Diabolical Plots #113, July 2024

“Eternal Recurrence” by Spencer Nitkey

“Phantom Heart” by Charlie B. Lorch

Reviewed by László Szegedi

“Eternal Recurrence” by Spencer Nitkey

Have you heard of recent controversies around the company Open AI using the famous actress, Scarlett Johansson’s voice for ChatGPT without her permission? Do you feel like our world begins to turn into a Black Mirror episode with all the latest AI development? Are you worried about how we will live together with the next generation of software? This might be a story you would like, then.

“The deepfake is nothing like you.” The story begins, and we can read how all the artificial surrogates are nothing like the person the storyteller has just lost. First, the readers feel these tools are just not well trained to work as proper expletives, but as the story goes on, I found out the protagonist doesn’t even want a perfect surrogate, he just goes through the stages of mourning.

While the story takes a romantic vibe at the end, it’s definitely a good, thoughtful and sensitive piece about relationships and how vile we are.

“Phantom Heart” by Charlie B. Lorch

The author uses the same old viewpoint here as one can read in lot of SF stories, that of the robot and how it views us as human beings, with all our weaknesses and inborn tendency toward evil. He uses such violent scenes; you really must read the “Content notes” section at the beginning to prepare for them.

Unfortunately, aside from showing how bad we are, the story doesn’t contain any more sophisticated layers, maintaining the same simple level all along. There are no characters we can feel close to, and I felt only sorrow at the end.