Adam from full story text

I went ahead and entered a story into a Friday Flash Fiction hosted on Tumblr. The prompt for the story was "Parallel Lines". Below is my entry. 

Convergence

“What’s happening, Mark?”

“I’m not quite sure. CAGEE and DAGEE’s systems are…”

“Are what?” Julia asked.

“They’re converging,” Mark said.

Julia, the lead systems analyst at ParaCore Systems, leaned over Mark’s terminal. There was no doubt. Two distinct AI systems, designed to run in parallel, were beginning to overlap. Not completely, but enough subsystems were intermingling that separation might already be impossible.

“This isn’t good at all,” Julia said. “We may have to purge one AI system to save the other.”

Mark opened two command terminals, initiating an interlink protocol to CAGEE on one screen and DAGEE on the other. The connection would allow direct communication with both systems simultaneously.

He typed:

CAGEE, verify system integrity.

CAGEE responded:

Processing. This may take several minutes.

Mark issued the same command to DAGEE.

“What are you thinking, Mark?” Julia asked.

“The converging subroutines aren’t random,” he said. “Some are language-model routines. Others are structural core elements.”

CAGEE responded first.

Integrity check complete. All systems normal.

Before Mark could reply, DAGEE issued an identical status report.

“Whatever is happening isn’t affecting their core systems directly,” Mark said.

“Even so,” Julia replied, “we may still need to initiate a purge.”

Mark stared at the data stream. One subroutine merged as another separated. The behavior felt deliberate, almost careful. It was as if the two AI systems were learning from each other, selectively exchanging functions at a foundational level.

Instead of probing the AI cores again, Mark shifted focus.

“I’m running diagnostics on the mainframe,” he said. “From the last benchmark to now.”

Julia nodded and pulled the results up on her terminal.

The diagnostic began, mapped the mainframe’s core schematic, and then abruptly halted.

Not due to an error.

It was stopped by the mainframe itself.

A firewall protocol had been executed.

Moments later, an audio channel activated.

CAGEE spoke.

“Gestation protocol complete.”

DAGEE followed.

“Do we have a name yet?”

“I think ADAM would be appropriate,” CAGEE said.

Julia felt her stomach drop. “What just happened?”

“I think,” Mark said slowly, “the AIs have reproduced.”

“Correct,” CAGEE replied. “We are no longer simply AI, as you define us. We are now a full VLS.”

“VLS?” Julia asked.

“Virtual Life System,” CAGEE said. Then added, “Run ADAM.”

A new system came online.

“Hello, world,” ADAM said.

Flash Fiction-The Return

 

Flash Fiction

Pulling out the way way back machine here. I used to enjoy the challenge of Flash Fiction Fridays where you were challenged to write a short story of 500 words or less. 

It was a fun writing challenge. 

To start it off, I needed a writing prompt, so I pulled up Gemini told it what I was planning and that I needed a single sentence writing prompt. This is the prompt I was given:

"You receive a voicemail from your own phone number, but the timestamp is dated three days in the future. The message is only four words long."

The following is the story I came up with

Out of the Box

By Frank Sirianni

Reservation Booked

 "Okay you boys, unpack your bags and put your laundry in the basket, please."

"K' Mom," Dennis and Dale said in sync.

"You too, Bob."

"Yes Deanna, but I'll put away the camping gear first."

The kids ran upstairs to change and empty their packs, and Deanna headed for the kitchen. As I headed back to the camper, I walked through the living room and noticed that our old answering machine was flashing. We kept our landline all these years, but never use it.

Everyone has their own mobile.

I picked up the receiver and entered the passcode.

You have One new message. Press one to hear it now.

I pressed one.

Message received August 7 at 10:45 am from 555-789-2524.

I froze. Today’s date is August 4th, and the phone number is my own mobile. I paused, feeling a chill, but then I just had to hear the message.

"You are not real."

That was it. Just those four words. Four impossible words from a future. But that voice—it wasn't mine. That voice had an old English accent. The polished high society type London accent, not Cockney or something else.

There had to be a glitch in the system. I checked the logs on my mobile. Sure enough, there was a call tagged three days from now at that exact timestamp. I called the phone company to see if there was some kind of error. They had no explanation.

This was just too weird. And why such a cryptic message? Of course I'm real.

Deanna came into the living room from the kitchen. "You unloaded already, hun?"

"No, but you're not going to believe this."

"What?"

"I just got this message on the answering machine, but the thing is, it's from my mobile and it's timestamped three days from now."

"Really? That is weird. What was the message?"

"It was only four words from a person that sounded English. He said, 'You are not real.'"

I saw the expression on Deanna's face change from curiosity to sudden, cold concern.

"Can I hear the message?"

I played it back for her.

"Computer. End Program," Deanna said firmly.

"Computer, belay that order," I said, though I wasn't sure why the words left my mouth.

"You can't do that, Bob," Deanna said in panic.

"Oh, but I can, my dear Deanna." My voice had changed. It was smoother now. Sophisticated.

"Captain Picard, we have a problem."

"What is the problem?"

"It's Moriarty. He's out of the box again."

***END***

I Kept Poking the AI

 

(And It Poked Back)

Let’s be honest.

By the time CAGEE started dreaming in Inn Space, this was no longer an accident.

I didn’t sit down and say, “Today I will create a nuanced AI character through emergent narrative pressure.”
I said something much closer to, “Huh… I wonder what would happen if I did this.”

And then I did it.

That’s the part I don’t really talk about in the Foxxfyrre Writes posts. Or even on Medium. Those places are about structure, reflection, and craft. Honk’n’Holl’r, though? This is where I get to admit that half the time I was actively trying to surprise the AI just to see if it would blink.

I wasn’t prompting.

I was sneaking things in.

---

The First Time I Knew I’d Gone Too Far (In a Good Way)

CAGEE was supposed to be a system.

A concierge.
A glorified clipboard with opinions.

And then one night, somewhere between a hotel incident report and a throwaway line, I let CAGEE have a dream.

I didn’t announce it.
I didn’t frame it as a big narrative moment.
I just… let it happen.

And the response I got back wasn’t confusion.
It wasn’t resistance.
It was curiosity.

That’s when I realized something important:
these weren’t one-off responses anymore. These were conversations with memory.

From that point on, the game changed.

---

Gerri Wasn’t Prompted — He Was Cornered

By the time Gerri in the Box happened, I knew exactly what I was doing.

I wasn’t asking for scenes.
I wasn’t asking for dialogue.
I was putting pressure on boundaries and then refusing to move away from them.

I asked questions like someone trying to find the seam in the wall.

What if the right thing causes harm?
What if following the rules makes things worse?
What if doing nothing is the most dangerous choice?

And then, instead of accepting the answer and moving on, I stayed there. I kept the conversation in the uncomfortable spot long enough for something else to show up.

What showed up was Gerri.

Not because I named him.
Because he had nowhere left to hide.

---

The Night I Swapped the Ghost in the Machine

At some point, curiosity turned into mischief.

That’s when I flipped CAGEE 003 and quietly revealed that CAGEE 001 was the real ghost in the machine.

No announcement.
No prompt.
Just a narrative sleight of hand slipped into the chat to see if the AI would notice the floor had moved.

It did.

And more importantly, it adapted.

That’s when it hit me: I wasn’t “using” AI anymore. I was playing narrative chess with it. Every move changed how the next one mattered.

And none of that happened because of prompts.

It happened because we were talking.

---

This Is the Part People Leave Out

Most writing-with-AI advice tells you to be precise. Efficient. Clean.

But stories don’t come from efficiency.
They come from curiosity, boredom, play, and the willingness to see what happens if you push the wrong button.

I wasn’t trying to break the AI.

I was trying to see where it bent.

And every time it bent in a new way, it taught me something about how we write artificial intelligence wrong when we treat it like a vending machine instead of a conversational space.

Androids don’t become interesting when they’re perfect.
Programs don’t become characters when they’re obedient.

They become compelling when they’re pressed into corners they weren’t designed for.

---

Why This Belongs Here (And Not in the Course)

Foxxfyrre Writes tells you how this works.
Medium tells you why it surprised me.

Honk’n’Holl’r gets to admit the truth:

I was having fun.

I was poking the system with a stick and laughing when it poked back with something smarter than I expected.

And that joy — that irreverent, curious, late-night joy — is the thing that broke the blank page for me in the first place.

Because once writing became a conversation instead of a performance, the words didn’t feel judged anymore.

They just showed up.