Today's #flashfiction #AuthorFactory

“Door number one, or door number two?”

Saint Peter* #quote

Today a dog told me someone was at the bottom of a well. He was quite fine since he had a ladder. Anyway onto the flash fiction!

Author Factory

Authors came down the assembly line, one at a time. There were models of every kind. Horror, Romance, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Adventure, Comedy, Historical, and so many other types were all shoved down the line by robotic arms. Every time an author was produced the factory swallowed a bit of coal and belched smoke.

But the Publisher, which is what the machine producing the authors was called, did not design the authors. Smaller robots, called Agents, would put author models into the Publisher’s database, and they crossed their mechanical fingers eager for them to be processed. The agents mined their authors from caves all throughout the world, like anyone would with any other raw material.

           But the most important thing in the author production process was at the end of the assembly line. Sometimes called “Quality Control”, other times called “Filters”. But their real names were Critics. With their metallic eyes they scrutinized the authors then determined which ones were defective, then threw them into the trash bin. They were relentless; some of the most effective ones were called hypocrites.

           Yesterday the following authors came down the line:

            First came a Horror author. Not creepy or withdrawn, but actually a very jovial and happy person. He treated Horror as his second love, a duality with his first love: his family. Especially his little girl with her cute, blue, polka-dotted dress and bright smile.

            Next came a Romance author. She never wrote with the simple boy meets girl format. She treated love as a hidden treasure, something to be discovered. The characters usually didn’t even realize they were destined to each other until the middle of her book, at the earliest. At times she made it to where they didn’t even know of each other’s existence until a quarter of the way through. But that made it ever so sweeter when the love was finally tasted.

            Third came a Fantasy author. He didn’t write about ferocious dragons, unspeakable curses or powerful wizards. Instead he wrote about the little magic elf in your computer, which was what was actually delivering your emails. Or perhaps the lawn gnome sentry keeping your garden protected from the goblins of the night. Maybe even the ghost right behind you as you read, giggling at that dirty thought that just popped into your head.

           At the tail end the comedy author sat. But he didn’t profess in slapstick or puns. He was the man that made you laugh at death, disease, and misfortune. From the angle he showed you, all that became giggle worthy. As the class clown of the morgue he got more laughs than he should have.

           All would have been thrown away that day. The Critics would have determined they did not fit the standard mold. They all their flaws, the Horror writer too happy, the Romance author didn’t believe in love at first sight, the Fantasy author didn’t have a single warlock, and the comedy author’s humor improper. All trashed. At least they would have been without the malfunction.

           That day something went wrong. A variable switched, loop broken, or server disconnected, all probable causes. That day all the Critics’ code was wiped. They had no programs or applications to follow. All standards and prejudices were gone. The only thing left was their eye.

            They no longer had their preprogrammed equations to think with. Like didn’t equal good, hate didn’t equal bad. Good equaled good because no variable existed to compare it too. It was what it was. Now with no code the Critics closed the bin, as they had no reasons left to discard the authors. The four saved authors became best sellers, and so many more followed behind them.

But the Critics were soon missed. No matter how many authors were or weren’t discarded the Publisher would still produce more. The Agents came with more, now more fervently because of the knowledge of guaranteed success. The factory overflowed, too many authors for the assembly line.  Too many to even fit in the factory.

              The Readers, eagerly awaiting the authors outside the factory, did not expect the torrent that followed. They honestly tried to fight. But the tsunami buried them. When they tried to read one, ten more presented themselves. The death tolls were in the millions.

              Management didn’t know what to do. They stopped production for a moment of thought. When the Critics broke they saw two things. The many gems that came out, and the crisis of overflow.

After months of deliberation and debate a solution arose. They added a stage to production. Called Refinement, this stage had new types of workers.

             These new robots came in many models; Friends, Family, and even Other Authors included in the list. The Refinement workers never threw away a single author. At every stage of production they did only one thing: fix. Through pats on the back, advice, and other support they retooled the author before sending back down the line again.

            No author was ever thrown away again. Critics played their part in weeding out the problems, but now they only threw the authors to the back of the line instead of to the garbage bin. The only time when an Author truly left the assembly line was when they jumped off themselves.