Short Stories in January

By: C. Mahoney

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

If you enjoy reading short stories, then this is the perfect book for you. Each day in the month of January, I imagined a story that could be written. I thought of who would be in that story, what they might do, where they might go, what thoughts they might ponder and how this matters in the big picture of life. And then I imported this information into a prompt box for an online AI and tasked it with creating a story for me.

Yes, you heard me right. I used my creativity to come up with a story that I was interested in reading, and then I handed over this task to a bot to make it. I know, that sounds weird, maybe lazy, maybe impossible because everyone knows that creativity only lies within the minds of humans, not machines, right? Their work would surely be subpar, less than, not worthy of reading. Well, I caution you to pause your criticism and use a scientific analysis before throwing your hands up into the air and walking away.

As you read these stories, know that each one arose from my mind. I provided a kernal and a set of instructions. I gave details about a character thinking and pondering and doing things that mirror my own life and my own curiosities. I did this first thing in the morning for thirty-one days in the month of January, and on the final day I self-published this collection with the hope that you would enjoy reading these stories as much as I did.

We live in an era where machines can be trained on human data, and then tasked with doing what we thought was surely our domain…storytelling. If you are curious about whether a story crafted by a human and created by a machine can keep your attention, then venture forward boldly and read these thirty-one short stories about immortality, death, solitude, power, freedom, violence, abduction, dreams, empathy, truth, disappointment, imagination, creativity, the mind, and more. You won’t be disappointed!