Ghost Writer

Writer’s Block. The words resonated in Alec’s head like a bell the moment he saw the words of his manuscript cascade down the wall screen to form a heap at the bottom. Small simulated flames rose from the pile. By the time recovered enough to try and shut down the system, he was too late. The image of a fifty ton block flashed on the screen; metallic laughter issued from the speakers. A row of red lights on his console blinked rhythmically. His touch-screen, normally populated by icons, was blank except for a redheaded grinning face.

Responding to his panicked cry, Linda tore into the study. She shook his shoulder as if to check if he’d had a heart attack.

“The manuscript.” Alec waved at the screen. He tossed aside the touch-screen and hauled out a dusty keyboard. He typed in a few commands but they hung impotently on his screen along with a flashing cursor. “The Muse is dead. Totalled.”

“Will you let me try?”

He didn’t object while Linda fumbled with the keyboard. Normally he wouldn’t let her near the Muse, but now that the virus had totalled the system, he doubted she could do it any further harm.

The Muse was born after years of neural programming. He’d adapted software obtained from trade shows and from other creatives. The best creatives were the best computer technicians. He depended on her for ideas, stories; to write screenplays. The studio supplied the specifications: schematics for characters X, Y and Z, the high concept and number of plot-turns per minute. The Muse produced fifty submissions for him to choose from. In one day, he had what used to take writers a month to complete: a finished and polished screenplay acceptable to London studios.

With an unruffled calm, Linda tried the obvious trick of powering the system down and bringing it up, but the wall screen remained blank. The console lights continued to blink.

“What were you working on?” she asked.

“Helicopters and Rushes.”

“When’s it due?”

“Monday.”

Linda shrugged. “That still gives you five days.”

“Five days. Don’t you realize that is my big break, the first studio with ties to Hollywood. If I miss the deadline, the job’s gone.”

The past month he fed the Muse a diet of best-selling action scripts. He even hacked into other creatives’ Muses to poach their secret software. He must have brought back Writer’s Block on one of his forays.

“Is it on backup?” Linda asked.

“An early version’s somewhere in cyberspace. If I can get to it.”

“Do you remember enough of the script to write it down?”

“Manually?”

“Using letters like these.” Linda held up the keyboard.

“You expect me to type out a script?”

Linda’s oval face broke into a faint smile.

“People used to write manually. They’d put down on paper whatever story came out of them. They didn’t need a computer to compose it.”

“Twenty years ago we all played around like that. No modern studio will look at a manual submission.”

Linda stood up, a cold gleam in her eye. She paused in the doorway. “Is there anything else you want from me?”

Long tangled hair fell on her shoulders. Her dowdy dress from a charity shop couldn’t disguise her wide girth. He realized that for the past year he hadn’t found her attractive or interesting. She could not accept what it took to be a successful creative. She’d complain every time he bought new hardware or travelled to creative trade shows. Years ago she had tried to create, but had never mastered the art of programming neural software.

“Is your com-screen working?” Alec asked.

Linda walked next door. “Everything’s dead,” she said as if only a light bulb had burned out. “The virus has totalled the network. Mobile phone’s out, too.”

No way of communicating with the world except by carrier pigeon.

Alec shuffled into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. As usual stacks of dirty dishes filled the counters. Since Linda’s day-trading business started going south, she sat in her bedroom and ignored the condition of the house. He decided not to fight the dirty dishes.

“I’m going out to borrow someone’s Muse,” he shouted to the open doorway. “Expect me when you see me.”

His electric car whined into life and started down the single track road. He loved their Aberdeenshire glen where they’d moved from London and where the only neighbours were sheep, but solitude exacted its cost. When the web went down he and Linda might as well be living on the moon. Now, the only creatives who might help him lived in Aberdeen but most were too self-absorbed to even listen to him. He could try Robin who had helped him build his Muse. If only they had met before he ran into Linda. Whenever he was around Robin, new ideas flowed with hardware and software solutions to implement them. Unlike other creatives, she was generous with her Muse. However she wanted a relationship in return, one that was closer than he found comfortable. He decided to videophone her from the Huntly Tesco.

He strode up to the supermarket’s glass door only to find Gordon blocking his way. Everyone knew Gordon, the unshaven derelict in the long button-less coat who sold The Big Issue. Alec often bought a copy from him but realized he only had copper change in his pocket.

“New issue today,” Gordon said and shoved the magazine in Alec’s face.

“I’ll catch you later.” Alec tried to circumvent him, but Gordon anticipated the move.

“No money? Wait a minute.” Gordon rummaged in a shopping bag and brought out a pink flyer. “Take this for the lady. A free cleaning service. Yours for spare change.”

Alec handed Gordon his change; took the flyer. His house needed attention badly. Maybe Linda would make use of the ad.

The video call went through. Robin’s lean face appeared on a small screen, and immediately broke into a smile. After an awkward greeting, Alec told her he wanted to stop by.

“I’ll be here as always,” Robin said. “Bring some wine.”

Placing a call with Network Repair Service brought him to a generic help screen. He typed in his ID. For “Description of Problem” he put down “Writer’s Block.” The computer voice promised to send a repairman later in the day. With luck, they’d revive the network, but he doubted they could bring up the Muse. He bought a bottle of average wine, and left the store.

He left the store, but not before Gordon shouted after him all the way to the car, “Call for maids in a row. Pretty maids.”

#
Robin had not wanted to break up. She wouldn’t hear of his creative concerns until she had dragged him into her bedroom. A tall, slender woman with thick curly hair, she’d put on a flowery top and loose black pants, just for him. Her broad smile disarmed him. He did not refuse her advances. As they made love, his brain spun in circles, recalling the disaster at his mountain home. Robin realized from his anaemic kisses that he had drifted far from her. When he told her what had happened, she turned her head away.

“I suppose you want a shot of my Muse,” she said.

“You feel I’m just using you?”

“Actually, yes.”

“I should go. This isn’t right. We agreed before that this relationship isn’t good for either of us. I’ve always been honest with you and that will never change.”

Robin smiled. “You’ve driven a long way, and the script is important for you. Go try out my Muse but keep it secret. I don’t want to be expelled from the guild for loaning it out.”

Passing into her attic studio, they sat before a large glowing cube set in the centre of the room. Seagulls perched outside the open window broke into a series of unnerving screams. He shut the window. Robin’s long fingers drifted over the cube; coloured text and moving images sprang to life on the surface. She entered his story’s specifications. A few minutes later several submissions popped into the cube.

“Those won’t work,” Alec said after he’d skimmed the submissions. “Your Muse isn’t set up for action stories. I need people swinging from cables, gunfire, explosions and one short romance. Your stories are all inside people’s heads, analyzing their thoughts. I can’t do character driven stories.”

“They still sell.”

To please her, Alec copied one script onto disk. As he placed the tube in his pocket his hand encountered paper, and he drew out a crumpled sheet.

CALL TODAY -- PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW
ELECTROSTATIC DUST CLEANING

Below the heading was a cartoon of girls in bikinis making up a bed. Turning over the paper he found it covered with longhand writing. He hadn’t seen cursive for twenty years; had hardly written but his name in longhand. He found the sloping letters difficult to decipher.

“Watch out! You’re about to hit (…) on the right. What are you thinking?”

“Cable’s about to break. (…..) some height. My God, is anyone up there listening?”

“(…..) you praying to me or to your God?”

(Explosion)

“Now that did it. Who’s going to clean up that mess?”

“(….) I was thinking that you’d volunteer for the job. Or, have you forgotten that you’re a fire-fighter?”

Robin rested her head on his shoulder. “Who wrote that mindless drivel?”

“The dialog is terrible. Cut it out and there might be a usable story.”

“Well, maybe whoever wrote it could ghost-write your script for you.”

“Gordon?”

“Who’s Gordon?”

“The homeless man who sells the Big Issue outside the Huntly Tesco. He’s crazy. He can’t produce a coherent thought, never mind a sentence. He couldn’t have written this.”

Robin smiled. “Maybe he’s a frustrated hand-writer who couldn’t sell his stuff and went nuts. Find out what else he has. Maybe he could help you out.”

#
Back at his house he found a Network Repair van. A scrawny man who looked barely twenty clacked away at Linda’s keyboard. Her com-screen swirled with undecipherable writing. His Muse was still dark. Several familiar menus popped up on Linda’s com-screen.

“I’ve reloaded the system,” the man said. “But I can’t get to your backup copies. The backup site isn’t responding. ” He zipped over to a new site, scanned what appeared to be a bulletin, and then laughed noisily. “They’ve been hit by Writer’s Block too. You exported it to them.”

“Can you bring up the Muse?”

“I wouldn’t go near it. You creatives know more than anyone about Muses. I’d call the Lemon Tree Creatives Guild.”

“What’ll you do?” Linda asked after the helper slammed the front door.

He took her hand and felt its reassuring pressure. “Thanks for sticking with me. But I need to be alone to figure this out.”

He could not hand-write a script, and without the Muse he was nothing. He had poured all his creativity into her: his insights and his vision. He recalled the wintry day when the Muse produced her first story, a crime mystery whose ending he couldn’t guess no matter how hard he tried. And I made her --- this Muse and she wrote this. The emotional rush hit him like a heroin shot, and became as addictive. Every day he needed to read a story she’d composed. Whenever the Muse was down for maintenance, he felt bereft. Less than human. After a program upgrade he’d be so high from reading new scripts that he couldn’t sleep. In the early days Linda read the submissions as fast as they rolled off but lately she didn’t even ask about them.

#
The sky was dark as pitch when Alec returned to Tesco. Gordon was still there, trying to stick pink flyers into shoppers’ hands. He shivered in the night breeze. Alec could scarcely believe that he, a creative, was approaching a homeless man for help, but such was his need.

“That flyer with the pretty maids you gave me, had some writing,” Alec said. “Was it yours?”

Alec’s cracked lips parted in a smile. “It’s all mine.”

“Do you have more pages?”

“Hundreds.” Gordon dipped into his bulging shopping bag and extracted a small sheaf of yellow papers.

“Can I take a look at them?”

Standing in the store’s foyer Alec skimmed several sheets. Gordon watched him as if afraid he’d make off without paying. Each sheet was covered with handwritten text, pages headed and numbered; clean copies without corrections. Unfortunately the characters were ordinary people of no interest to studios or movie-going kids who demanded the larger-than life. But perhaps somewhere in the heap he’d find a story he could use.

Alec took out a wad of bills. “Can I buy these papers?”

Gordon’s eyes lit up. He scratched his stubble. “For a small donation.”

“How much?”

“I don’t know.”

“Twenty quid. Will you take twenty?”

Gordon thrust his shopping bag at Alec. “See here, the whole bag has flyers. Yours for thirty.”

“Done.”

The bag weighed as if it contained a couple of reams; the wad of money he handed over weighed nothing. But Gordon smiled as he counted it.

#
After dinner, Alec shut himself in his studio and sifted through the stack. Many pages were water-damaged and scarcely legible. He found military stories, science fiction and even a couple of romances. The helicopter story appeared usable, with snappy action and a surprise ending. He skimmed a story about a Glasgow mother’s futile search for her kidnapped daughter. Unfortunately a downer that no studio would touch. The romance kept his attention and contained commercially viable erotica.

Linda appeared in the doorway wearing a nightgown. Ignoring his unwelcoming look she walked up to his console and stared at the spread of yellow sheets.

“I’m sorry, but I’m busy,” Alec said.

Linda picked up a page. A cloud grew over her forehead.

“Where did this come from?” she asked in a voice like a violin string about to break.

“The Big Issue guy outside Tesco. He’s a closet hand-writer. He just sold me his entire life’s work.”

“For how much?”

“Thirty quid.”

“You gave him thirty quid for all that?”

“He seemed happy with it. The writing’s a bit dark. You can tell he’s had a rough life on the streets.”

“I suppose you’ll pass it off as your own.”
“I bought it.”

“Right.”

“I’m very busy and have to pull together a manuscript.” He stood up, hoping she would take the hint and leave. With lips drawn tight, she studied him. “It’s all legal,” Alec said “It’s not plagiarism to pay a ghost writer. You don’t even need to acknowledge him. What use to Gordon are all those sheets anyway?”

Linda had grown quite pale. “Why did he give them to you?”

“Maybe he needed the money. Look, it’s a solution to the immediate crisis. I can adapt one of his stories and have a trial script out by Monday.”

Linda slammed the paper down on the table. “You don’t know anything about those papers. You don’t even know if he wrote them. Did he tell you he wrote them?”

“I guess he did.”

“Maybe you need to double check.” She stalked off, letting the door slam.

He picked up a sheet. The cursive slanted uniformly to the right, the lines straight, evenly spaced, and each “I” dotted. Not what he would expect from a man who had lost his mind, who slept somewhere in a caravan and lived from cans of baked beans and jars of Nutella. Like other Big Issue people, he appeared from nowhere and owned nothing except for his name. No one knew anything about him. Did he write stories each night under a candle? Not these days. More likely, Gordon had written the pages long before he became psychotic.

Having chosen the helicopter story, Alec scanned the sheets into the system, posted them on his monitor and began to transcribe them. He magnified the text to decipher it. His fingers fumbled with the keyboard, unable to locate the punctuation marks. Much of the dialog was hopelessly wordy and outdated, so he snipped it out. In an action story, dialog only got in the way. Audiences suffered through it while they waited for the next car chase or explosion. To soup up the script he cut and pasted in a couple of scenes from his old scripts. He proofread the draft. The studio editor would inevitably find problems, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed.

The front door slammed, and he heard the whine of Linda’s car as it backed out of the driveway. He must have really annoyed her, for her to get dressed and go commiserate with a friend. He hoped she wouldn’t spread the story that he had stolen a homeless man’s life-work.

He flipped on a wall screen, put on his 3-D glasses and tuned into a rerun of a SF sitcom. Spaceships tore through starry clouds with dizzying speed, shot volleys of laser fire at each other. Young alien women in tight clothing materialized and dematerialized. Not unlike one of Gordon’s stories. What if….? He muted the screen and returned to his console.

He rummaged through the flyers. Sure enough, there was the page with characters Xero, Zeno and Yato, straight out of the SF sitcom, but instead of fielding explosions they were sitting around a table and chatting about philosophical issues no one could resolve. Stuff no one cared about. So, Gordon had seen the program and was using the characters. Except that the show was barely a year old. How did Gordon know about the sitcom? If he handwrote, he had no access to a computer. Had he seen a TV lately?

As Alec flipped through the soiled pages, a line caught his eye.

“Alec and Linda got into the boat. Alec grabbed the oar and pushed off.”

The familiar names stared at him from the page. Turning it over, he found a small grocery list scribbled in the right hand corner.

He was still reading when Linda returned, soon after midnight. Her face was an impassive mask. After everything that had happened, he wasn’t surprised.

He looked up at her but did not want to meet her probing eyes.

“This is yours isn’t it?” Alec said, nodding at the pile on the coffee table. “I don’t know what to say.”

Linda slumped into the arm chair opposite him, and covered herself with a throw.

“You were ready to believe that the man outside Tesco could write better than me?”

“You threw it all into the bin, didn’t you,” Alec said, trying not to stammer. “Why did you do it? You must have felt dreadful letting it all go.”

“I’m not a writer. I didn’t want anyone looking at my stuff. Especially those whorehouses that you write for.”

“But you’ve got some great stories here. Some really exciting ideas. I haven’t been able to come up with any; not without the Muse’s help. Where do you find them?”

“I’m not a creative,” Linda said wiping a tear from her face. “You lot produce what the world wants; what you can sell, but I write because I have to. I don’t need any machine or Muse to help me.”

“That’s why your stories are so good. They’re genuine, human, in a way that no Muse can replicate.”

“Thanks for appreciating them.”

“Will you let me use your ideas?”

Linda sat up straight. She reached out for the scattered papers. “You’re asking a lot, maybe more than I can give. I don’t want my stories to be prostituted. The idea that they’ll be made into reality shows sickens me. But okay. Which story do you want?”

The End