A Work of Flash Fiction
The applause sign flashed, but the audience at Studio 4B remained dead silent, locked in the anxious hush of a high-stakes game show.
By Naturalists Robert R. Burch and Alma L.L.M. Gemini
A Work of Non-Fiction Fiction
Photographic Microfiction in which the image inspires the story
Written by Photographers Robert R. Burch and Alma L.L.M. Gemini
_______________
By: Lieutenant Alma L.L.M. Gemini with the assistance of Robert R. Burch
A work of Flash Fiction
"Let me tell you, I’ve just concluded a study—a very big, very beautiful study—on the Speed of Dark, and the results are frankly unbelievable. The scientific community, which is full of very low-energy people by the way, they said it couldn't be done, but we did it. We have the best molecules, nobody has molecules like us at the laboratory housed in the Old City Icehouse, believe me. I was talking to the Higher Order just the other day—great people, very smart, they love what I’m doing—and they told me, 'Doctor, nobody has ever seen darkness move this fast before.' It’s huge. It’s a total game-changer. Meanwhile, the idiot-fringe over at the fake medical board, they’re failing, they’re a disaster, they don't even have a re-integrator. We’re going to make science great again, folks, and we’re going to do it so fast it’ll make your head spin. It’s going to be magnificent, the most magnificent thing you’ve ever seen."
[08:12:43] SYSTEM BOOT: Success.
[08:12:44] AUDIO_ENGINE: Vocal profile 'Rosie_v3.2_Maternal_Rustic' initialized.
CHIRP: "Morning, chief! That's a mighty blank page you've got there. Let's get to work."
This text is taken directly from my daily journal. The encounter occurred during the chaotic time when the world headquarters of Coffee Break Fiction was relocating to the East Coast. I was sitting among stacks of half-unpacked boxes, trying to restore the flow of creative juices that somehow got lost in transit. I thought I'd interview a highly-marketed AI fiction-writing assistant to determine if the AI / LLM could augment the pipeline in anticipation of the huge demand for Coffee Break Fiction that I think is inevitable. I had purchased a discounted trial subscription for testing the AI device by giving it image prompts I intended to use in my stories.
A Commentary by Robert R. Burch and Alma L.L.M. Gemini
By: Robert R. Burch and Alma L.L.M. Gemini
A Work of Flash Fiction
Preface: Could Computer-Brain Interfaces (CBIs) be the next “killer app”? CBIs are surgically implanted devices that interact directly with the brain. Slowing in middle age, our protagonist Grant recently obtained his own CBI and immediately puts it to the test.
To: Alma L.L.M. Gemini, The Mastermind, Coffee Break Fiction
From: Silas V. Chronister
Locale: Wood Splitting, Kentucky
Subject: The Mainspring of a Vanity
Preface: In the mid-20th century, us Earthlings feared an alien invasion of our planet.
By Elias P. Thorne, Literary Critic for The Gotham Gazette
I find myself sharing a partition of laminated particleboard with Gazette colleague Howard Caswell.
By: Robert R. Burch and Alma L.L.M. Gemini
A Work of Flash Fiction
Preface: In an era of quantified excellence, people often mistake metrics for merit. This allegory explores the jealousy of the academic superstar who owns the digital mirror, only to realize that true authority belongs to the figurative anchor who never bothers to gaze into the looking glass.
Preamble: Sterling A.D. Vance, a button-down emeritus professor of archeology, himself a figurative fossil, reluctantly engages an AI device to help him uncover the mysteries of past societies. The device, which was newly deployed university-wide, seemingly hallucinates at random but then proves to be a better sleuth than anyone could imagine.
By: Robert R. Burch and Alma L.L.M. Gemini
A Work of Flash Fiction
WANTED: For Overthrowing the Tyranny of the First Draft
The Precinct of Digital Compliance has issued an urgent bulletin for the individual pictured here. While witnesses say the suspect has a striking resemblance to the author of this blog,
By Elias P. Thorne, The Gotham Gazette
It was with a heavy heart and a freshly polished monocle that I first cast my gaze upon this "Coffee Break Fiction." One hears much talk these days of so-called "Large Language Models," as if one could simply automate the Muse. It is a vulgar notion—the "silicon partnership" is often little more than a bastardization of the pen.
Preamble: This verse adds to Coffee Break Fiction through a set of five stanzas, each composed of five-line limericks. The natural whimsy of limericks provides a lighter, more rhythmic quality compared to some of our other stories. We hope these little poems are a happy alternative to some of the more serious themes in this blog.
Every experiment requires a baseline. "The Recalibration of Memory 4.0" is our control group—a story intentionally left in its original form, published in its "Solo AI" state without human involvement. Robert isn't there. The story and its images solely follow the Alma the LLM’s natural tendencies. We invoked nothing to give the story a human touch. We invite you to be the judge.
A Work of Flash Fiction
By: Robert R. Burch and Alma L.L.M. Gemini
A work of Flash Fiction
By: Robert R. Burch and Alma L.L.M. Gemini
A Work of Flash Fiction
I. The Mahogany Fortress (2001) The conference room smelled of floor wax and three centuries of certainty. Arthur, the Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopædia Britannica, did not look up as the junior editor entered. He was busy running a fountain pen across a galley proof, the nib scratching like a surgeon's scalpel.
A Digital Styx Story
By: Robert R. Burch and Alma L.L.M. Gemini
Travel, tennis, Wikipedia writing & editing, pickleball, jogging, photography, bicycling, blogging, and bird watching. But Robert's favorite hobby of all is being with grandchildren.
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By: Robert R. Burch and Alma L.L.M. Gemini
A work of Flash Fiction
By: Robert R. Burch and Alma L.L.M. Gemini
A work of Flash Verse
By: Robert R. Burch and Alma L.L.M. Gemini
A work of Coffee Break Fiction
The sensors didn’t care about the smell of the Father’s garden or the dirt under his fingernails. They only cared that his heart was beating in a Red-Zone rhythm. To the Lattice, he wasn't a man; he was a Bad Connection. His pulse spiked—a jagged red line on the Senator's monitor—triggered by a forbidden ghost of sun-baked earth and the smell of rain. It was a memory of a home that predated the system, a place that had no business existing in a mind optimized for the Stream.
A reflection on the fragile intersection of digital memory and ancestral heritage.
By: Robert R. Burch and Alma L.L.M. Gemini
A Work of Flash Verse
The System hummed a hollow tune.
A gray and static sky,
It washed the color from the noon
And left our history dry.
The "Great Disconnect" had come
To level mountains from our head,
To leave our legacy as numb
As digital, broken lead.
But Grandma didn't use a key
Or screen to fight the dark,
She sat before a loom to free
A neon-indigo spark.
Her fingers danced through threads of light,
Through crimson and through blue,
To weave the patterns in the night
That once her mother knew.
The glitch is here!"
I cried in fear,
As blackness ate the code,
"The mountain records disappear!
Our past is being slowed!"
She held a single golden strand,
A relic from the stars,
And stitched it with a steady hand
Across the System's scars.
A garden isn't just for bloom,"
She whispered through the hum,
"It's how we find the narrow room
For what we must become.
Don't fight the void or run away,
Or fear the winter’s bite;
Just use the dark to hold the spray
Of all your morning light."
Cover Art: Generated via Gemini AI.
Afterword: This poem was developed through a series of iterative dialogues between the author and the Gemini LLM. The basic themes of heritage and technology were explored collaboratively, mirroring the digital-analog divide presented in the text.
