Artificial Erotica

(written by the editor, edited by the writer)

Gil Dillard sat at his desk, poring over the manuscript again. He’d lost count of how many times he’d read it since he printed it yesterday afternoon. And yet, each time he did, he ascended slightly further into a euphoric stupor. How did this happen, after all these years? It didn’t matter, this was it. This was going to put Mr. Smut back on the map!

The author, his once most-prized client, a man he’d known for decades, was about to arrive. Gil had the cookie-cutter contract ready, but he knew it was just a front. He would hand over his firstborn if Johnny wanted, as long as Johnny put pen to paper before he left Gil’s office.

Two pages into Gil’s latest read, his buzzer sounded, and after confirming through the intercom that it was his guest of honor, he let him inside. Gil kept reading until Johnny opened his door.

“Johnny, you sick fuck! Get in here!” Gil yelled as he brought him in for a hug. “How are you? How long has it been?”
“Good to see you too, Gil. Yeah, I can’t remember the last time I was here. It feels…smaller.” That or Johnny’s gotten bigger, Gil thought to himself.

John Stephens (pen name Johnny Stiff) was the most decorated writer in his field for years. But about a half-decade ago, it suddenly came to a crashing halt. No one in the industry could explain it. Some say he got too serene after he took up transcendental meditation. Others say he lost his edge after he had a vasectomy. Regardless, the results, or lack thereof, spoke for themselves.

After years of reliably titillating material—usually two or three collections every year—the drop off in quantity and quality was shocking. The great Johnny Stiff, suddenly down to one collection of middling, semi-chub stories. But Gil didn’t care. He knew what he was reading, Johnny’s triumphant return to erotica’s Mount Rushmore. And that return had to happen under Mr. Smut Publishing no less!

“Okay Johnny,” Gil said as they both took a seat, “I’ve read this thing like 30 times. Every time it gets better. You’re back! We’re back!”
“Thanks, Gil. I’m really happy with how it came out.”
“Are you kidding me? You should be ecstatic! This is gonna go down as your masterpiece, your magnum opus! These scenes, more vivid and lurid than you’ve written in years. You got straight sex, gay sex, trans sex, something for everybody. And the way you circle all these seemingly unrelated stories back to Becky? Brilliant!”
“Okay, okay, I get it, it’s good. Let’s just figure out how we’re gonna get it published.”

Gil couldn’t help but notice a change in Johnny’s demeanor. He had always been a boisterous, gregarious fellow when they negotiated, clearly confident in his work. But now he seemed reserved, eager to get this over with as quickly as possible. Strange, but not something that was going to slow Gil down.

“I like your thinking,” he said to Johnny. “Lemme start going through my basic contract template. But I can always make some tweaks for the great Johnny Stiff.”
“No that’s fine, let’s just use your standard one.”

Okay, Gil thought to himself, something’s off. Johnny knew how shitty Gil’s standard contract was. He used to pilfer first-time authors who didn’t know any better. Frankly, if he had been in Johnny’s shoes, he’d be insulted by this contract. Gil decided he needed to extract some more information.

“Suit yourself, big guy,” he said as he started filling out the paperwork. “Buy hey, since we’re not negotiating, why don’t you tell me how you came up with all this stuff?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I mean I’m Johnny Stiff, ain’t I?”
“Please. The Johnny Stiff I know disappeared before Covid. And now, all of a sudden, he’s back from the dead! How’d you do it?”
“Oh gee, I don’t know. Just some new inspiration I guess.”
“Yeah, I bet. Come on, spill it. What new inspiration? You get a girlfriend on the side? You get a boyfriend on the side? Wife start pegging you?”
“Okay, okay, fine. You really wanna know the big difference?”
“No, I’ve just been asking incessantly for legal reasons."
“Wait, really?”
“No, not really! The fuck would I do that for? I’m just your dear friend, your partner-in-crime, and I’m dying to know!”
“Alright, fuck, you’re very persuasive. Okay…”

Gil sat on the literal edge of his seat waiting to hear the answer. If Johnny’s story of inspiration was even half as good as some of the stories in his book, he’d be golden. It would make for a killer foreword, for a book that would leave them drowning in money from thirsty men and women from all around the world at $15.99 a pop!

“I used A.I.”

For the first time since his wife came home with a pet parakeet, Gil didn’t know what to say. He sat stone-faced, staring at Johnny.

“Alright, I guess that’s out of the way,” Johnny said to break the silence. “Do you wanna talk titles?”
“Come again?”
“Hmm, a bit blunt, more direct than usual for you. But I guess it could work. Points to me returning to the big stage, and Becky definitely ‘comes again’ during that last chapter—”
“I’m not talking about the title! What do you mean, you ‘used A.I.’?”
“Well, I was stuck, just like I had been for a long time. So, I had a chatbot help me…rediscover my voice.”
“Rediscover your voice, huh? All right, well, I guess that’s okay. I mean, it’s not like you had it write entire chapters, right?”Johnny grimaced. “Oh, for fuck’s sake! How much of this manuscript is actually A.I.?"
“Seventy…eighty…ninety…ninety-five percent?” Johnny said as he slowly realized how high the true answer was.
“Ninety-five percent?!?!?!?! I don’t understand! How did you even do this? Don’t these bots have, like, usage policies that stop you from making explicit stuff?"
“Well, yes, but you can work around them pretty easily. You just gotta get the prompts right, and you kind of trick it into getting smutty. Pretty cool, right?”
“No, Johnny, it’s not pretty cool. I can’t publish this! It’s not yours. It belongs to the A.I.”
“No, no, it’s mine! Here’s the thing. I had the chatbot write up a contract that gave all the rights to whatever it wrote to me. So legally, it’s mine.”
“That’s ridiculous. How are you gonna explain this on the tour circuit, when people asked you how you brought these stories to life? You gonna say the chatbot did it?”
“No, I mean, I don’t know. I’ll come up with something. Maybe the app can come up with something for me.”

“Okay, that’s it, we’re done,” Gil seethed.
“No! Come on, Gil. We can do this.”
“Enough! This is a disgrace. You’re a disgrace. This isn’t what erotica is about. It’s about the soul, the senses, and the innermost thoughts that become reality with just a little nudge. It’s about helping sad, repressed people get out of their shells. It’s about using your own artistry to paint a porno with words. But this? This?”
“I know all that Gil. But you can’t dispute the results. This might be better than anything I or anyone else has ever written! It deserves to be out there, and you know it.”

Gil knew Johnny was right. This stuff was special, no matter who—or what—wrote it. Maybe those sad, repressed people did need to see it. But he knew one thing: it wouldn’t be from Mr. Smut. Could he use the break? Sure, but not like this. There’s got to be a code, even in erotica. He knew what he had to do.

“Get out of my office, Johnny.”
“Oh, Gil, come on. You don’t need to do that—”
“I said GET OUT! Go on, scram, vamoose. And don’t ever let me see your face again, or won’t even get another meeting anywhere in this town, you hear me? Good-bye!”
“Okay, I understand,” Johnny stammered, with a hint of tears in his eyes. “Take care, Gil. Take care.” And he skulked out of the building with his manuscript in hand.

Gil sat there, stewing. He couldn’t tell you how long he simmered to gather his thoughts.

Once he composed himself, he took out his phone and made a ChatGPT account.