Nick hated that stupid lamp.

 

Alex had bought it from some fancy German company, insisting it was “state of the art technology” and would “maximise Nick’s reading prowess,” whatever that meant. Instead, all it did was hurt his eyes.

 

Nick had threatened to throw it out more than once but Alex always stopped him. “Every writer needs a good writing space,” he said. And so the lamp stayed, sitting right next to a photo of him and Alex. It was the only photo they had together. When Nick won his first award, he had it printed. You could see their dilapidated college bedroom in the back, the long graveyard of beers and vodka bottles. None of it mattered, because their smiles took away the watcher’s attention.

 

The shine of the lamp made it hard to look at the photo.

 

*

 

The fights started with the AI. WordBreather, Alex called it. “Everyone’s using it. You should too. It’ll cut through your blocks.”

 

Nick had spitballed some ideas with it but seeing the clean, fluent sentences it produced on command made him feel sick. They felt hollow, like something taxidermy: lifelike, but something essential had been scooped out. It creeped him out. 

 

But the deadlines pressed in, and Alex pressed harder. “You’re choking on perfectionism. Let it scaffold your ideas. You can shape them after.”

 

Reluctantly, Nick did. And, to his horror, it worked. He typed fragments, and WordBreather bloomed them into whole pages. The words weren’t his, not exactly, but they were close enough to pass. Close enough that Alex could package it and sell them.

 

Nick thought of the empty paycheck that sat secretly inside the photo frame. His first check, from Alex’s dad, which he had used to pay for the initial marketing fees of his book, a risk that launched his career. 

 

Nick looked at the photo again and the lamp and swallowed his rage for as long as he could.

 

*

 

Nick’s voice cracked as he yelled, “I can’t do this anymore, Alex! You may be fine pretending it’s okay to use that chatbot, but I’m not!”

 

“I’m not okay with it either!” Alex shouted back. “But if we don’t have another choice—”

 

“There’s always a choice,” Nick snapped. “My writing meant something—to me, to others, to you. And now it doesn’t. You don’t care that we’re using AI, just like you didn’t care when you used me to make yourself look like some genius who has a knack for ‘discovering’ hidden talent! As if that alone —”

 

He never finished. The German lamp connected with his skull, and Alex stood over the still body, blank-eyed.

 

When realization hit, the lamp slipped from his hand. Panic drove him as he dragged Nick’s body to the bedroom, scattered sleeping pills, and tucked a few into Nick’s mouth. He placed the torn confession note beside him. Then he rifled through Nick’s laptop—drafts, chats, research—copying everything onto hard drives, screenshotting obsessively.

 

The lamp, wiped spotless, gleamed coldly on the table, next to their photo. Their smiling faces stared back at him. Everything looked as it needed to.

 

Alex left and closed the door. Nick’s and WordBreather’s ideas churned in his mind, already forming a story—a tragic mystery where the culprit was technology itself. He could feel its potential, the same instinct that had made him notice Nick in the first place. He smiled.

 

He would finish this story. Not alone, of course. He had WordBreather.

 

He would finish it for Nick. For art.