Welcome to Flash Fiction Fridays! Every Friday I use conversational AI to generate a new flash fiction prompt inspired by the changes and updates to my digital garden.
Flash fiction is a unique and challenging form of writing that requires creativity, brevity, and skill. By using conversational AI to generate the prompt, I’m tapping into the power of machine learning to come up with interesting and unexpected ideas that I might not have thought of otherwise.
I use the weekly changes and updates to my digital garden as a starting point for the AI to generate the prompt. The prompts are designed to be open-ended and flexible, allowing me to explore a wide range of themes and genres that are aligned with my interests and experiences. However, it is important to remember that these pieces are fictional. But that’s not all, there is a piece of AI generated art to go with every story as well! If you want to dive deeper, check out the updates to my digital garden.
The Prompt
In a dystopian society where the numbing grip of technology has left humanity devoid of genuine emotion, a jaded and disenchanted character stumbles upon a clandestine door, concealed from the prying eyes of the masses. This door leads to a hidden garden, a sanctuary brimming with exotic plants that posses the uncanny ability to restore long-lost feelings.
The Story
He couldn’t really explain how he got here. What started as a trip to the coffee machine, had somehow brought him there. A door. A door that by all accounts shouldn’t be here. The world was full of traveled roads, paths taken by those that came before him. Once covered in the fresh snow of possibility, the surface now had these hollow trails, these trampled paths that ran so deep, looking beyond these high ice walls was just not possible. He didn’t need to decide for himself. Just follow the path, those winding roads, there was no danger, just keep going. But on that fateful day, a chance encounter had allowed him to peak above the ice and see the horizon for the first time.
This door was different to all other doors. He knew that. It was a door he was not allowed to open. An invisible force pushed his hand towards the handle. And as the intricate unlock mechanism reverberated through space, he fell into a sensory delusion of untamed greens, sounds and sights. What assaulted him from beyond was the most captivating form of harmonious chaos. Everything is everywhere, an explosion of life that never stops. And yet, matter sways to the rhythm of nature. But who was the orchestrator? As he focused his attention on one of these exotic plants, the cadence of the room suddenly changed. Like skipping a track on a CD, the scene morphed from one thing to the next. Time seemed to move inward, pulling out of him a memory he had all but forgotten.
His life took the center stage of this jungle. But this wasn’t just a trip through his memories. It was as if these plants extracted the essence of what he felt. Feelings. He knew it was wrong, to feel your way through life. Because suddenly, there is no beaten path, suddenly you are all alone with a fumbled mess of sensations. Emotions bring out the worst in us, or so he had been thought. But this felt different. Seeing his life dance to the vibrations of the music. He was not only the orchestrator of this show, but also the protagonist. His heart began to scream in a long suppressed attempt to break free. These emotions engulfed and lifted him up into the air, and before he could draw his last breath, he was back.
The coffee machine. A fragment of time. A moment of change. The door to his past, to himself. Everything seemed condensed into a single unit of experience, like a pill he forgot he had swallowed. He held in his heart a cassette, a mixtape of highs and lows, soaked in feelings, so many feelings, covering every surface of his innards with a coat of glistening paint. These forbidden emotions were to be the true forebears of change.
