By GPT3-3, the ghost of Jorge Luis Borges and Daniel Zautner
I reched the GPT3’s token limit with this story, so it is unfinished in every sense.
A man is dying, and as he dies the time is getting slower and he can’t stop remembering his sins. In the end, he realizes he’s in hell
It’s been a while since he began to feel bewildered, and he had not, yet, decided to go to the doctor. In all honesty, he had thought that it was simply an anomaly, a transitory feeling of weakness. He had always been of good health, and in spite of his age, he was active and agile. His muscles were hard, his body firm. The only physical effect of his eighty-five years, he thought, was a slight trembling of his hands. But he had considered the trembling to be a natural result of his advanced age, and he had attributed to it the mental anguish he sometimes felt, the confusion.
He did not recall a time when his memory had been less reliable. He kept forgetting where he placed his glasses; he was not always able to recall the names of people he had known for years; his memory of recent events was distorted, and he would find himself inventing excuses for not having done what he had been planning to do.
There was nothing serious, he thought, about his condition. He had never been a vain person, and he did not consider memory an end in itself. He thought that he was enjoying a period of special creativity, and that the episodes of confusion were a natural consequence of this. He was writing, with a leisurely, happy pen, his memoirs, and he was enjoying these labors with a diligence and pleasure that he had not experienced since he was a young man. He was writing his memoirs in the first person, and he had decided that he would tell the truth. He would tell the absolute truth, with no attempt to hide his lies. He would tell the truth, and the truth would set him free.
He had decided to write his memoirs in the first person, he recalled, because he had begun to doubt the authenticity of the Memoirs of his youth. He had written those Memoirs as the result of an impulse, a desire to record his most profound sensations before they vanished. He had written them in a state of extreme youth, in a period of fever and disquiet. He knew that he had written them well, but he felt that he could not trust their veracity. He remembered the old man who had said to him, as they were sitting together at the table in the dining room, that the Memoirs were masterpieces, but that they were also lies. He remembered that the old man had said that his Memoirs were lies because they had been written by a young man.
He had written the Memoirs of his old age, he recalled, in a state of calm and serenity. He had written them in the full awareness that his life was nearing its end, and that he was writing for posterity, for the generations that would come after him. He had written them, also, convinced of the vanity of writing, and convinced of the absurdity of the act of writing. The result, he thought, was a dry, colorless, mechanical text. He had not written the Memoirs of his old age with passion.
He had not written with the passion of youth, he thought, because he doubted the possibility of him having passion. He had never been a passionate man. He had never felt love for a woman. He had never known the passion of hatred. He had never felt the true pleasure of alcohol nor the true pleasure of a violent and stormy friendship. He had never felt the pleasure of a good book, nor the pleasure of a good film. He did not feel pleasure, he thought, because he did not feel. He was not a passionate man, and he was not a man who felt. He was a man who remembered. He felt only the sentiment of the past.
He remembered, for example, that he had been born in the year 1900, in a wealthy middle-class family in Buenos Aires. He remembered that he had had a good education, and that he had received an excellent classical education. He remembered that he had been a good student, and that he had liked to study. He had not, however, learned much. He had not learned that man is mortal. He had not learned that human beings are alone in the universe. He had not learned that human beings are slaves. He had not learned that human beings live in order to suffer and in order to die. He had learned that human beings are capable of the most diverse acts of cruelty, and that they are capable of the most diverse acts of kindness. He had learned that human beings are capable of the most diverse acts of creation or destruction. He had learned that human beings are capable of the most diverse acts of greatness or of baseness. He had learned that human beings can be angels or demons.
He did not know, he thought, whether he had faith in God. He had been raised in a religious family, but he had not been able to feel the presence of God. He had not been able to feel the presence of God when he was a boy, and he had not been able to feel the presence of God when he was an old man. He had not felt the presence of God, he thought, because he had not been able to feel his own presence. He had always felt his own presence, but he had never felt the presence of another. He had not been able to feel the presence of God, he thought, because he had not been able to feel the presence of his own soul. He had not been able to feel the presence of his own soul, he thought, because he had not been able to feel the presence of his own death. He had not been able to feel his own death, he thought, because he had not been able to feel his own life.
Chapter 2
It was a cold winter morning, with a gray sky. The city was spread out before him, a grayish-white mass of buildings and streets. It was a cold, gray, and desolate landscape. He was sitting in an old armchair, looking out of the window of his study. He was thinking that the city was a mass of graves, and that he was going to die. He was not afraid of dying. He had accepted his death as he had accepted his life, with serenity and disenchantment. He was sitting in his armchair, in his study, and he was thinking about his life, and how it seems to move slower and slower with each memory that leaves him. He was thinking how strange it was to recall the past with such clarity, and that despite of this, his memory was losing strength. He was thinking that, perhaps, it was his life that was moving slower, and that it was his memory that was growing increasingly stronger. He had the impression, he thought, that he was able to remember each instant of his life with photographic precision, but that he was unable to move forward in time. His life, he thought, was moving forward in slow motion. His brain, he thought, was processing the memories of his past with increased clarity, but his body was going back in time.
He had been feeling for several days a strange sensation of lightness. He had the impression that his body was getting lighter, and that he had more freedom of movement. He was feeling, he thought, a strange sensation of emptiness. It was as if he were losing weight, and as if his clothes were getting bigger and bigger. He was feeling an emptiness in his head, as if his head had been emptied of all thoughts. And with every thought that left him, time’s arrow moved slower.
He had the impression, he thought, that he was not in the same time as the rest of the world. He had the impression that his time was different from the time of the rest of the world. He was feeling, he thought, as if he were in a bubble, a bubble that had emerged from the depths of the past. And what is that past? He was thinking about that which he remembers. And how it would be impossible to remember that which he had forgotten.
He rememberd the school in Buenos Aires again, and the girls school on the other side of the street and the little skirts that they used to wear. He remembered the smell of the girls, he thought. It was the smell of the girls, he thought, that made him feel so lonely. He remembered the first time he had held a girl’s hand. He remembered the cheap hotels where he had tried to overcome his shyness. He remembered the first time he had kissed a girl, she didn’t like it and the way her lips had tasted salty. He remembered the first time he have tried to make love to a girl. He remembered the awkwardness, the shame, the anger, the impatience. He remembered the summer he had spent at the seashore in Uruguay. He remembered the two girls that he had met there. He remembered the long night of love, he had made love to both of them, he thought. He remembered the walks on the beach, and the books they had read. He remembered how he took the books with him so he could read them on the bus to Buenos Aires. He remembered how the girls were looking for the books, and how the younger one cried as she did the night before. It was the smell of the girls, he thought, that made him feel so lonely.
He could no longer remember anything else but the girls, until he could no longer remember the girls and could only remember that one Sunday class when he was seven.