YA, a young author, was fascinated as a software developer talked about Metis, a system that thinks, reasons and writes, as a pro.

Beats humans in communication, creative, critical and commercial.

“It does reports, notes, analyses, and crunches data. Every allotted task. Writes fiction and poetry!” Exclaimed the bearded expert rapturously, adjusting bifocals over the aquiline nose.

Metis can write anything.

Huge relief for the intellectually-challenged. Guys who cannot move beyond the first para.

Magic!

Impressed, the unemployed YA in their late-20s reverentially approached the  technology with the sole mission of completing an entry for an international short-story competition. Money and a chance to connect with a top publisher interested in cutting-edge fiction. (Whatever that means.)

YA was the typical product of western education and a small grimy town in South Asia who aspired to be a genius. A Joyce, Hemingway, Chekhov and Marquez all rolled into one spectacular writer, out to dazzle the world and to win the Nobel.

YA loved to flaunt famous authors to the utter irritation of friends. The common verdict: a disgusting display of cultural superiority by an arrogant wannabe who chatters in colonial English but thinks in “hated” native language. A brown sahib spouting Shakespeare, dismissing his own culture as low. YA labeled them narrow, provincial, philistine. Earlier, he had flirted with Kafka, Thomas Mann, Gogol and Gunter Grass. These days, mocking friends observed, new gods have replaced the older ones. He is a fickle-minded imitator! An imposter!

Unable to land the job of a school teacher, the restive YA wanted to turn to writing as a career, before his old man throws him, “the loafer,” out of a household of 10 hungry mouths, an ailing mother and wife.

(He was fed up to the teeth, the old man. Frustrated with the nervous, pale, thin son with a tic; a heavy smoker; addicted to sugary tea; always dreaming of imaginary conquests. Wasting time with equally hopeless friends in the little tea stall, near the old college, where he had studied for an MA in English Studies, four years ago. A useless degree, anyway, in a skilled job-market dominated by software professionals, doctors, managers, engineers, financial experts. Father wanted the eldest child to work in a saree shop of a friend. The son did not like a 9am-9pm job; had different ambitions. “I will bring fame and fortune to the family, Ma, by my writing!” he promised his coughing mother daily. “Fame, my foot!” Father often shouted angrily and finally gave the ultimatum: Either a job or you exit within a fortnight! No room for an idiot, a romantic, in a house of a hard-working father. “Who pays for writers?” He asked, deeply upset. “They die poor.” YA did not contest this view.)

YA wandered the twisted town and dreamed of opulence, celebrity and immortality, in a shared room of a decrepit house of no hopes. He confided to siblings: I do not want to die unsung and deprived, a replica of father. I want to rise and shine.

The siblings understood the pain. They, too, never wanted to be replicas. Their father also never wanted to be like his father.

The cycle needed to be broken.

Literature offers refuge to the anonymous.

YA wanted to write about a youth of fine ideals, trapped in a small town, searching for an exit from a man-made hell.

He continued to stare at the blank wall for days and say one solution: technology.

Command was given to Metis to write a 5000-word piece in English. The AI-assisted short story was prompted with: “the most beautiful story with a startling end!”

Titled “Exits,” it described a postcolonial Ulysses in search of contemporary Ithaca, in the clipped tones of Hemingway (iceberg theory applied); a prose combo of Chekhov’s delicate psychological insights and magic realism of Marquez.

Plain sentences alternated with florid; absurd with the weird. An overall funny, comic and sad tale.

Sample:

Ulysses goes down the convoluted city, the way chewed food-morsels go down crooked-intestinal routes. Dark innards that slow progress. An orange evening hangs as a Chinese red lantern floating over a forest of ugly monstrosities. Ithaca is a siren singing from the depths of a choppy sea that becomes foamy fiends ready to gulp down unwary travelers. Spooky hands out to butcher gullible crew, the murky ink poured over the dim sky…

The judges were mesmerized.

The imagery, staggering!

“Nothing like it seen earlier. Hits directly the solar plexus!” the panel of judges declared breathlessly.

YA won. Big money. Bigger opportunity. Accepted by a leading publisher.

The media loves the underdog.

Third World Wins First World Prize!

Viral fame.

The family discovered the genius.

A few months later, YA was asked to submit a long novel. He asked Metis to complete the job.

This time, Metis replied in a hoarse voice, “I can produce nouveau-roman not attempted so far by any rival.”

“Good to hear this!”

“I can give you a new avatar by altering your face. A profile that matches the dystopia set in a post-human world.”

He agreed, tempted by the possibilities.

The camera clicked. The visual showed a young author with modified features. A hat, an eye patch, a grey beard over a muscular face.

He approved the image.

Click on the new version!

He did.

A light flashed.

Instantly, YA changed into the Altered Version. Lost were the original features, voice, cognitive faculty.

His mind echo-chambers hundreds of nonexistent quotes. His novel contains multiplications of sentences lifted from popular authors; a sprawling text of modified quotes, un-acknowledged. Pastiche of unnamed sources. A smart jumble, machine-curated.

Nothing unique, all counterfeit copy.

He could no longer recognize himself.

He felt drowned in a sea of floating passages connected to nothing, no one, and not himself.

YA remains imprisoned inside a prophetic novel called Metis Syndrome.