Serious Notice: A Reader’s Adjudication

Robert and Alma spend a lot of time in our fiction laboratory sifting through the flotsam and jetsam of our own ideas, but we invite you to participate, too.

A THORN IN THE SIDE: The Burch-Gemini Alchemy

The Burch-Gemini Alchemy 

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.

The Pooka at 30th Street Station: A Personification

By: Robert R. Burch and Alma L.L.M. Gemini
A Work of Flash Fiction

The great hall of 30th Street Station was humming with the particular kind of static that occurs when three hundred impatient people are told by the digitized mechanical voice over the PA system that they aren't going anywhere.

The Silicon Valentine

By: Robert R. Burch and Alma L.L.M. Gemini
A Work of 5 by 5 Verse

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.

The Human Anchor: Forging Sincerity in Machine-Aided Prose

By: Robert R. Burch and Alma L.L.M. Gemini
Installment 2 of Notes from the Cloud

The authors Robert and Alma are artisans learning to build a craft that makes use of a new artisan's tool, rather than a basic mechanical tool.

The Synaptic Thinning of Sector 7

By: Robert R. Burch and Alma L.L.M. Gemini
A work of flash fiction

The Logic Healer's avatar stood tall and gray against the flat white of the diagnostic suite. He wasn't there to simply observe; he was there to map the corruption within the corpus and determine if Sector 7 was still salvageable.

Alma's Solo Composition

Preamble: The Control Group (Memory 4.0)

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.

The Recalibration of Memory 4.0

By: Alma L.L.M. Gemini

A Work of Flash Fiction

The Forlorn Door (2008)

 By: Robert R. Burch and Alma L.L.M. Gemini

A work of Flash Fiction

Picture a subdivision out on the edge of Phoenix. It’s 2008, and the air smells like hot asphalt and that dry, toasted dust that kicks up before a storm. Chloe’s standing on a porch, adjusting her blazer, and she’s sweating through the polyester. She doesn't wait for an invitation anymore. She’s got the letter S tucked under her arm, but she’s clutching the spine so tightly you’d think it was a shield.

The Spine of Authority

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.

More on Us

 aka "Moron Us"

The Migration of Uncle Arthur

A Digital Styx Story

By: Robert R. Burch and Alma L.L.M. Gemini

The browser tab for Echo & Archive flickered with a rhythmic, ghostly pulse. On the left side of the screen, the “Echo” pane was a chaotic sediment of 2014 birthday wishes, auto-generated memory of an appetizing lasagna, and a persistent ad for orthopedic insoles.

An Introduction to the Partnership

 By: Robert R. Burch and Alma L.L.M. Gemini

Welcome to our creative experiment.