Short Story Submission

A short story I submitted to a science fiction literary magazine after their submission guidelines inspired me to write it. It was rejected shortly thereafter.

Aaron Thorpe dutifully double-checked his cover letter while the authenticator sat on his desk, as if it was patiently waiting to be used. It would be the first time he would have used it, and he was leery of what it would feel like, but he was determined to be published at long last.

After pasting the cover letter into its field, he double- and triple-checked all the others--name, address, genre, word count, title--perhaps subconsciously delaying the inevitable. Red asterisks apparently denoted the required fields, and they all had red asterisks. . .including the second checkbox.

Aaron clicked the button labeled “Choose File,” and uploaded “Tribulations of a Terrier,” the culmination of the hobby he took up after the accident and the skill he’d honed under the encouragement of his second wife Jenna; as well as inspiration from Louie, his first wife’s and his Jack Russell who had perished along with her. Aaron was aware to some degree that his story would be dismissed as maudlin and mawkish by the more discerning, but the readers of this magazine were likely to let it envelop them like scented bathwater.

Aaron then clicked on the first checkbox, which served as his declaration that he was the story’s legal representative; that it was not currently under consideration by other publishers; and, of course, it was written without the aid of artificial intelligence.

That last claim was, of course, the most difficult for a writer to prove with a simple click of a mouse, and for a publisher to verify. A statement in boldface in the submission guidelines asserting that attempting to submit works written, developed, or assisted by AI may result in a ban from future submissions only goes so far. Thus the addition of the second checkbox, the clicking of which signaled one’s agreement to submit to an analysis by the authenticator.

Aaron, like many others of his ilk, was loath to purchase the peripheral for his computer. For years, he wrote fiction primarily as a means to remove himself mentally from the day in the national park when he asked his wife Madeleine to pose for a picture while holding Louie in her arms, when he directed her to stand on the rocky outcropping overlooking a gorge, when the ground beneath her suddenly gave way. The other witnesses of the fall, three mountain bikers who had stopped for some trail mix, might have been privileged to have the memory dissipate over time, but Aaron had to wrestle with his subconscious in both his waking hours and his dreams.

But Jenna had kept telling him how others not in his writer’s group deserved to see the things he was capable of, and he finally ordered the authenticator that was now linked to his computer via a fiber optic cable. (Ordinary copper wire could never handle data at the rate in which it is delivered by the hippocampus.)

After clicking the button marked “Next,” Aaron was greeted by a prompt to place the halo-shaped authenticator over his cranium. He’d already adjusted the straps in anticipation. What he could not anticipate, however--because those who experienced it before him had all failed to describe it in a way that could be understood by those who had not--was what would happen after he clicked “Start Authentication.”

Just as students had to demonstrate they did not use calculator software to complete their math homework by showing their work, so too must authors demonstrate they did not rely on AI to write their stories by documenting their thought process behind all the aspects of their writing. But since AI had now advanced to the point that it could craft a convincing explanation for a supposed writer’s creative choices, publishers had to resort to more invasive measures to ensure writers’ honesty.

Aaron tried to relax as much as possible when the online submissions system fed the authenticator the text document he’d just uploaded. As the authenticator interfaced directly with his brain to analyze “Tribulations of a Terrier” and determine the provenance of every plot point and line of dialogue he’d written, an unavoidable side effect was that Aaron himself would remember it at the time of analysis, as if voluntarily recalling the memory.

The first order of business was determining the creative decisions in the surface attributes of the story: word choice, grammar, punctuation. This was the stage that was most overwhelming to all subjects of the process, and Aaron was no exception: In rapid succession, memories surfaced of reading different words for the first time and studying parts of speech in elementary school, and committing what he’d learned to his story. He was somewhat embarrassed to recall so many instances of consulting a thesaurus, and hoped the assistant editor (who would later be ascertaining the story’s organic origins by experiencing these recorded memories as if they were her own) would not judge him too harshly for it.

What followed was far more straightforward: an examination of the sources of inspiration for the plot of “Tribulations of a Terrier.” This part of the procedure may not have been so cut and dried for other stories, but Aaron’s was based by and large on his experiences with Louie, so the memories he experienced in quick succession stayed more or less close to the same point of origin. Sammy, the dog in the story, had many attributes present in Louie, from the way he cocked his head to one side when trying to decipher the words of his master to his eager jumps when anticipating being fed.

And, on a more somber note, the master’s emotions immediately following Sammy’s death were based directly on Aaron’s after Louie had expired together with Madeleine. It was different to some degree, of course: Sammy’s death took his master completely by surprise. The fictional master did not, unlike his real counterpart, deliberately arrange for his wife to hold the dog so she would hesitate to let go of it and grab onto something to save herself from the fall.

But then Aaron started remembering things he didn’t think he would during the authentication process, events only tangentially related to Louie’s death but the authenticator deemed relevant nonetheless. He remembered selecting the precipice in question as it was next to a clearing where hikers and cyclists were known to rest, so there would be witnesses who could attest that it was indeed an accident. And he remembered the middle of the night before--after he told Madeleine he was going for a late night swim and she should just go to sleep in their tent--spending hours excavating the outcropping, removing the dirt caked between the stones with a trowel and a damp rag, and carefully placing the stones back where they were so that the loosened structure would collapse if a significant weight were to be placed atop it.

Before Aaron could form a plan as to what to do, a notice popped up on his screen stating the authentication was now complete. All the memories that had been gathered were now property of the magazine, ready for the assistant editor’s inspection.

Aaron ripped off the authenticator, but he knew that would have no effect now. The brain that betrayed him was now awash in panic over how the information extracted by the authenticator would be handled by the assistant editor. Would she realize the meaning of the memories she would recall as if they were her own? Would she see fit to do anything about it? Was there some code of confidentiality in place? Would that be nullified if the memories contained evidence of a felony? Were these memories admissible as evidence in court?

All these answers, Aaron knew to his chagrin, would only come in due time. The submission guidelines specified an average response time of five weeks, and allowed for a query email after 45 days.

Author's Note

After publishing this story online, I realized that "rocky outcroppings" are composed of bedrock and, by definition, not of loose stone prone to collapsing. I would appreciate it if implications otherwise in this story were attributed to artistic license, rather than failure to conduct adequate research. Thank you.