Collector’s Item

guitar

PHOTO PROMPT © Jennifer Pendergast

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.

“You’re kidding. No. Absolutely not.” Daniel stared in disgust at the rainbow-striped acoustic guitar. It was hanging with others of the more common variety in a second-hand store catering exclusively to metanormal customers.

“I’m serious. In a couple of months, when GenZ discovers the music of legendary folk singer Kain DeMarko, it will be worth millions. He played it three times at the Fillmore West during the Summer of Love.”

“You are the silliest predictive AI I’ve ever engaged.” He’d just leased Sofia and uploaded her into his cranial implant last week.

“It’s on discount for one-fifty. C’mon, buy it.”

It’s once again time to participate in Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ 28 July 2023 edition of Friday Fictioneers. The idea is to use the image above as the prompt to craft a poem or short story no more than 100 words long. My word count is exactly 100.

I was momentarily stuck on what to write for the prompt. The guitar reminded me of the 1960s folk era in San Francisco and I briefly considered a time travel tale. Then I hit on buying the guitar in the present (or near future) as a collector’s item.

Folk singer Kain DeMarko is fictional but The Fillmore West was a San Francisco historic music venue (which still exists). In the 1960s, it hosted (and was briefly owned by) such rock luminaries as the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Big Brother and the Holding Company.

The Summer of Love was a San Francisco social phenomenon in 1967 characterized by drug use, the hippie culture, and rock and folk music in the city’s Haight-Ashbury district.

I should point out that I was working from memory when I wrote this and only looked up the references later (these events occurred during my lifetime, but I was too young to really be aware of them and their historic significance).

Obviously, Sofia is another incarnation of a “female” AI program running in a person’s head, in this case Daniel’s. I left him and the nature of the “second-hand store” a tad mysterious since I needed special circumstances for my tale. I did once live in San Francisco in the late 1970s and recall a small shop I visited which captivated me with its wares (I can’t remember where it is anymore and no doubt it’s long since gone out of business). That’s my inspiration for the place.

To read other stories based on the prompt, visit Inlinkz.

To read more of my work, try the SciFi/Fantasy novelette ICE.

ice
At the end of time, the world is hot and men travel the vast oceans in merchant sailing ships. Captain Ki-Moon Yong of the Star of Jindo has discovered a new horror at the bottom of the world. Can he and the Star escape disaster long enough to warn a disbelieving world?

36 thoughts on “Collector’s Item”

  2. I like the idea of an argumentative AI… or rather, I don’t like it at all. I think she’d drive me crazy. The guitar does look folksy, doesn’t it? I think my 10 year old would’ve loved it but luckily for my bank balance, he wasn’t there at the time.

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  4. Is anybody else in the group starting to read news items, stories, and blog posts and wondering whether an AI has written that?
    Sometimes the news site stories are so clumsily written that I wonder whether that’s an AI or a poorly edited article 😁

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    • It’s actually become a big problem. A lot of publishers, when they announce an open submissions call, specifically state it will reject anything they believe was written by an AI. The striking TV and movie writers are concerned that at least some of their work may be replaced by studios using AI. The actors are upset that their voices and likenesses can now be very convincingly be reproduced by AI, putting them out of work.

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    • MY daughter is a rather recalcitrant student in her final year of school. She had a legal studies exam and asked AI questions when she was studying the night before and she got one of the top marks after missing a lot of school. She’s a bright girl and responds better to auditory than reading and I still don’t know quite what to make of it. She struggles with many of her teachers so for her AI could be the answer.

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      • Mmm, if she was able to use AI as a learning/research tool that’s great. The problem lies in when you use it to replace your own words / write it for you. Plagiarism will just have to cover AI – you’ll need to be able to reference it, like other sources.
        Do you think?

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      • People have different styles of learning but standardized education doesn’t apply to all of them. Audio books might be a good alternative. I’ve never studied by consulting an AI so I don’t know how to comment on it.

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      • Thank you for reminding me about the different learning styles but the usual learning styles doesn’t take into account going to the beach or social media/gaming. Maybe there should be a new category for people who learn via distraction.

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      • One of my sons suffered/suffers from an attentional disorder. As a child, we consulted different specialists finding ways to encourage him to learn. He is intelligent, but with learning disabilities, it was always challenging.

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    • I have. Lots on Medium (I don’t read many blogs outside FF). One writer in particular writes really long and dare I say dry and perfect. The person offers long replies in comments. But, I later read the writer claims they are neuro-diverse and has been nice to me.

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      • My thoughts on writing maybe done by AI is it being ‘not so perfect’. That is a combination of well written, then clumsy, like english is not their first language, or the piece needs an editor.
        And as I hear that traditional news outlets are having problems with articles not being edited, then that makes sense.
        I just don’t know 🙂

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      • I’ve played around. For dry writing like reports and summaries AI is scary good. Facts are wrong though. So humans have to fact check. Creative writing AI can do well as a first draft but lacks something.

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  5. I’d go mad with AI in my head and have enough trouble arguing with myself. Really loved your story though and appreciated the insights at the end and will have to follow it up with the great oracle…Google.

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    • Actually, I imagine the AI in my character’s head as them arguing with themselves. Not long ago, I wrote a similar story only it was the simulated personality of the man’s dead wife talking to him. Imagine that.

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      • My mother has devekloped dementia in the last year. She’s still at home and things could be a lot worse but she sees a number of dead relatives particularly her mother and grandmother and she thinks she’s talking to them but it’s actually my dad who she also describes as the man in the yellow raincoat. I sort of wonder if she is somehow connecting with the afterlife because she doesn’t think dad is someone living. She goes to a dementia social group and she came home this week and told my dad the people were a bit strange. When Dad was relaying this to me, he said “well you’re a bit strange too dear”. Not that he told her that.
        BTW you’re onto some interesting ideas with these stories about AI.

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      • My Mom is 91 and her dementia is extreme. She’s in memory care and hospice. She sleeps most of the time, barely eats, and tends to yell at people. It’s very sad because she has no quality of life at all. There are times when she doesn’t know who my wife is, even though I’ve been married for 40 years and my wife was close to my parents.

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  6. It is interesting how some everyday objects can take on extraordinary value, simply because of who owned the item. There is not a real material value, but the intrinsic cultural value holds on.

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    • Consider comic books. Not only are the older ones more valuable because they’re harder to get a hold of, but comics in which certain characters and events occurred are pricey, such as the introduction of “The Punisher” in Spider-Man or the death of Gwen Stacy. Something is worth what people are willing to pay for it for whatever reason including nostalgia. Think of a guitar owned by John Lennon or B.B. King.

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  13. I like Alexa. I can turn her off or unplug her 🙂

    I was in college in 1967, too busy working and studying and boyfriending to pay much attention to the Summer of Love ( I was in Minnesota).

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