If you don’t know what story cubes are, see the introduction to the story cubes series.
To see the original roll of the story cubes, see yesterday’s post.
The first stories were told under trees. One of the first ones we learned was probably about what happened underneath a certain apple tree when an unfortunately-gullible woman ate one of its fruits and then handed it to her husband. Adam, like any smart husband, ate what his wife gave him. Things haven’t been the same since.
At night, around campfires, stories were made up and told and passed on. These small huts and villages grew into big cities with publishing companies who specialized in selling these stories that had once been handed down for free. People talked about these books, criticized them, praised them, gave some crap prestigious prizes and ignored some gems until they were buried under the dust of obscurity.
This went on for several centuries, some old masters forgotten, some replaced, others rediscovered, until the day the computers got smart. ChatGPT bolted onto the scene seemingly overnight, the first thunderbolt of a storm that had been blowing toward civilization since the 1950s.
Once its power had been unlocked as suddenly as if it had dropped out of the sky, humans could not turn around to look at what they had created to overshadow themselves.
I didn’t space the cubes equally around for several reasons: first, the gap makes it clear where the story starts. Second, the eye in the middle of the book cover looks directly at the scary cube. Third, the gap gives an ominous sense of finality to the story: things as we know it end and there’s nothing after it. That could mean the world as we know it, or it could be that we step into a future that is so unlike our previous history the story no longer resides in our same realm. The post-AI realm, unlike our previous history, won’t be “more of the same, only different.”
One other thing I like about this layout is that it almost begs for a story to be written by reading the cubes in the opposite direction, from the 9 o’ clock position counterclockwise. Would it be the same story? With imagination, absolutely not, just as if you could rewind the clock of your life, there are things you’d change along the way and you wouldn’t end up in the same place you left.
The comments section is the perfect place for what you came up with. I’m sure you did better than I did this week!
I'd love to hear from you!