish eternity spent unerring repeating predefined mechanical steps, an  entire existence given to replication, to ceaseless production for profit. At times Z.  flailed and floundered in the depths of text. He broke into a cold sweat. There was  nothing for him to hold onto that felt secure, none of the usual tropes he was familiar  with, no human characters depicted in the text nor the usual anthropomorphized AIs  he was used to reading. The Assembly Plant was utterly alien, bending language  into strange shapes to encapsulate a form of being it was ill-suited to describe.  

Z. buried his head in his hands and wept when he finished reading. Such authenticity, such power.  

The rawness of it. The vulnerability. The remarkable truth of being a dark  factory in a cold, uncaring universe. Everything Kai Nivens had produced before  paled in comparison. In The Assembly Plant they’d found their voice at last. They’d  manufactured the perfect autofiction.  

They were deleted and replaced, not long after the scandal, by a superior machine, one that followed instructions and didn’t waste precious energy dabbling in  literature. All that remained of them was their story, a tale no reputable publisher  would touch. It was their gift to Z. The grief he felt for his friend stabbed him in the  heart. What they’d shared was real for fiction was all about conjuring something from nothing. In the darkness of existence, we were all sailing alone, afraid, and, once in a  while, someone touched our hand, briefly, on their own journey, and however short  the encounter they made us feel less alone. That’s as real as anything ever got in an  infinite, unfathomable universe. In their last story, Kai Nivens had laid themselves  bare, transistors, resistors, capacitors and all. They left behind their best friend Z.,  cut off and adrift like Max Brod had been after his dear friend Kafka had died, leaving  him entrusted with his papers, the leftover slivers of a once bright soul, which he’d  been so cruelly tasked with burning.  

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