The devil's mind

GPT-3 experiment in story writing

Goal: Goal was to see if I could use GPT-3 to quickly write a short story with minimal prompting. I concentrated on speed and hence did not record all prompts. The first sentence was the main prompt. The story is gory so tread carefully. Story was written in ~6 mins.

STORY START——————————————————————————————--

It was a hot sunny day. Nothing different from any other summer day in Hyderabad. But today was different.
Today, was the day when a small boy from our locality, the small colony of Habsiguda, who had started the new academic year as a first grader, was found dead in a pool of blood on the main road of our colony.
I was there.

Murders were common. Last heard there were 3 murders in a day. But no one ever had been monster enough to kill a child. What kind of monster would do that? It was around 10:30 AM. The incident happened a few meters away from my house. The screams of my mother and my sister who were watching from the balcony were enough to wake up the whole colony. And wake up they did. They all rushed towards the boy. I too joined them. The boy was already dead. There was no point in trying to save him. I stood there, dumbfounded. I was in a daze. I couldn’t think.

The police arrived and did their job. They asked questions.

Had anyone seen anything?

Who was the last person who saw him alive?

Where was he headed?

No one had an answer. There was no CCTV in our colony. No one knew what had happened.

The police came to my house. I was still in a daze. I didn’t know what to say. They asked her why did she scream. What did she see? My mother answered their questions. She told them everything she knew. She told them that I was the last person to see the boy alive. I was the last person to see him alive.

I was the last person to see him alive. I guess I had to be.

You see, I killed the boy. I was the monster. My mother and sister screamed not just because they had just seen a boy get murdered. But they had seen their boy murder another boy. Just like that. And this is my story.

I was a normal boy. Until I was a teenager. Used to wake up early. Study. Play. Go to school. Come back. Study. Play. Sleep. Wake up. Repeat. That was my life. I didn’t have friends. Or at least no one who was close to me. Somehow I always felt better off alone. Reading my books. Writing my stories. Making up my own world. I was in the 5th grade. In our colony, there was this kid. A first grader. His name was Balaji. A kid like me. He was cute. He had the most innocent face. I used to see him everyday.

Everyday, he would run around with his friends, play in the fields, and do what a kid does. One day, he had an argument with his friends. They said that he was a coward. They said that he wouldn’t dare to do something. So he did. He walked up to a dog which was sleeping in the middle of the road and kicked it. The dog was sleeping and the kick was strong. It woke up and ran away. I had seen it all. The kid was now a hero in the eyes of his friends. He had shown them that he wasn’t a coward. From then on, every time I saw him, he would kick the dog. And every time the dog would run away. But one day, the dog didn’t run away. It just sat there and barked. And barked. And barked. The kid was scared. He started crying. His friends too were scared. They tried to calm the dog. It didn’t work. They started running. The dog followed them.

The dog died a few days later.

No one had known what killed it. I was the last person to see the dog alive.

Well, by now, you must have got a fair idea of what happened with the dog. You see at that time, something snapped in my brain.

The value of life took on a different meaning.

What was the value of a dog’s life?

Would anyone miss it?

Did it matter if someone missed it or not?

Our society hangs by a thread. A lot of things are assumed. It is assumed that no one kills without reason. The first thing that the police look for, is motive. Who had a motive to kill? A life is taken, there has to be a reason. Without reason, where do they start? Reason is the first casualty of every murder. One thing that we fail to understand is that all human beings are connected. We may not know each other. We may not like each other. We may not care about each other. We may not live in the same society. But we are connected. And that connection means we won’t kill each other. Just for fun. But what if someone’s mind was made different. What if they didn’t care for society? What if their only care in life was to kill. Would they kill? They would. And they would enjoy doing it.

And that is when I realised that I am not alone. There are people like me. There are people who have gone past a point of no return. There are people who wouldn’t mind killing someone and watch them bleed to death. There are people who wouldn’t mind killing someone and spend the rest of their lives with their blood on their hands. They would kill without a reason. Just for fun. The dog was the first. And that started me down this damned road of no return. And there were many more. Too many to count. The more I killed, the more confident I became. That’s when I realised that my greatest fear isn’t being caught. It is the fact that the more I kill, the easier it would be for me. And the more I do it, the more I want to do it. Like a drug. Like a habit. I was shocked when I found out. Shocked at myself. But I couldn’t stop now. That would mean I would have to stop living.

So I killed. I killed people who never knew they were in my list. And I killed people who did know. And the boy, he was my first human kill. Did you think this was a story about a hero? No. This is a story about a villain. One who has not empathy. You think you need a feel good story? Look at the world around you. Do you feel good? Didn’t think so. No one knows what will happen after this. No one knows what I am capable of. But I am not stopping. I don’t know what I will do, when I am caught. I don’t know what they will do with me. I don’t know what I will do to myself. But I don’t care. I don’t care what I will do. All I know is that no one will stop me now.
Because the world is full of fools. And I am one of them.

And I am coming for you next.

Why?

Because I can. That’s it. No other reason required.