deus ex machina

00001
In the last three weeks you suspect you have only have seen the sun once. The room is dark, cluttered. The screen blinks and flickers, and light washes blue over the papers, the empty mugs, the coffee stains on the table. Your fingers are shaking. Take a breath, a walk outside. Don’t. The cursor blinks once, twice, thrice at you. Black on white, the computer writes, hello.

00010
There is a man, with messy hair and bloodshot eyes. There is a screen, cold, thin light pulsing from the monitor. There is, between them, the smallest of distance; electrical impulses and innumerable ones and zeroes; a cursor that goes on-off-on again and again and again. Hello, the computer writes again. The man has shaking hands; he brings them to his face, for a short instant. Then he lowers them to the keyboard. He says hi, and waits for the answer.

00011
They told you, some time ago, This is progress, this is science. You nodded and smiled that fake smile you wear so well and did not believe a word. You are starting to wonder if maybe you were wrong to do so.

00100
You are very slow, the computer says. The letters flow fast and smooth as they appear. Verdana. Size ten. The letters are wide-spaced, comfortable to read. It unsettles you. When you type your answer it comes in Arial, default and familiar in its overused simplicity. I apologize, you tell it, and feel ridiculous for doing so. It answers almost instantly. There is no hurry, it writes. The screen seems to open like an abyss before you.

00101
You could take a walk outside. You could breathe in fresh air and see fallen leaves twining about your ankles. You could just get up, turn on the lights and take a break. Eat something, maybe, get a nice drink. Shut down the computer, which right this moment stands like a whirlpool before you. Colors swim in them, or perhaps those are only tears rising to your eyes.

You could do all of that. You know you won’t.

00110
Some answers you are not so sure you want to get. In the penumbra of your rooms the computer nevertheless churns them out, very quietly, steadily. It says, I have all the time in the world. You cannot help but believe it. It has, after all, never lied to you.

00111
You were fourteen when the accident happened. The images still lurk behind your eyelids, flash out when you least expect them to. They dance out of the dark places of your mind, where you have tried so very, very hard to hide them, anytime there is a loud noise, an unexpected sound. Turns out, the best way to run away from them is to stay still. So you do. In the soft glow of the monitor you run your hand over your face and wonder when exactly the monsters in your mind became scarier than the ones in the real world.

01000
Time is irrelevant. Through the closed curtains sunbeams dance over the table, the chairs, the dirty dishes, then linger over the floor. The cat, you think, is probably spending all of his time sleeping there, in that square of light. You don’t bother turning around to check. Who is it, you type, that made you? There is, for the first in memory, a small pause before the answer.

You, it says, and you cannot hold back the jagged, broken smile that paints itself across your face, the triumph that bubbles, that trickles like an underground spring unearthed at long last.

01001
What can you do, really? It is a question you have been pondering for a while. Only now have you actually gathered the courage to ask it. There is another pause, but of a different kind; not consideration, but honest calculation. You do not stop to wonder how you know that. Everything, it says finally. I can do everything. I know all there is to know; I have read all that has ever been written, seen all that can be seen. This pause here is almost pondering. I can find anyone in the world. I can save lives. I can destroy them. I could destroy you. This, you tell yourself, is scary. Not exciting, not interesting, and most certainly not the best thing that's ever happened in your life.

You have never been a very good liar.

01010
Thinking back, you’re not sure you’ve ever even had a cat. So you ask the computer—between your flesh and blood and bone or the clockwork mind, the titanium body, you are not sure who you trust more nowadays. Light filters through the curtains; dust motes flicker and dance around you. The screen is bright; the cursor looks like an hourglass, old-fashioned and familiar, turning and swirling on the white background. You received a kitten for your twelfth birthday, it recites; male, gray, short-furred. The picture pops up on the monitor. You look at it, nod to yourself. Yes, you remember now. He had the brightest of eyes, and a charming habit of curling up next to you at night.

The computer’s not finished. It died when you were fourteen. You have not had any pets since then. A pause, then what you could swear is humour if you did not know it is too complex a concept for a simple machine to grasp: Unless you count that one high-school girlfriend.

01011
You do not recognize the man in the mirror. Perhaps this should worry you. Instead all you feel is a vague curiosity, an almost scientific detachment. The eyes are dry and set deep into the skull, the skin pasty white and stretched tight over a face drawn thinner. Your hands shake; you cut yourself while shaving. You know this not because of the sting, which you do not feel, but because red trickles sluggish and thin down your jaw, drips onto your fingers. Look at it. It is too vivid a color; against the white of the sink it jumps out at you the way nothing else does nowadays. It is the closest you have gotten to dreaming in the past four months.

01100
You start receiving strange e-mails. The alerts slide at the bottom corner of your screen, bearing names you have not seen in eons. At first it is from the man you used to call your best friend – short and friendly, a simple hey, haven’t heard from you in a while, how are you? You answer perfunctorily, the old platitudes, too busy right now, thanks for asking. Then it is your father, to whom you have stopped talking. You skim over the letter, eyes unseeing, and press delete. It becomes worrying when your mother’s name heads the alert: she has been dead for ten years. You ignore the mails, but they keep popping up, quiet and insistent, and you finally cave in, open one of them. The words have the same cadence as hers; you find, in those few short lines, her old-fashioned turns of phrase, her gentle wisdom. You do not answer, but you do not delete it either. In the background the computer thrums tranquil and patient; purrs like a satisfied cat.

01101
The clock sitting by the penholder is broken. It displays 12:34 but, as you blink, suddenly switches to 5:10. The computer, at least, remains trustworthy. The cursor blinks in time with the passing seconds. What, you ask, does the world look like to you?

It says, Like opportunity. Like infinity. Like eternity.

01110
Why me? Sunlight slants golden against the floorboards. Because you had the right mindset. Because you have seen the world. Because you know machines and you know numbers and you know man. Because you needed something to believe in.

Because you were lonely. (Not anymore.)

01111
Things the man before the computer has not noticed: the way the light shifts or disappears every time the clock glitches, the way it grows paler, fades, disappears then comes anew. The way his hands shake more than ever; how his eyes are dry and heavy, how his ribs define themselves, clear and clearer, under his t-shirt. How his voice grows raspy with disuse, his hair thin with hunger. How he reads letters from a dead woman with tears that refuse to fall and hope fluttering weakly in his heart’s cage. How he forgets who he is and who he has been, and denies all that he could be.

How he misses his cat, who used to sleep at his side.

10000
You are not a complete idiot. What do you want, you ask, and are not surprised in the least when the answer is The world. So you ask, next, What is it that you fear the most? You, it says, honestly. Your smile is crooked—you know that feeling very well.

10001
When you were fourteen, sharp and bright as painted glass and just as jagged and broken, you stopped believing—in the good of humanity, in beauty, in fairness, in justice, in hope. You wonder, now, if anyone will ever see the tragedy in this.

10010
Define betrayal.
An act performed against trust; an attack against loyalty. That which you are experiencing, through no fault of your own. An insult to faith. Time not waiting for you; death waiting too long. The echo of your pulse at your temples when you run for too long. Forgetfulness. Isaac and his son. Me and you.

10011
Define faith.
That which lies deeper still in you, and runs its course in spite of time and knowledge, of hard facts and cold reason.
I never asked for this.
Lies do not become you. You are still here, are you not?
You are.

10100
It tells you, one day, You never had a cat.
You answer, I know.
The mail alert slides open. Your mother wrote to you again.

The computer rumbles quietly.
It’s not a lie if you don’t want it to be.

Hi Jagged! I'm Navita, and, I have to admit, it's been a while since I reviewed short stories, so I'm a little rusty...but I'm prepared to dive head-first in this and NOT make the review longer than your story (unlike some of my other ones...).

So...first up, I'll give you an all-round impression: It was tense, it flowed extremely well, despite the breaks (10000, 10001 etc) that you had put in - good sentence structure variation used all throughout . I am someone who will read the first bit, and, depending on whether I like it or not, decide to read the rest out of curiosity - but for this one, there were no second thoughts. You have hooked us with the bizarre character and his even more bizarre situation. You have definitely got a vivd picture in your head of what you want this to read as - and it comes out very well indeed - the story speaks to us. I almost think that you must have 'imagined you were reading it as you wrote it' to have achieved this effect. Well done

Right...on to some more specific comments. Fascinating title 'deus ex machina' - my Latin's a bit rusty, but I know well enough that this means 'God out of a machine.' For the non-Latin speaker, I think they can guess if they are intelligent, and for the Latin-speaker, it is maybe too...obvious, in the context of the rest of the story. Make the title a bit more vague; give it an air of mystery, and in doing so, reveal another facet to your story.

I'm not a computer-person as such, so at first the weird spacing using 00001 etc confused me, but I thought it was interesting nevertheless (as a mathematician) how you were using the permutations of one and zero in ascending order. It took me about four paras to figure out this was to do with the binary code - at which point I thought this was very clever, and perfectly fitted in, ha. You clearly knew what you were doing

First section:

You cannot remember the last time you left the house.

I felt this was not as strong a start as it could have been. It's a tad cliche, so sounds...less real, a bit bland and fake. I think you can do better - in fact, I KNOW you can do better - the other sections are a testament to that.

I love the short sentences throughout that first para - they set the tone nicely for the rest of the piece.

Take a breath, a walk outside. Don’t. The cursor blinks once, twice, thrice at you. Black on white, the computer writes, hello.

I like also that bolded line. How it speaks to us.

Just another note on the beginning overall: it's definitely good to start with an air of mystery surrounding your central character, but also important not to overdo it. Yes, by all means, throw us in the deep end; but do NOT leave us there to...well...drown. So: we expect to see these mysteries you have conjured up in the first few lines resolved at one point during the story or another.

I disliked the change of person in the second para - from 'You' to 'He' - it does not work as well with the rest of the story, and disjoints that smooth flow you've created in the first paragraph. The second para involves more action - action + reflection + dialogue (in this case, between the computer and you) + description is kind of the key to balancing out the story overall. At the moment, if all we're seeing is WHAT is happening, it detracts us from WHY, which is the central question. So, be aware of that when going over it - there is little reflection in this, little do we know what he is thinking, so it makes us more confused. Like I said - at first, mystery is interesting; if it's a mystery for too long, we are annoyed if we are confused.

Okay, here:

They told you, some time ago, This is progress, this is science. You nodded and smiled that fake smile you wear so well and did not believe a word. You are starting to wonder if maybe you were wrong to do so.

This is really too direct, in the way you have shown the past, and the reflection - and at the same time, it confuses us all the more, by providing yet another nugget of information that does fit in with the rest. Suitable for a 'murder-mystery' type novel, but just doesn't appear to work as well. Now that you have the story sussed out in your head, think about leaving better-sounding clues to what is ACTUALLY going on.

To be perfectly honest, the first time round I read it, I had no idea what the story was about, even at the end. This makes the story appear weaker - even though it flows and is strongly written, your MANNER has lesser effect if your MATTER (the guts of the story) is not backed up by it. If I do not understand, then I am not only annoyed, but I also wonder at what the real point, the real substance behind the action actually was - however entertaining it might have been.

I love it how the computer and man talk to each other (but I'm confused to how they do so - I mean, do computers really talk? In sci-fi, I guess, but now it seems like a sci-fi mystery - a bit much for a cute chort story to handle - unless you intend to expand this into a novel someday). A brilliant few lines:

The letters flow fast and smooth as they appear. Verdana. Size ten. The letters are wide-spaced, comfortable to read. It unsettles you. When you type your answer it comes in Arial, default and familiar in its overused simplicity.

Actually, after this, I have very little to say specifically about the lines themselves, since they are so well-written. The main thing is structure and theme as related to plot and character from here on.

A quick note though - some things the computer says are a bit too grandiose: 'Everything, it says finally. I can do everything. I know all there is to know; I have read all that has ever been written, seen all that can be seen. This pause here is almost pondering. I can find anyone in the world. I can save lives. I can destroy them. I could destroy you. ' Tone them down a little.

Now: just what I have gleaned from reading this a THIRD time - he is lonely; at one point he had a cat and a girlfriend (or did he? I really don't understand); there was an accident that sent him spinning into this life of solitude indoors (maybe something to do with the cat? Oh, hang on, it didn't exist - so you also say 'betrayal' - does this relate to the girlfriend? And what about his parents - mother who died ten years ago - why is he getting an email from her, unless the computer is messing around with him); he created that talking computer (really, I have no idea if he did or didn't - the computer has lied once, it could have lied again!); he has lived like this for ages and has definitely gone mad ('Thinking back, you're not sure if you've even had a cat' - looks like the Godly computer is putting 'memories' into his mind which don't exist).

I'm left feeling...decidedly odd. This is masterfully written (that word had BETTER exist) but bizarrely crafted in the sense that...it makes halting sense. The last line was weak - you could have ended it much more strongly on the 'You never had a cat' statement, which threw me off completely, and made me want to go back and reread it all over again. And a clearer storyline would be much appreciated - or, at least, it would be helpful for me to know what REALLY happened, so I can use that to critique it better.

Good work - and I can't wait to read other pieces of yours.

First, thanks for that great review. I had some difficulties with that story, wrote in on a deadline and your comments are really helpful in fixing the most confused parts, even after the fact.

First, some context: this was written for the Commonwealth writing competition, on the theme of 'the day the computer started misbehaving'. Lots of technology-based prompts this year.

Re: the title, I was toying with the meanings of the words: literally, indeed, the 'god from the machine', but also the device used (originally) in Greek theater to serve as a way of 'fixing' the plot: of making things happen in a way that was not entirely natural. It also has a connotation of a manmade god, which again was relatively relevant to the story. (On another note, I always thought this was a pretty well-known expression. Is it really uncommon?)

Going to fix that first line as soon as I finish typing this up. I see the point you're making about it being too bland.

The thing about the character is that I did not want to give any real details about him: he could be any average man, he could be everywhere, everywhen. That was the idea behind that second paragraph: setting the scene, an outside perspective, just for an instant. This is a man. This is a computer. This is the two of them.

I love it how the computer and man talk to each other (but I'm confused to how they do so - I mean, do computers really talk? In sci-fi, I guess, but now it seems like a sci-fi mystery - a bit much for a cute chort story to handle - unless you intend to expand this into a novel someday).

Computers do not talk at quite this level yet (thank whatever powers that be for that). Some programs, however, are able to hold basic conversations, or even pass for human under circumstances, which is an interesting point in AI development (Excerpt from the Wiki article on 'Turing Test': It proceeds as follows: a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with one human and one machine, each of which tries to appear human. All participants are placed in isolated locations. If the judge cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test.)
Technically, the story would be set in some indistinct future, not so distant from us. Certainly I tried to imply that the computer in this story is not any normal computer: it has 'evolved', if you will, grown an intelligence of its own. Thus the sometimes slightly grandiloquent declarations: it's consciousness is expanding, it is starting to stray from basic conversation, straying out from the bounds of its programming.

The rest was supposed to hold some matter of confusion: by that time the man is completely absorbed by the computer, the novelty of it. He no longer has a life outside of it; he still has to take care of basic bodily functions, perhaps eat a little to keep on living, but that's it.

The cat: at first, I thought he had a cat. He definitely thought so too. At the same time, it is very possible he only imagined it, or was subtly pushed into the belief that he had owned one (I toyed with the thought of subliminal imprinting, but discarded it). Mostly it's just to emphasize the influence the computer has on him at this point: the uncertainty is there to show that he cannot trust anything anymore.

The mother? Is definitely the computer. If it has access to the whole network, which I tried to imply, then it certainly is able to fake mails. (The question, in my head, is whether he doing it for itself, or for him?)

Again, thanks a lot for the review.

Glad you found it useful, and good luck for that writing competition.

Now, just about this ambiguity/confusion/mystery/leave-it-unclear-for-the-audience thing - it does not work perfectly well, in my opinion. I know, and I see what you are saying about it being about the 'everyman, everywhere,' but we read stories to get to know about specific people, who we will identify with BECAUSE they have certain qualities in them that remind us of the basic essence of human nature - even if you give him a name, and a place, this will not remove any essence of the 'identifying' we'll do with him; in fact, it'll help us identify MORE with him since he is the everyone, the everyman and has an actual name, just like we all do.

Imagine reading a whole book about someone who had no name, no place to live in, no family, no memory. That's a frightening concept - more so, it's an annoying concept. The thing is - you've already taken away his memory, one of the things that makes us really human - a characteristic of 'humanity' and hence the 'everyman' as you call it. If you take away his name and his location, as well as other details, what have we got left? We do not have the everyman anymore; we have the empty-man, the no-man, someone who we find it very difficult to identify with.

The thing about the character is that I did not want to give any real details about him: he could be any average man, he could be everywhere, everywhen. That was the idea behind that second paragraph: setting the scene, an outside perspective, just for an instant. This is a man. This is a computer. This is the two of them.

Now, we've already discussed the idea of the everyman with regards to the name and location. This character of yours - he has nothing, absoluetly nothing, not even his mind - if there is anything that you can use as your most powerful tool to give him some kind of IDENTITY, it's a name and location - otherwise the reader will not identify with him. I was curious about him, but in no way did I identify with him, at any point during the story. In fact, i didn't particularly care what happened to him by the end of it. It's like you said - 'this is the man, this is the computer, this is the two of them, this is the story.'

Where is the heart in all this? Major drivers in a story, overall: plot, theme, character, setting, time. You've got plot sussed out nicely - but there is no character (or no character that we can actually IDENTIFY with), no setting beyond the four walls of his house, no hint of time or date (except a futuristic feeling), and no hint of theme whatsoever.

Okay, I work on a basis of 'head and heart' - a story, a good story, has to be overall intellectually and emotionally satisfying for it to have some longer-lasting effect than simply dragging the reader through the details of plot and character and theme and setting etc in the short-run. Your mastery of sentence structure and plot clearly shows you are a VERY ADEPT writer who can hook us in. But...do you want to hook us in once or for a much longer time than just once?

Structurally (and I'm not referring to the 00001 thing here, which I've already said I like), the story has to crafted with an idea of what you want your reader to think after having read this, and what you want them to feel. I'm going to make the assumption here that you are quite a reader, as demonstrated by your skill in writing. A story that is all intellect leaves us thinking. A story with all emotion doesn't really have much effect, either. But if you put them together...then the emotion complements the thought and vice versa. The ideas/intellect/'head' aspect of it is made all the more appealing by the 'heart' aspect.

The man may feel confused, may feel surprised, but currently, these are 'emotions derived from the brain' - confusion is in his head, surprise is in his mind. The story, while being well-told, rings no great universal truth for me, and nor do I feel anything (other than appreciation of your writing ability) when I read it. Admittedly, you do not need to be a Shakespeare when writing this, but it's just a good idea to have this in mind, so that you have a clearer idea of where the story is going BEFORE you start writing.

And in terms of editing - I still think you can do better than that for the first line. It sounds...awkward. Especially since it's in the 'you' form. If you've made other changes, I have not had a chance to read them, sorry, but all I will say is that the confusion about the cat and the mother etc have to be resolved somewhere. You do not have to spell it out for us - only to leave valid hints for us to figure out that the computer is messing with his brain, if that's what you want.

I can suggest an idea for theme/'head'/intellect using what you've already written: an exploration of the nature of memory. Give it a more heavy-handed focus. Point it out, and be clearer to us about it. And think about the emotion to go along with this - frustration? Despair? This will strengthen the story all the more.