Ernest leans back from the screen. His eyes sting. For a moment, the blinking cursor at the end of the last sentence looks like it’s winking at him.
He’s done.
The manuscript is finished. Eighty-four thousand words. Three and a half months. Twenty-three late nights that bled into sunrises. One full mental breakdown in early June, two minor ones in July. But the story—his story—is done.
He scrolls to the top of the document. The title glows against the white: Children of the Sleeplight. It’s a good title. Earnest. Poetic. Unmarketable.
He knows this because the Submission Portal for LitPub’s speculative fiction imprint rejected that same title three times last year. Not the manuscript—just the title. Their bots read titles first. The rest follows only if the hook survives a trillion-parameter culling.
Ernest pushes his chair back and walks into the kitchen. His apartment is small, clean, and tastefully empty. The walls are lined with printed book spines—hollow things, mostly decorative. The only physical book he owns is a dog-eared copy of Storycraft: Writing for the Next Intelligence, its cover splattered with old coffee.
He stares at his reflection in the microwave door. His mouth is drawn, eyes pale with fatigue. He looks like someone who wants to be remembered. And is afraid he won’t be. In the silence of his apartment, the world feels paused. His back aches. His eyes itch. Outside, drones murmur through the early evening light like distant insects.
Back at the desk, he opens the portal in a second tab.
Welcome to ONYX: Train Tomorrow’s Imagination
He scrolls past the boilerplate: Your work may be used by AIs to learn narrative structure, character development, and emotional realism. You retain no rights. We pay based on perceived quality.
Ernest knows the drill.
ONYX will ingest the story. An LLM will read it in half a second, analyze it for tropes, originality, sentence structure, cultural sensitivity, depth, pacing, dialogue efficiency. Then it will stamp it with a category and a dollar value.
No human will read it. Not today. Maybe not ever.
But they’ll learn from it. All the little AIs who one day will generate bedtime stories for six-year-olds. Or outline movie treatments. Or ghostwrite memoirs for politicians. Some microscopic part of Children of the Sleeplight might survive in a line of dialogue spoken by a robot pretending to be a teenager in the year 2092.
It pays well. That should be enough.
But it isn’t.
He tabs to the old Submission Tracker. Fifteen open calls from publishers. All unpaid. Most will take six months to respond. One still has his last story—The Ocean Stammers—"under review."
That was eleven months ago.
Ernest sighs, returns to ONYX, and uploads the manuscript.
As the file begins processing, he opens his notes app and types a message to himself.
“Farewell, Ada. Larkin. I’ll find you again in the sequel.”
He deletes the line, then types it again—then deletes it for good.
The screen flashes: Processing complete. Estimated payout: $2,000. Bonus under review.
Then a second message slides into view, outlined in cheerful silver-blue.
Congratulations! Your story has been certified AI-free.
A final note appears beneath it.
“Characters are richly rendered. The arc of Ada’s decision to sabotage the Sleeplight reactor is emotionally compelling. Dialogue reveals moral nuance with human-like cadence. As a result, you are awarded a Quality Bonus of $500. Thank you for training us.”
Ernest stares at it for a long time.
He can’t decide if it’s the nicest rejection he’s ever received—or the cruelest praise.
Then he closes the laptop, stands, puts on his shoes, opens the door, and steps out into a sunset the color of diluted fire.
Curious how much is AI? Read the prompts here.