I was recently invited to meet with Simon Banks within the confines of his gilded tower. If you have never been it is certainly a sight to behold, practically the eighth wonder of the world. It's worth going to simply enter the bottom floor and stand around gawking about the grand lobby, regardless of whether or not you have legitimate business there. I probably looked like quite the fool going through those entry doors and simply spinning around to take it all in. I had an actual reason to be there of course, but I couldn't help but feel out of place. Those bottom floors are a public business, you can enter and look around so long as you aren't simply intending to loiter and can come up with a reasonable excuse, but it's a place that feels as far removed from daily life as living on the moon. I had naturally dressed up for the occasion (who wouldn't when invited to meet someone like Simon Banks?) and yet I still felt completely out of place. I felt like a medieval peasant suddenly entering a modern day mansion, I simply didn't belong to this world and felt the strong sensation I had no reason to be there and should immediately leave before they kicked me out for soiling the pristine floors.
I shall attempt to describe the opulence of the place, but I fear my words, nor even pictures, can ever do a place like that justice. It's something you can really only understand in person, when the full scale of the excess is on display. I'm not particularly good at eyeballing measurements, but I'd conservatively estimate the ceiling was at least a hundred meters above my head, the hall some hundred meters wide and another two or three hundred deep. The size is impressive enough in its own right, but what truly makes it so grandiose is the unimaginable excess to which it's designed. The floor is a marble so polished and impossibly smooth it's better than some mirrors, and I could see every foot print I made when walking upon it. It was like standing upon glass, seeing everything repeated in its reflective surface. It was, of course, flecked with gold as well, dazzling flakes of the precious mineral shining and glittering as if they were cheap as dirt. Pillars lined the entry hall, holding aloft a vaulted ceiling from which dangled dozens of massive crystal chandeliers. Each chandelier was a dazzling piece of light, suspended by invisible strings to give the appearance of hovering in the air with thousands of crystal pieces reflecting and scattering the light every which way so as to make it impossible to tell what sort of source it was coming from. The pillars were unnecessarily ornate, fanciful white stone things topped with intricately carved gold and silver crowns connecting them to the ceiling. Veins of gold ran up their length and through some clever trick of lighting the golden veins gave off a soft glow giving each pillar an ethereal nature. The vaulted ceiling was a masterwork in its own way. Between the pillars and painted upon its curves were stunning depictions and scenes of a transcendent quality. They were done in such a way as to give them a white finish to blend in seamlessly with the pillars and floor, but when you looked closely you could make sense of the line work and masterful brushstrokes with just the barest hints of color and shading to give them unimaginable depth and complexity without breaking the perfect clean palate of the place. I felt certain they must have found some way to resurrect Michelangelo and da Vinci and pitted the two greats head to head to create such masterpieces. I could have spent all day simply staring up at the ceiling, but I was there on business, and there were quite a few other sights vying for my attention. At the far end of the hall there was a massive set of windows looking out into a crocodile enclosure, and I nearly laughed at the absurdity of noticing it for the first time, but I will be forced to admit it was rather tastefully done. The greens of the habitat gave a nice splash of color to the white and gold palate, and the movement of water and animals in the distance gave a nice kinetic impression without completely distracting one's focus. The animals were all massive and sleek, well fed, and by some means, groomed to utter perfection. The crocodiles, I'm ashamed to admit, were cleaner than I was. Their hides were sparkly and shiny, not a speck of dirt could be found on them, their teeth a glowing white that made me envious. How they could have a perfectly constructed river habitat and remain so clean was beyond me, and certainly the logistics and danger of cleaning such massive animals should have been impossible, but in this place I was beginning to wonder if even gravity could be changed with enough money. Throughout the whole place there were scattered a multitude of sitting areas with white couches and chairs in all manner of fanciful designs and shapes. They looked soft as clouds with their legs and armrests gilded with polished gold. It was all a sight to behold, and there were a thousand details I feel could be worth mentioning (like the ATM with a literal waterfall of cash), but it's the sort of place one can only truly understand by seeing it in person.
They had a man waiting for me, dressed in a fashionable black suit with gold highlights and without a spot, wrinkle, or so much as a speck of dust or lint. He seemed annoyed at my appearance, which was quite shabby in comparison, and at the footprints I was leaving despite having cleaned my shoes just for this occasion. Still, he was a professional and motioned for me to follow him into a golden elevator. It was spacious and roomy, complete with soft chairs for the infirmed or elderly, and every surface was lined with gold polished to such a reflective quality I would have thought that in seeing my reflection there were suddenly two of me had it not been for their yellow sheen. The elevator rocketed upward with such speed I would have thought we were heading into orbit, yet its start and end were so smooth I couldn't have said when the acceleration began or ended, simply that at some point we were moving and at another we were stopped.
It was on the 179th floor that I was to meet with the owner of this all, the enigmatic and eccentric Simon Banks. Such a man is larger than life, and people talk about him with a nigh religious fervor, and after having visited his tower I would be inclined to do the same save for the fact that on this occasion I met him in person. He strode down a hallway to greet me and seeing him in person struck me with the fact that he was antithetical to everything I had witnessed thus far.
Imagine for a second that you took a homeless man off the street and gave him all the money in the world in order to dress himself as if he were the wealthiest person alive, and then told him to act as if he were the most important and influential man in existence, that would be the best way I could describe meeting Simon Banks. He had a mischievous grin across his face, revealing a concerning number of gold teeth that lacked even a tenth of the quality of the material and polish used in the elevator. He had long white hair and a long white beard streaked with gray that looked like he'd never owned a comb or hair brush throughout his whole life. They were tangled and messy, sticking out at odd angles and poofing off to the sides. They were an overgrown and wild lion's mane about his head that draped down past his chest. He wore gaudy golden robes woven with an intricate pattern that made him look like a parody out of a work of fiction, and he moved with what one might consider either the supreme confidence of someone who had no reason to even care what others thought, or one who'd never properly learned to take a step in their life. He thrust each leg out to the side at an odd angle, pulling each knee up to his waist before tossing out his calf and foot to catch the floor and push himself forward. His stance was laughably wide for no discernible reason, and he sort of bounced between each leg as he shifted his weight to handle the ridiculous gait. His robes billowed with each large step, shooting up about his ankles and revealing mud-coated tennis shoes beneath. He had multiple watches on each arm of varying qualities, some made of solid gold or silver, others looking like he'd swiped them from a filthy child and were a size too small. Dozens of rings glittered on each hand, multiple a finger and often with stupidly large gems, or made out of plastic like the things they give young kids at parties. He was such an absurd mismatch and moved in such an odd way I could hardly fathom this man had even the slightest sense of how to run his own corporation, but somehow it now seemed to be everywhere and dominate everything.
He invited me to take a seat in an office off to the side. It had an ornate wood desk with gilded edges and posh seats, also gilded. The window gave a breathtaking view from up on this 179th floor, and was gold tinted (I think that should have been expected by now). There was a nice bookshelf that looked like it had been stalked for appearances and that the books were brand new and never touched, save to be dusted. He invited me to sit before plopping down in a spinning chair behind the desk and completing a full 180 degree rotation that brought him round again and face to face with me before putting his feet up on the flawless desk. He grinned at me and reached out awkwardly around his legs to shake my hand, "Congratulations! You're being promoted!"
"Thank you sir," I replied. He was technically my boss in some way or another, but so far removed I hadn't the slightest clue why he wanted to see me in person. It was like a function that extended infinitely far in the x direction, but one where if you were to take the limit as x goes to infinity you would come up with the value one. There were an infinite number of bosses, managers, companies, corporations, and media conglomerates between me and him, but if you were to follow the never ending trail of overcomplicated corporate ownership you would eventually land on him.
"The boys in the back," he said, gesturing behind himself with his thumb (I don't know why he felt the need to do this, there was only that gold tinted window and empty space behind him), "have cooked up a new machine to revolutionize the writing industry, and I want you to join a new team dedicated to experimenting with it!"
"I'm honored sir," I replied, curious as to what he was referring to.
"Who's your favorite author?" he asked.
"I'll have to go with Tolkien, sir," I replied. I've always been a big fan of fiction and immersive worldbuilding, and Tolkien, who practically created our entire modern idea of fantasy, seemed like a perfectly good and uncontroversial choice.
"Well, imagine for a second you took all of Tolkien's written ideas, all his books, writing, notes, scribbles, chopped it up and fed it into this new machine, and then with the flick of a lever a whole new book was spat out! Imagine it for a second, a book written exactly like Tolkien, but with a completely new idea and story! People would eat it up! It's the rebirth of Tolkien! Now imagine you could do that for all the best authors, and imagine you could produce a full book in each of their styles a day!"
"How would this even be possible?" I couldn't help but ask.
"Simple arithmetic my boy! All their words, chopped up and turned into ones and zeroes, then studied by a machine until a pattern emerges and a formula is created to perfectly recreate them! Simple science, a machine brain breaking their words down into their base parts then reconstructing them in entirely new and creative ways without ever losing what made them great! It's a revolution for writing!"
As a creative this didn't sit right with me, "Not to doubt you sir, but isn't this against the very idea of creative writing? You read authors to hear their own voice, their own style, their humanity, a Tolkien knock-off doesn't have anything of that, it's just a copy. It's like the music industry, writing styles change, they adapt over time and reflect differing trends and values! A song may be an all-time great, but that doesn't mean replicating its style will make you successful, you have to figure out what's popular now, to innovate and create something new if you truly want to climb the charts! I can't help but wonder, sir, if a machine that can do this will be able to provide such value and really be able to become so popular."
He grinned at me, "You caught on quick, didn't you? People like art because it's made by a person, and therefore has some sort of inherent meaning, but I don't think you quite understand what I intend to do. I don't intend to make the next Tolkien, or make works that surpass him. It's not my intention to push the boundaries of writing, to redefine genres, or even create art. My intention is to simply revolutionize the media markets, to take them by storm with this new machine. I don't intend to make masterpieces or defining works with this machine, I simply intend to flood the markets until there is only this machine! I intend to outcompete them all, to out produce them all, to conquer them all, to take the media markets by force! I will revolutionize the media and create a new content empire that lasts for a thousand years!" (I sincerely hope that was just a poorly thought through religious allusion).
This was all sounding rather dystopian, and as a writer I have some degree of pride in my work. He must have noticed my discomfort because his grin spread even wider as he clambered down off the desk (I'm not sure when, but he clambered up on the desk to raise his fist to sky, or well ceiling in this case, while making the speech), "You will be in charge of refining the machine, to figuring out the full extent of its capabilities, and adding those human creative elements. It's your job to experiment until you can write in harmony with the machine, to integrate it into your own works!" He fished around in his robes and handed me some very long and very official looking contracts, "Besides, there'll be a pretty substantial pay raise," he then pointed to a number that nearly made my heart stop. I could have been signing away my soul, but I didn't hesitate to sign those documents as fast as possible and assure him that I would experiment with the machine until I had mastered it and incorporated it into every bit of my writing.