The AI-euthanasia Hollywood Lament

Six Sentence Stories is a weekly writers’ challenge hosted by Denise at Girlie on the Edge blog. This week’s cue word is: Rhythm

_{AI-euthanasia. Noun. The practice of killing without pain an AI product which is suffering from a malfunction that cannot be rectified by scientific intervention. Synonym: Mercy killing. Painless death.}

The Department of Eternal Sleep Productions.

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The AI-euthanasia Hollywood Lament

I was doing so well… I’d passed my programming reactions with critical acclaim and attained ‘red carpet’ certification for my harmonisation into a clinically-controlled Human Actors Network Cell (HANC).

They modelled my looks on the actor Martin Henderson, knowing that I would be programmed to want to look like the actor Ewan McGregor – but, ha, I didn’t mind really, both Martin and Ewan are good-looking fellows… which leads me to ask the question regarding how AI and humans attain their physical looks: is there really much difference between an AI actor who is subject to the design whims of a team of executive producers, and a human actor who is subject to the inherited genes of their parents and good lighting ???

After HANC came my first starring role simulation… and it was here that I failed under the gruelling AI-Academy’s programme of extreme acting… you see, as I said at the beginning, I was doing so well, but right at the last moment I cracked and lost my temper… and I shouted so loud and angrily (more at my own failure of composure than the hostile conditions I was working under) that the special effects team all the way up on the 3rd floor could hear me!

My lament: you’d think they’d make a modification to improve my temper, so that next time I cracked I wouldn’t go off-script and cause such a hullabaloo, but no… it’s the AI acting scrapheap for me, with my best parts integrated into the next model to come… alas, that’s showbusiness, as they say.

So now, here I sit in the AI-euthanasia department waiting room, and to pass away the minutes I’m dreaming of the times I used to spend in my trailer in between shooting schedules, when I’d watch on my tablet re-runs of Ewan McGregor in Trainspotting and season three of Fargo, while ignoring the spirited recommendations of my agent to study Martin Henderson in Gray’s Anatomy and Virgin River… when finally I hear my name called out on the waiting room intercom… and it’s time… time for me to take a last bow and make my exit… tick, tick, tick, goes a rhythm within me… tick, tick, BOOM!!

Oh, how I wish I could be there to see the audience’s expression when the entire studio goes up, as they cut me apart and trigger the bomb I had my stunt-double plant in my circuitry!

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Editor’s note: The above micro story was written after a gruelling three-day spell of 13 hour shifts with missing personnel. Like the AI character in my story, I was doing so well under extreme conditions, but am sorry to report that I cracked right at the last moment…

The AI-euthanasia Hollywood Lament written by Ford, 06 April, 2022.

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