Drones roamed through the clouds, forming them, and remote-controlled balloons wandered between the shapes formed by drones. I left my friends with a sudden motivation. I started walking towards the sunflower field adjacent to the cloud show area. After I entered the path that divided the field and went a little further, I sat in the first gap I found. I felt better in this little space surrounded by sunflowers. I first smelled sea that reminded me of my childhood, and a blue-skinned woman came out of the sunflowers.
"It is interesting to meet someone here," I said.
"What kind of person?" the woman asked, and from her expression, it was clear that she was also surprised by this encounter.
"You have blue skin, and you have brought the smell of the sea here," I explained.
"Because I use a bluing spray."
" I think I'm ignorant about cosmetics," I said with a smile. "Would you like to sit down?"
"Have we met before?"
"It happens in movies. Those who are tired of the party start chatting outside."
After a brief pause, she decided I was a harmless type; she sat next to me and said, "My name is Sanem."
"I am Umut; nice to meet you," I said, and to further the conversation," What do you do?" I asked.
"I'm a fashion designer, are you?"
"I'm a publicist. I'm also working on a novel ."
"It must be hard."
"It's not easy to create a novel using an artificial intelligence program. I've been trying for two years."
"Are you an obsessive type?"
"I don't know; I never thought about it."
"I think I'm obsessed with aesthetics. I want everything around me to be beautiful."
"Then I have to leave," I said, pretending to get up.
"You're funny," she said, accompanied by a smile that spread across her face.
"I have to," I replied.
"They may have been worried about me. I better get going," she said.
"We were good, but as you wish."
She got up, saying, "Maybe we'll talk another day," and disappeared among the sunflowers without giving me a chance to say anything.
That night, while I was sitting with my roommate, Görkem, drinking beer, the subject was our novel project. He worked for a software company that produced content for media companies. His job was to create highly clicked news texts through artificial neural networks. This effort was an artistic activity, according to Görkem, because the news he produced had already become independent of the facts. About two years ago, we decided to write a novel using Görkem's ability to create automatic text. There were many novels created in this way abroad, some of which even reached good sales figures. As a matter of fact, Görkem initially wanted to do this with a corporate publishing house's support. Still, the publishing houses did not even like to discuss the issue. At this stage, I suggested that we take on what publishing houses can bring to the project. As a copywriter who has worked in the advertising industry for years, I thought I could handle the issue's literary aspect. Although our work was sometimes divided by crises of despair, we managed to end our novel the previous month. For the same reason that I didn't ask Sanem for her contact information, we were postponing the novel's announcement. Later, we determined the book's release date with the courage of the beers we drank repeatedly.
Before going to bed at night, I searched the internet for fashion designers named Sanem. As a result of my meticulous work on hundreds of accounts, I identified her Instagram account. After postponing the sending of friend request for the next day, I fell into a restless sleep in my bed, where I would turn around with strange dreams.
Sanem responded to my friendship offer, albeit with a few days delay. Our dating, which continued through texting, was crowned with a date decision.
I spent the first half of my day staring blankly at the young man visual produced by an artificial intelligence model called dueling networks. They had sent me a picture of this virtual character hoping it would inspire me with the ad text, but the timing was obviously wrong. At ten to one, I left the workplace in a hurry and started walking to the restaurant where I would meet Sanem. Installed in my glasses, the elegant city app transformed the slum on the road's left side into a villa site and the migrant beggars on the sidewalk into stylish musicians. I continued on my way, accompanied by the singing of virtual goldfinches in the trees.
When I finally got to the restaurant, I saw that the table I had booked was empty. Sanem appeared at the restaurant entrance while reviewing the media plan of our novel on my mobile computer. She was wearing black pants and a state-of-the-art blouse. The flexible screen covering her blouse changed color to create harmonious combinations with the colors in the background.
"Welcome. I felt like I was watching a Tarkovski movie for a moment."
As I settled in the chair opposite me, "Why is that?" she asked.
"The colors of the clothes in Tarkovski films always match the background."
She didn't listen to my answer because her eye was on the box. "What's in that box?" she asked.
"It's a gift I bought you," I handed her the box. "You have to open it at home alone."
"I'm curious, but I think I can wait. How's the novel project going?"
"Two days before the introduction. Excitement is at its peak."
After we had dinner, Sanem invited me for coffee in the garden of their house. We paid the bill, left the restaurant, and took a taxi to the neighborhood where their home was located. As soon as we entered the Sanems' villa garden, I smelled of the forest; this was surprising because there was no forest around. The air in this area was quite polluted. As I sat at the wooden table in the garden, I heard bird chirpings. While Sanem was busy inside, I realized that the sound source was the e-forest device, which also cleans the air.
As we sat across from each other drinking our coffee, Sanem opened the box of the gift I bought. A childish expression of joy appeared on her face when she saw a bouquet of chamomile with a butterfly coming out of the box.
"Like a nightingale, this butterfly does not leave its flowers," I said.
When Sanem put the bouquet in the vase she had brought from inside, the genetically modified butterfly took off and took a tour of the garden and turned around and put it back on one of the daisies.
"It was a great gift, thank you," Sanem said. After chatting for a while in their garden, I said goodbye to her and made my way home. In the following days, I was going to put everything aside and prepare to introduce our novel.
Our novel attracted the attention of media outlets that broadcast on technology rather than cultural and artistic media. We agreed to promote it through a media platform called Bad Robot.
"Thank you for your interest in our broadcast. Today we will introduce the first Turkish novel written by artificial intelligence," Görkem began.
Bad Robot's outspoken host took a moment's pause, saying: "Are you sure this is a first?"
"Except for studies that are done for academic purposes, yes," he said. They said they would force us with their questions, but it was still a surprise that the presenter asked such a question.
"I honestly don't believe that artificial intelligence can write novels. Can you prove that to us?"
"Our website contains a raw version of the novel produced by artificial intelligence. Anyone can open and check."
"There are mountains of differences between the text produced by artificial intelligence and the book released."
"There may also be similar differences between the first copies that people write and their published books. We also ran the model many times while creating the novel. We didn't want to put all the intermediate outputs that we used on the site."
"How can a computer program write a novel?"
"In fact, our program The Dreamer, like humans, learns to write by reading other literary texts. Analyzing the works it has read creates a recipe for writing novels and applies it."
"Can you explain a little bit how the program can do this?"
"Some novelists write by improvisation, others by adhering to fiction templates. We see a similar distinction in artificial intelligence programs that write novels. The Dreamer who wrote Simulacra Diaries, for example, is a program that generates text using improvisation. It created the novel based on the first few sentences we fed."
"I read the novel from beginning to end. And to be honest, I didn't understand anything about the book. There's no story going on, no character I can identify with."
It would be appropriate for me to answer this question: "The Simurakra Diaries is an encyclopedic novel written with post-modern understanding. As its name indicates, it has no claim to referring to everyday reality," I said.
The interest in our publication was higher than we expected. Some of the audience thought that the presenter was squeezing us too much. Some of the audience decided that what we were doing was charlatanism.
"Let's assume for a moment that novels created by artificial intelligence replace what people write. Do you think writers will be unemployed?"
"Again, the author must decide what kind of model the novel will be written through and which books the model will be trained with. It is also necessary to check the text for logical consistency. I mean, writers don't have to worry."
"Why do you think big publishing houses and famous writers are not interested in this issue? I mean, personally, I'd expect a job like this to come out of them."
"It could be because they think rationally. It's always hard to make firsts."
The number of people watching the live broadcast began to decline rapidly. And since our host noticed this situation, "we'd better get it together. Anything you'd like to add?" he asked.
"Readers can get Simurakra Diaries from all platforms that sell e-books. Those who want to write novels using The Dreamer can also contact us," he said.
I was encouraged by the fact that around a thousand people watched the live broadcast; on the other hand, only three readers had ordered our book at the moment. As I left the studio in a terrible sense of defeat, Görkem said that sales would increase over time, and I had no hope in this direction.
Because the sales figures upset us, we decided to take the next day off from our work and stay home. I didn't call Sanem because I wasn't in the mood during this period, and if she wanted to, she could call and ask me to meet. At the end of my second day at home, we started texting, and the next day we decided to meet in front of a light statue in Kadıköy, half a hologram, half a stone.
After talking for a while in front of the light statue, we began to wander in Kadıköy. During our walk, Sanem asked if it would be a problem for me to stop by the clothes store. As soon as she walked across the visualization booth at the back of the store, she completely lost interest in me. Because the body size scanner created a model of her body, she could see the clothes she was holding in front of her as worn on the visualization booth display. Perhaps after the tenth outfit, "I'm not the person that you think," she said.
In the limited time we spent together, I learned that Sanem had a strange sense of humor. So I didn't take these unfamiliar words seriously; on the other hand, the sad expression on her face confused me. "Let's go out and sit somewhere; I have something to tell you," she said, putting the clothes on his lap aside in a gesture as if they were getting her hands dirty.
Outside, the weather suddenly changed, and large and small hail began to fall on the street in front of the store. Surrounding coffee shops' tarpaulins have started to open automatically. Hail bounced off the ugly tarps covering the bodies of taxis, and those who had nothing to protect their heads tried to take refuge in a secure place in a hurry. Sanem and I, meanwhile, found a table under the tarp of the coffee shop next door and sat on wicker chairs.
After we placed our drinks orders, I said to Sanem, "you had something to tell me." At this time, the Elegant City app began to distort the images added to my glasses. As the app did not show the cars' sponge tarpaulins, the filled grains seemed to bounce out of the gap. When the fancy clothes of the people passing in front of us vibrated, the dark matted garments appeared.
"My father went bankrupt three months ago. Since then, my life has been turned upside down," Sanem said.
"But you still live in a luxury villa."
"The creditors confiscated it. I wanted to visit one last time before the others settled in."
"I don't know what to say. I'm really sorry."
"I get angry with myself for trying to maintain my old habits. I feel like I tricked you, too. I'm not in a position to make any relationship work right now."
"You have a job, a profession. I think you can handle it," I said.
Sanem began to watch the heavy hail with a sad expression. Blinking my eyes in turn, I closed the Elegant City app, which had already become dysfunctional. After the app closed, the first thing I saw was two poor children joking in joy across the road.
"All I have experienced sounds like a dream. I feel like I've lost my way," she said.
"I'm also upset about the novel. Let's not let our story end this way."
After hail had eased, it was suddenly cut off, and vehicles began to move on the street ahead. "I really don't know Umut; what I say would be a lie," Sanem said.
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