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Write a story that solely consists of dialogue. (No dialogue tags, actions, or descriptions. Just pure dialogue!)

Posted in Dialogue on Dec 6, 2024

Hi Gemini – This is Randy Foakes from The Authors Forum; as the group’s administrator I've had an issue with your posting, and I’m giving you personally another warning due to you posting on the board an AI image. Your post has now been taken down from the group site. The post was titled – Having a Bad Day, and I’m just about to send a screenshot to your inbox. I kindly ask you not to send anymore posts with AI images. The group’s mantra is completely opposed to the use of AI in any creative form. If you continue to post AI images, we will be forced to suspend you from the group. These are our rules.”

“Randy, kindly tell me what is the problem with using an image taken from a source that has no trademark or IP protection, and then to modify it into a unique piece of artwork? Anyhow. You are the administrator; it is your role to make decisions on whatever you believe is of benefit to the group. But, when you look around these social media platforms, everyone is using AI. It’s a future reality. It’s inevitable. But, in the end, it is your decision on behalf of your board, and I respect that.”

“The Authors Forum campaigns diligently against AI for very good reasons, Gemini, please check out our rules, and desist from posting with this type of content.”

“Randy, have you ever read the definition of AI? The base image in the post was taken from a library, and I used a compatible toolkit, a mixture of applications to modify the original image with overlays and then a final freeze of an original artifact, which has been finally overlaid with my logo. So, you can conclude this is my artwork. I owe it! It is not wholly generated by AI. Check the rules of trademark, which I explored recently to protect my content. Technically this is not wholly generated by AI and is an original piece of artwork with my embedded Gemini logo, which represents an artifact with trademark protection.”

“Thanks for the explanation. Your post has been reinstated.”

“Thanks for understanding Randy. The world of AI is a complicated place right now. Coincidentally, I come from many years in IT development, I don’t profess to be an expert, but I know enough to be dangerous. In the end I don’t want to be disrespectful. Thanks Randy, and it was very understanding of you to follow up and advise me of the reason behind the removal of my post from your board. So many people don’t undertake that care and attention, and do what you did today, that is very thoughtful of you. Your administration of the group is thoughtful and in good hands.”

“I've allowed it this time Gemini, but in future as your image was derived from an AI image, I'm afraid it will be declined and removed. The fact that you then manipulated it yourself doesn't detract from the fact that it was derived from an AI source – sorry, these are the rules. Look at the screenshot I just sent to your inbox; it has been identified as a 99% probability that it is AI generated.”

“Randy – don’t you find this ironic? I’m looking at the message as we speak. The screenshot shows an application you used to test out if the image is AI generated or not, and it’s a robotic application. This means you are using AI to test out if it is AI or not! The original image is most certainly AI generated. However, technically the original image was modified by me and then posted with my trademark, as an original artifact. That makes it slightly different from the original AI generated image you sent me.”

“Gemini - this is my business, my board. I'll use any method to test what is AI or not – understand? You may have manipulated the original image and stamped your trademark on it - it doesn’t make any difference. It's still derived solely from an AI image and so that breaks the group’s rules.”

“But that’s the point Randy, the final image posted has been manipulated, and altered, it is not the original anymore. It has been manipulated and created differently by yours truly. Your test was against the original, NOT my altered version.”

“It's derived from AI. That fact alone makes it unacceptable to post on my board. Sorry.”

“Okay - it’s your rules and your interpretation, I must respect that. Like I said it’s your board. Most artwork nowadays is derived from digital libraries and providers. I hope you can find some non-AI work to post. I will watch the board with interest.”

“Gemini – did you know we are one of the busiest writing groups on social media? The board has no problem with the constant feed on non-AI material. But – AI generated is no -no. In fact, around 150 posts a day are rejected by me. Interestingly, since my stand against AI images and writing, our membership has rocketed. This is interesting, and in my mind solid proof that AI in the arts is very much disliked.”

“Randy - I doubt if there is one post nowadays that is not in a digital image format. Nothing else would be acceptable anyway. Technically - if it's a digital image then it is computer generated. Like I said before, I have been in IT for more than 50 years, and did you know that AI, I prefer machine language, started a long time ago with fourth generation programming language. AI is a popular acronym and little understood. It’s fashionable and like a lot of things nowadays; misunderstood. It is your interpretation of my actions, and the event that must be respected. What is really so ironic; you are using an AI tool to test out AI. Now there’s an irony and a story to write home about.”

“Thanks, and please follow our rules.”

“Hold on there a minute buddy! I see you have removed two posts. Not just the one you showed me. Now I'm online I see you have removed the announcement of my interview with a prominent magazine, what's wrong with that? In fact, the post was prepared by the magazine themselves, and I'm allowed to use this content based on the conditions of the contract. All of a sudden, I have started to feel like a victim here. Plus, I had a quick review of other posts on your group page, many look to me like they are digitized – AI generated.”

“Plus, the same post you have removed was allowed by your board days ago. I posted again today because the interview was part of a campaign around an international book festival which is still running since last weekend - so now looking at this I want to question some of your logic behind your rules and actions? I hope you don't mind!”

“Sorry Gemini. I can't debate this all night, especially as it's getting late here. All that I can say is that I will be very vigilant about your posts in future and if they're not derived from AI they'll be published."

"Good night.”

(CLICK)

Author's note to myself: Moral of the dialogue - when you are winning an argument, stay silent. Never be a smartass!

While a conflict of interest, be it in life or in fiction, can bring about self-introspection, strange though it may seem, a casual encounter could lead to self-discovery. So it happened with me in the wake of my rebuff to a dogged tempter, “money is not my weakness” and his “what is your weakness” repartee; for the record, either I had been a straight purchase officer or a strict loss assessor, occupations amenable to monetary mischief.

However, the idea of this article is not to gloat over my uprightness but to present the genesis of my attitude to money and the vicissitudes of my life as a subject matter for possible research. But the caveat is that much of my growing up that shaped the same was in the times when the social pulls and the peer pressures, not to speak of the student stress, weren’t, as they have come to become of late, as emotionally unsettling. It was primarily because, as compared to the times now, in the days of yore, life tended to furrow in the tracks of karma siddhanta’s poorva janma sukrutam; the happy circumstances of one’s current life are the outcomes of the previous versions’ noble deeds. Besides keeping envy out of life’s framework for the equanimity of the haves and the have-nots alike, this karmic concept boded well for the collective social conduct buttressed by the individual hope of a bettered future life, never mind the bitter one on hand. But lest the laid back attitude should breed in societal lethargy, the dharmic work culture for a pragmatic life was formulated in v 47, ch2, Bhagvad-Gita: Treatise of Self-help, thus: “Hold as patent on thy work / Reckon thou not on royalty / With no way to ceasing work / Never mind outcome but go on.”

Given my birth in August 1948, so to say, I was conceived under the flying Tiranga and lived the first decade of my life in Kothalanka, a remote village in the picturesque Konaseema of the agrarian Andhra Pradesh. There my paternal grandfather Thimmaiah happened to hold a ten-acre paddy field and a five-acre coconut grove and as was the wont of the landed gentry in that era, he leased out all of that. It was in that rural setting, in those leisurely times, as the eldest of the third generation in a frugal household, that I have had a carefree childhood. But, when I turned ten, my father Peraiah, a remarkable man whom I sketched as A Character of Sorts in Glaring Shadow, my stream of consciousness novel, had shifted base to Amalapuram, a nearby small town, apparently for bettering my education.

And better it did for me. In the first academic year itself, I could make myself eligible for the merit-cum-means scholarship that though I chose to forego offhand and did not think much of it either to inform even my mother Kamakshi about it. But, having come to know of my ‘foolhardy act’ from my class fellows, when my grandfather questioned my strange conduct, I reminded him that it was he who told me that we are well-heeled, and he had no more to say. But, it was much later, and long after he disposed off that family silver and mismanaged its proceeds, that I realized my little eleven-year old rustic head could have instinctively figured out that our then family means made me peremptorily ineligible for the scholarship on that count. However, despite the latter-day material modesty, my attitude to money stayed course with my life and times as my youthful grasp of the ethereal value of woman’s effervescent love made the moolah inconsequential to my being as well as immaterial to my belonging, thereby ensuring that I remained immune to its lures that is notwithstanding the truism in the adage that ‘love is no more than a hackneyed expression unless backed by money’.

It’s thus, Napoleon Bonaparte’s “the surest way to remain poor is to be honest,” has been fine with me, and thankfully, with my spouse Naagamani as well. Nevertheless, the inexplicable period of penury that followed my cold shouldering a one crore bribe made me wonder whether goddess Lakshmi, feeling slighted at long last, thought it fit to punish me, the audacious errant. But, having subjected us to a four-year financial ordeal, as if to validate the Sanatana dharma’s credo, dharmo rakshati rakshita (righteousness protects the righteous persons); the goddess had finally relented by putting our life back on its modest track, so it seemed.

However, as it appears, maybe, Suresh Prabhu of my free ebook in the public domain, Jewel-less Crown: Saga of Life, has unraveled the ramifications of the moolah in its Spirituality of Materialism thus: “It’s the character of money to corrupt the ardent, tease the vacillating and curse the indifferent. That way, there seems to be no escape for man from money. You’re damned if you have it and accursed for the lack of it”. What is more, by way of showing an escape route to his bride Vidya, he cautioned her; “make money the measure and you are in for trouble dear”; it is as if he has alerted all of us to its pitfalls so that we can collectively regulate our monetary heads to make the best use of our life within our mundane means.

After letting me pen over a score of articles, though my muse prompted me to enter into the arena of fiction, yet it made me struggle to come up with the opening lines of my maiden novel for over ten days or so before “That winter night in the mid-seventies, the Janata Express was racing rhythmically on its tracks towards the coast of Andhra Pradesh. As its headlight pierced the darkness of the fertile plains, the driver honked the horn as though to awake the sleepy environs to the spectacle of the speeding train. On that, in the S-3, were the Ramaiahs with their nine year-old daughter Roopa.”

But then “the train stopped at a village station, as though to disrupt Roopa’s daydreams of modeling herself on the lady doctor at the Christian Medical College Hospital, and as she peeped out, the ill-lit platform seemed to suggest that the chances of her being
Dr. Roopa could be but dim.”

Indeed, as Roopa’s father couldn't help her become a doctor, she marries Sathyam, hoping that he would help her cause, but when he fails her, feeling used by him, she insensibly seeks lesbian solace in her friend Sandhya’s embrace. Later, losing her heart to Raja Rao, Sandhya’s husband, she finds herself in a dilemma of love, even as Sathyam’s friend Prasad woos her to distraction. Unfolding the compelling saga of Roopa’s love and loss, governed by the vicissitudes of life, this 'novel' endeavor nuances man-woman chemistry on one hand, and portrays woman-woman empathy on the other.

When, in an absorbing story, these and other inimitable characters began to come alive in an intricate plot, I could sense that my maiden novel was turning out into a work of art on the Indian literary stage, and so I was desperate to live up to its completion in its poetic prose. Oh, how I feared death then, and what a relief it was as I lived to keep up with the muse to complete 'Benign Flame'!

But what a poetic justice it was that the publishers’ apathy, for my literary foray into an uncharted fictional arena, pushed me into Roopa’s despondent shoes, leg for leg! So to say, to atone for myself, and to earn for her the empathy, at least, of a few discerning readers, I self-published it, in which some have found freshness - “it’s a refreshing surprise to discover that the story will not trace a fall into disaster for Roopa, given that many writers might have habitually followed that course with a wife who strays into extramarital affairs” – for, after all, Raja Rao famously goads the deviant Roopa to love Sathyam too to make him happy.

Who said the novel is dead; 'Benign Flame' raises the bar as vouched for by –

The author has convinced the readers that love is something far beyond the marriage tie and the fulfillment in love can be attained without marriage bondage. The author has achieved a minor revolution without any paraphernalia of revolution in the fourth part of the novel – The Quest, India.

The author makes free use of – not interior monologue as such, but – interior dialogue of the character with the self, almost resembling the dramatic monologue of Browning. Roopa, Sandhya, Raja Rao and Prasad to a considerable extent and Tara and Sathyam to a limited degree indulge in rationalization, trying to analyse their drives and impulses – The Journal of Indian Writing in English.

Overall, Benign Flame is a unique attempt at exploring adult relationships and sexuality in the contemporary middle-class. All the characters come alive with their cravings and failings, their love and their lust. Benign Flame blurs the lines and emphasizes that life is not all black and white - it encompasses the full spectrum of living - Indian Book Chronicle.

Later, after enriching it further, I’ve placed this enchanting novel in the public domain as a free ebook to more acclaim that is even as ‘publishing’ remains the Domain of the Devil, as captured in the eponymous chapter of my second novel, Jewel-less Crown: Saga of Love, also in the public domain