I used ChatGPT for the first time today. I asked it to write me a story using this prompt:

“write a short fantasy children’s story using ideas around the five following words: glimmering, whisper, serendipity, ethereal, cascade. Please have some sense of triumph for the main character by the end of the story. Also, a surprise plot twist toward the end would be great.”

I took its output and pasted it into the Lovo AI text-to-speech engine (which also allowed me to mix in background music from a selection it provided). Below is the story text that ChatGPT produced:

Once upon a time, in a far-off land, there lived a brave young elf named Eira. Eira lived deep in the heart of the enchanted forest, where she spent her days exploring and discovering all of the mysteries that lay hidden within its leafy depths.

One day, while wandering through the forest, Eira came upon a glimmering stream. As she walked along its banks, she heard a faint whisper on the wind. Intrigued, Eira followed the sound until she came upon a clearing in the woods. There, she found a group of wise old wizards gathered around a bubbling cauldron.

Eira watched in wonder as the wizards conjured up a sparkling potion, their words and gestures full of magic and mystery. Suddenly, Eira had a sudden stroke of serendipity. She knew exactly what to do!

Stepping forward, Eira reached into the cauldron and scooped up a handful of the ethereal brew. As she did, the potion began to shimmer and glow, its light cascading out across the clearing.

The wizards were amazed by Eira’s bravery and determination. They knew that the potion she had created was a powerful elixir that could grant any wish. And so, with a great sense of triumph, Eira made her wish: to bring peace and harmony to the enchanted forest.

To everyone’s surprise, the wish came true. The forest was transformed into a place of beauty and wonder, where all of the creatures lived in harmony. And Eira, the brave young elf, was hailed as a hero.

But little did Eira know, there was one more surprise in store. As she walked through the forest, she suddenly came upon a hidden glade, filled with glittering jewels and treasures beyond her wildest dreams.

And with this final plot twist, Eira’s adventures in the enchanted forest had truly come full circle, bringing her more joy and wonder than she could ever have imagined. The end.

Good thing Chuck was several steps ahead of the mostly-disinterested pack. For once, it was a good thing he wasn’t very good at his job. Mostly, he didn’t care that he kind of sucked at this. And that was a major contributor to his continued suckage at this and most other jobs he’d ever tried. And it’s just as well, because he likely wouldn’t last any longer in this role than any in any job he’d previously held.

Being those precious few steps ahead put him around the corner with just enough time to view, only half-register, and reroute the shambling party away from what was half-in and half-out of the alley between what was once a small but thriving pet store and the tenement halls on the corner of 8th and Clover.

It was Samuel Allen Dresden. He could only see the prone young man from the shoulders up, and even though the body – or at least Chuck assumed it was a whole body – was lying stomach down, its left cheek plastered to the dirty, cold sidewalk pavement with dried, caked blood. Though Sammy’s face was turned away from his view, Chuck could tell it was his friend from the unmistakable thick, black, curly hair and the ill-fitting, much too large for Sammy, red leather jacket adorned with what seemed to Chuck to be at least two-hundred zippers, that Sammy wouldn’t be caught dead not wearing…

They hadn’t yet become really close friends. They met in Thornhill’s Engineering Calculus class last semester, and Sammy and Chuck had had enough in common. Sammy was in the Computer Science major at a local community college, and Chuck had switched from that major to the Digital Animation track. Chuck was probably smart enough to continue with Comp. Sci., and had already graduated almost a decade earlier as valedictorian with his Computer Programming/Data Analysis degree, so he hadn’t even bothered to look at the curriculum for this new major when he first returned to school for a new degree. But after it took him two attempts to get a passing grade in Statistics, and that being topped off with Thornhill’s Calculus from hell, he decided that if this is where the math started in that major, well, he didn’t need that much math in his life. So he switched to a more tech/art track instead, Animation.

Sammy and “Chucky Baby” as Sammy called him, had only hung out and played video games at Sammy’s mom’s apartment about four, maybe five times. And for whatever reason, a fast friendship never really blossomed. In the short time they’d spent together, they enjoyed each other’s company and had fun, and Chuck even sometimes called Sammy Sambo because of their mutual adoration for those 80s Stallone “Rambo” movies. Chuck just chalked up not getting closer than they did to timing and them both probably being in some sort of transitional stage in life that neither really recognized at the time.

But now, Chuck saw his friend; lifeless, bloodied. A metal pipe that shared Sammy’s blood was barely peeking out of the alley beside the unnaturally still body. No more video games or thanking his mom for the unsolicited strawberry lemonade Crystal Light drinks she would bring them while they played the original Final Fantasy on the classic Nintendo Entertainment System they both loved so much. No more exams. No more struggling, crying out in the dark, dank alley. No more convulsions. No more anything.

The main reason Chuck thought he even took this job as a Southside Ghost Walk Tour Guide was to get that copy of Ultima he finally scrounged up on Craigslist. It was going to be a gift for Sammy. Sammy talked about how it used to be his favorite, and that his old, worn-out copy had finally gone kaput a few years earlier. It was a hard game to find an original cartridge of.

For now, Chuck knew he needed to quickly cut this tour short, get the small, listless mob back to the tour launch, and figure out what the heck had happened to his friend.