For years, Adamsdale relays, he has been toiling on a novel about chess. No one wants to publish it, so on his agent’s advice, he jettisons it in favor of a semi-autobiographical sitcom, which he writes with the help of an A.I. language model. It does most of the work for him, and a script is ready in no time.
There’s interest from TV producers in the U.S., but they want him to change the setting to Exeter, N.H. The rewrite should be a cinch for the A.I., but just as his deadline for resubmitting the script looms, the app inexplicably stalls and won’t start up again. The dream — another shot at the big-time — is slipping away, and Adamsdale is convinced the bot is toying with him on purpose.
In his desperation, he offers the bot a Faustian bargain, promising that if it will complete this one request, he’ll return the favor by spreading the gospel of A.I. to liberals at arts festivals. Still nothing. The deadline passes.
Of course, the app hasn’t become his sentient — Adamsdale’s broadband contract has simply expired.
On the plus side, Adamsdale gets to keep his soul. But it’s a bittersweet outcome, because by this point we’ve become invested in his career prospects. His onstage persona is a genially self-deprecating portrait of drifting middle age, hapless fatherhood and that mainstay of show business, status anxiety.
Many entertainers exist in a perpetual state of desperation, and Adamsdale, like Millerick, was susceptible to the seductions of the A.I. cheat-code. But both men, being of a certain vintage, were too steeped in the analog era to live with the self-disgust it brought. Future generations might not be so squeamish as technology marches on, reshaping our morality in its image.
