“Gods,” the Voice said, “of all days, ‘course it’d be today, wouldn’t it?” It was behind her today, wrapping phantom limbs around her torso tight.

“Been a while,” Evangiline said.

“I know. Been busy.”

“Then why haunt me still?”

“You know well as I we’re not riddin’ ourselves of each other anytime soon.”

“Even after-”

“Evy,” the Voice said, a defeated sigh it’d been unable to suppress escaping phantom lips. “We haven’t been ones able to live those lies in a long time. I don’t give a damn about whatever excuses you’re trying to draw up about why or why not I ought stay away.”

“But-”

“Evangiline,” it said, “breathe, darling. You made it to tomorrow. That was always the promise. I sure as shit don’t give a damn about whichever miserable wretch fell upon your blade — you’re alive.”

Breathing? Really? That was the aberration’s world-shattering advice for the day? In, the dry air burning against her lungs and skin. Hold, gods, she was listening anyway, a heartbeat stuttering, staggering, pausing; out, the build up and release, the adrenaline and panic, the– In, notice, nothing; draw it all down. Hold, pull the breath up and with it all ills, but not yet– out.

/// IV:X ///

Evangiline’s breath was hot against her helmet, trapped in and close by its steel. The humidity didn’t do much to help, though her ward had strapped cuirass and scrap tight enough across gambeson today it’d not come loose and clatter. Her ward, and a dozen other things if she dwelt on it, was only a few steps behind her, silent as the damned Void. Ahead, the northernmost Auteran post was finally audible with distant sounds of industry and orders. The hilt of her sword felt heavy, even at her hip; the rhythm of her heart slowly building into that dreadful hymn of horror laced with anticipation.

\\\ IV:VIII \\\

“Why’d you do it?” the Voice asked.

“Hmm?”

“Let me turn you into a killer.”
“You didn’t turn me into a damn killer, Aura. I chose, the moment that first thug swung on you, I chose. You don’t get to take that away from me.”

The Voice hummed something pleased, that godsforsaken melodic hum that she hated–

That she missed enough for her mind to torment herself with it. Gods. And she was talking to it. Not that she particularly cared anymore — she was far too tired to even try such a thing. It was as close as she’d been in years and so she’d savor it, this time.

/// ∅:II ///

You’re nearing me, aren’t you? I can feel it in my blood, in my bones, in my breath. The franticity of it all finally calming, slow as it may be, week to week, month to month — the slow, winding death of war drums. Soon, my love, you will see the labors of my work; the beginning of our new work: that which hath surely occupied your mind as it has mine own, an end to that which haunts and chases. I cannot wait to learn what you have and to teach that which I’ve; soon Ilistia will be made anew, new faces and names in tow and none to behest of us. Hence I make three us: the machinist — a sister esotericist of yours — the alchemist — better with a spear than even I — and the huntress — sunsister o’ mine; and name them thus: three of threes, two of threes, and one of threes.

\\\ ∅:IV \\\

“How much longer do I have to–”

“Evangiline Taris-Rose,” the Voice said. “I swear on the Swordbearer Herself I will raze hell itself and drag you lifeward just to gut you myself if you die first.”

Gods, it was eerie how lifelike it was.

“You’n I didn’t spend every waking and sleeping moment of seven years of war and espionage in lockstep just to not know the other.”

Also eerie, that her mind could read itself. “Why today, after all these months?”

“Solstice. Always made you homesick when we missed it. I’d wager it likely got you thinking, got you missing.”

Evangiline shrugged, eventually turning to a reluctant shake of the head.

“Back to that trick? Damming your mind off well enough you can’t miss someone or feel like shit? Took me a good year to pry your brain open, don’t go an’ tell me you’ve gone and welded it shut again.”

“I do what I have to,” Evangiline snapped, a spike of wretched anger making it harsher than she’d meant. “Even so, look where we are, I’m talking to a ghost and waiting for the Swordbearer to whisk me off to the After.”

“Talking to someone who’s rather alive for a ghost.”

“Prove it.”

“Send me something, anything, telling me where you are. Pen the damn Herald if you must.”

“I don’t trust anyone here well enough. I–” Evangiline paused. “I can’t risk them finding me and you walking into a hiding pair of manacles.”

The Voice sighed. “I know, I know.” Silence washed through Evangiline’s mind. Long enough to feel the breeze atop the derelict warehouse she’d been squatting in, long enough to hear the distant shouts of the final minutes of dockside work after the suns had dipped below the sea.

/// IV:X ///

The clearing betwixt the trees and the Auteran palisades was only a few meters wide at its thickest and at its shortest hardly a step of sunlight between its shadow and the treeline. Evangiline let her last breath go, slow and relaxed before hell broke. She shook her gauntlets, both secure, checked her bags and sheaths, all tight and accessible, before letting herself draw her sword — a gift from her ward yet to see its first drop of blood.

\\\ IV:X \\\

Long enough Evangiline had thought the Voice had left, before it spoke again. “Do you spite yourself for making me a killer? Because you did. I didn’t choose this. You know that, right?”

“A killer? Gods no. I thank the Moonmother every day that I did. Means you’re something akin to safe, even when without me.” She paused. “And I do know. I taught you the sword as mother taught me, as mother taught us both.”

“Not the swordplay, you idiot. The moment you chose to kill someone to protect me, the same choice was robbed from me. No questions, no doubt, I would do the same.”

Evangiline sighed. “Gods below, what a pair of lovestruck idiots we were.”

“We were teenagers.”

“We went to war proper a month later, Ari.”

“Doesn’t mean we weren’t young. Gods know the only reason we weren’t more careless was because of the other.”

Evangiline gave a noncommittal, vaguely affirmative grunt. “And would you question or doubt killing to find me again?”

“Gods Evy, the hell kind of question is that? We spent the better part of a decade killing for each other and just as long being each other’s own mind.” The Voice paused. Softer, it continued. “I would damn the whole world to find you.”

“Then fucking-” Evangiline paused. “Damn it faster, would you? I’m losing it, darling; far more than just a conversation with myself.”

/// II:XII ///

You were there again, in the shadows of my vision; in the dusty corners and the dark recesses. You’re real enough my heart spikes enough to punch me in the gut and do a double take, which hurts just as much as ever. Just a curtain in the breeze; a trick of the light, an odd speck of dust doing a lonely dance in the sunlight.

Gods almighty above damn it all to hell. I need you, y’know? And you just up and go goddamned missing and–

~~~

~~~ ~~~

~~~

The sting of salt and seawater spraying across Aura’s arm felt like someone’d torn the sutures from their place and lit fire to the blood underneath. Even so, it felt divine to be stung by air that felt almost like home instead of the harsh, crisp air of the north, like the Light herself had finally remembered to shine, warm, and burn the world all at once. The thick gauge of copper wire that held her forearm shut had finally begun to green after a week at sea, once the salt and water had seeped back into her soul.

/// V:II ///

The world went quiet as Aura took a deep, slow breath. In, the birds and the leaves, the distant sounds of industry and life all fading into the stillness. Hold, her heart beating soft against her ribs and the steady breath of Evangiline crouched not a step ahead. Out, and the world caught fire: searing pain and heat and warmth — gods, the warmth was incredible — coursing through her body and soul; weight filling her hand, solid and real from nothing, thin threads of light spilling into reality weaving themselves into a gauntlet around her hand and arm before snaking upwards and out, across the rest of her body, leaving nothing but the fire and a thin gossamer of arcana across her skin.

\\\ V:II \\\

Another spray of sea and salt misted her, the hull of the Astersail doing its damnedest to hold itself together against waters warning of distant skies turned gray. A few specks of salt stuck to the wire. Aura traced them with her eyes, trying to muster the will, the energy, the care, to make her hand brush them off. She knew she should — surely the wound would appreciate being kept clean. Then again, it was a damned stupid wound to have at all, regardless of how little it hurt anymore. Maybe she shouldn’t have been so…

“Reckless?” someone — Evangiline, of course — suggested from a step behind.

Aura jumped slightly. “Gods Eva,” she said, glancing back just long enough to make sure. “When’d you go and get so bloody quiet?”

/// I:IV ///

When I find you, I’ll never have to speak these dreadful tongues again, if my own even remembers the Moonmother’s. I’ve been studying — some old tomes out of the Verasi Academy’s libraries. Zariilk is truly a horribly boring language, isn’t it? Even the Auterans’ have vestiges of Ilisyra’k hiding amongst their mismatched tongue. I think I’m beginning to understand why the scholars always disdained me — their rigid monotony bores me, regardless of the magics or machines they can create; none can claim my magics neath their theories. My very being unsolved to their minds, the modern theories of arcana akin to Zariilk aside thine own tongue.

\\\ I:IV \\\

“I told you, I’m a quick study.” Evangiline took a slow breath, then another and another. Aura watched as her knight’s face passed through a dozen competing feelings all at once — fear, anger, calmness, hatred, loss, happiness one after the other after the other like the clashes of steel on steel–

/// V:II ///

The taste of iron came next; teeth and tongue barely keeping the scream down until the flame receded into a lone, flickering candlelight of warmth. Evangiline placed a gauntleted hand, finally checked and secured, atop the sword at her hip, wait. It wasn’t one of the handsigns either’d been trained on, though they both knew each other well enough that hardly mattered any longer. Aura heard her knight take two, deep, rhythmic breaths — since when had Evangiline needed to steel herself before a fight?

Evangiline raised her free hand just enough to curl her forefinger into a claw. Move. The knight slowly stood — and rather silent for all the steel she bore — as she began to inch them closer to the haphazard Garrison. It was one of a half-dozen others like it scattered atop these mountains, all searching for the Hidden City in hopes of crippling the Coalition’s wartime industry. It would be fruitless. Aura and Evangiline would make sure of it.

\\\ V:II \\\

“Besides,” she said, “not wearing armor makes it rather easy without all that dreadful clanking.”

Aura cocked an eyebrow. “And here I was thinkin’ you liked the noise.”

“I’m offended. I enjoyed annoying my commander, not being a walking cacophony.”

“There a difference?”

“One’s being a prick, other’s being stupid. Plenty of difference, darling.”

Aura rolled her eyes, letting the silence consume them for another moment, a minute — the first peace she’d felt in years; the crest and crash of wave on water and wood, wind on sail, the calls of a hundred flocks of far-off gulls. “When did you start annoying me for fun instead of spite?”

It was Evangiline’s turn to go quiet, silver eyes fixing on distant clouds before glazing over. Gods, the woman looked a dozen years younger without her armor on, despite the scars and callous across her hands, arms, face — whole body, really, these days. Made her look frail, if you looked past them while she held no sword nor grim determinance on her face.

/// I:IX ///

When’ll you be home? Where’ve you gone? Because gods know your mind is same enough as mine. This isn’t better than before, is it? It can’t be. It’s that same eternal chase as before, though now alone and with silence instead of bloodshed.

Hells’s with us havin to see anything at all anyway? I know we chose this life — as much as we could’ve, gods know we’d’ve keeled over in some dingy back alley boathouse otherwise — but–

I mean fuck, maybe we ought just return to duty just to kill that High Prick of theirs that caused everything. Or maybe the Coalition for fucking us over at every damn turn or your father or the whole fucking world–

Gods, Eva. I used to be mad at you for even having a father, you know? Yeah yeah, fucked up of me, considering the man he is. Then I was mad at your sister, for having a sister. Of us, I’m starting to think I might be the more fucked up one, though I hardly know a thing that goes on in that head of yours.

You ever wonder if we could just be normal one day? Be happy, have a little cottage an hour out of some Erathi town, away from war and death?

\\\ I:IX \\\

“I never spited you.”

“Certainly felt like it.”

“I– Sorry. I didn’t, I promise,” Evangiline said. “Just was hurting was all, despite the freedom.”

“Thought you were happy I got you out?”

“I was, I am. Just… Expected more than only Eve to give a damn I’d gone missing. I think I was hoping that maybe not having me around would suddenly make any of them give a shit.”

“When did it change from you just being you and to trying to annoy me, then?”

“Year, maybe.” Evangiline hesitated. “Would’ve been sooner, but I was scared it’d push you away.”

“Not sure you’d’ve been able to be rid of me if you tried.”

“Maybe, though that’s why you’re at sea, ain’t it?”

Aura turned to glance back at the woman, though she’d never been there at all.

\\\ ∅:∅ ///

Will we know? When it stops being a lie, how’ll we tell aberration from apparition, girl from ghost; blade from banshee, spear from spectre? Love from loss? Then what becometh of mind — assuredly you and I are past the possibility of ones that are sound. Are we to be cursed once more with blood and faces of late or is it to shift anew once more? If only for novelty I hope upon the Swordbearer old and new it is to be the latter, though I fear the mere possibility of separation shall plague us, now that we have known it.

I miss the cold, darling, though I miss thine mind and direction more. I was never one for strategy or leadership. I am drowning and drowning, falling and falling, o’ commander mine. The dry and drudgery and death and death and death all bore me; wear at my edges as wind upon stone. I fear soon my walls, my façade, my will, shall shatter.

I miss the warmth, my love, though I feel not the safety of your steel aside me nor even your teachings any longer. Worn memories like distant starlight akin to nothing against sunlight; paranoia seeping through the cracks upon the star-filled night. I have blotted it out with power and arcana; burning myself bright though alone — the once-sun — though I know not how long until I follow into her stead to ashes upon the wind and soil. I am burning alive, my knight. Save me one last time, my shield.

     The first step one has to take to answer whether or not a proposed solution would fix or improve a given challenge or problem or issue, I would argue, is to understand the supposed issue first, well before giving any solution the light of day. Such is the basis of the oft-touted scientific method that’s ubiquitous in western sciences: understand the question before searching for answers. In the case of so-called Artificial Intelligences within the arts, that means attempting to understand what art is. In this case, that’s writing, as I am a writer well before a painter or sculptor or photographer or—perhaps to the surprise of those who know me better—a woman of science. Exploring the use of AI in writing then necessitates understanding both the process behind writing and the intentions with which it is done to guide a reader along a given path.
     Ursula K. Le Guin perhaps puts it best, “I would go so far as to say that the natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us,”1 though I would go further and expand that definition beyond just that of the novel and to all writing, and that sometimes bags do not hold things: sometimes they are empty or only partially full—words left unsaid, both purposeful and not, too are a part of writing. Perhaps those blanks are the most important part of a piece, perhaps they are an oversight that leaves the reader unfulfilled or dissatisfied or feeling lesser. To illustrate this, I’ll turn to the idea of maps. No matter how detailed or precise it tries to be, things will be left blank; either unknown or deemed unimportant. This does not, however, inherently make a map worse. “Blanks can also represent what is known, but deemed unimportant in a particular context, for a particular map. While it’s useful to know where public libraries are, and while some bicyclists no doubt make use of public libraries, we wouldn’t expect to find libraries on [a] map of county bike trails.”2 This is to say that writing is a collection of words and blank spaces bound by both their author’s intent and the ability for others to interpret those words for themselves. 


     Artificial Intelligence, then must seek to ‘fix’ this, by way of stripping words or spaces or ideas of any intentionality. What’s worse is the underlying implication of this: that creation is something to be stifled and reduced in favor of more. Maybe this is an artifact of societal pressures—people seeking a quick influx of cash by churning out novels or a fear of perceived failure in school. Mostly, I’d argue that it is a result of our own fixation on value and the ways in which our definitions of the word have shifted: time could be better spent earning or spending money rather than creating something without an inherent use or physical and tangible monetary value to society. After all, the implication that writing is something to be ‘fixed’ or ‘solved,’ to be made more efficient, is a rather capitalistic view of the world, is it not? Incidentally, that capitalistic mindset is exactly that which is used in the tech industry to continue making their advancements on large language models:

[Open AI’s] belief in scaling was once viewed as extreme. Now scaling is seen across the tech industry as doctrine. And should the industry’s adherence to that doctrine continue unabated, future deep learning models will make the once-unfathomable size of generative AI models today look paltry. [. . .] The scaling doctrine has become so ingrained that some are even beginning to view it as something of a natural phenomenon. Scaling compute is the way, not just a way, to reach more advanced AI capabilities.3 

This is identical to the capitalist growth mindset, “capitalism cannot exist without constantly expanding the scale of production: any interruption of this process will take the form of an economic crisis.”4 Of course, infinite growth is simply not possible in the long term as “we continue to embrace economic systems that prescribe infinite growth on a finite planet, as if somehow the universe had repealed the laws of thermodynamics on our behalf. Perpetual growth is simply not compatible with natural law.”5 Thus I claim the following: the Artificial Intelligence frenzy—specifically that of Large Language Models—will, out of necessity, die.


    Indeed, many economists agree with this conclusion. First, it must be stated that companies like OpenAI are facing huge economic losses: “The most hyped AI companies in the space are taking huge losses, and profitability is still far away for most of them. OpenAI and others will need to keep raising money to stay afloat. To attract future investors, they will have to be able to continue growing their valuations to unprecedented levels.”6 To cover for this, these companies must take on huge quantities of debt. “[CoreWeave] expects to bring in $5 billion in revenue this year while spending roughly $20 billion. To cover that gap, the company has taken on $14 billion in debt, nearly a third of which comes due in the next year. [. . .] CoreWeave also faces $34 billion in scheduled lease payments.”7 It is with this information I present the crux of Hyman Minsky’s Financial Instability Hypothesis:

Over a protracted period of good times, capitalist economies tend to move from a financial structure dominated by hedge finance units to a structure in which there is large weight to units engaged in speculative and Ponzi finance. Furthermore, if an economy with a sizeable body of speculative financial units is in an inflationary state, and the authorities attempt to exorcise inflation by monetary constraint, then speculative units will become Ponzi units and the net worth of previously Ponzi units will quickly evaporate. Consequently, units with cash flow shortfalls will be forced to try to make position by selling out position. This is likely to lead to a collapse of asset values.8

Of course, prior to the rapid rise in Artificial Intelligence, the tech industry was in the midst of a ‘protracted period of good times,’ with companies like Nvidia comfortably bringing in a billion in revenue quarterly since at least 2012.9 Today, there has been a mass influx in private investment within the tech industry—like all of CoreWeave’s aforementioned obligations. In other words, a shift to a reliance on speculative finance; thus leading to Minsky’s hypothesized collapse of asset values.


    And thus I’ve walked us headfirst into the trap I’ve set: I’ve fixated on the economic value of Artificial Intelligence—our proposed ‘solution’—and rather specifically haven’t understood the question beyond that. Sure, I’ve ‘defined’ writing and posited a solution to the encroachment of AI in the creative spaces of simply waiting it out, but that rather misses the point, doesn’t it? Is there value to be had, on an individual and specific level, to using AI as a tool in the process of creation or learning? I simply ask: what is the point of using AI in the process of creation or learning or simple exploration; what ownership of creation can you claim if your bag of words is stripped of the intent with which you put each piece into it?
    The answer, I think, must be built up not from what writing may or may not be, but the process in which it is created and read; the why behind an author’s intention.

We might set out intending simply to describe what we see — to open the curtains beyond our desk and report on the landscape outside our window — but even then we describe what we see, the way we see it. We know the names of the trees and birds and grasses, or we don’t. We’re aware of the different types and formations of clouds, or we aren’t. Even if we could know it all, at any given moment we would have to choose the evocative description or the scientific fact. No matter how hard we work to be ‘objective’ or ‘faithful.’ we create. That isn’t to say we get things wrong, but that, from the first word we write — even by choosing the language in which we will write, and by choosing to write rather than to paint or sing — we are defining, delineating, the world that is coming into being.
‘Intention’ is a useful term when more broadly defined. Intention might be meaning, but for another writer, or another poem or story, the intention might be to depict a particular emotional state, or to explore an ethical dilemma in its complexity, or to understand how a particular character could commit a particular act — or, for that matter, to test the limits of associative movement, or collage structure. Certainly we have some intention(s) for each piece, or we wouldn’t be writing. [. . .] The plan that guides our exploration may or may not be the structure-defining intention of the map, the document that leads the reader; experience reminds us that there is often a world of difference between what we hope to find or think we might find, and what we discover. Goals of our exploration, then, include refining our intention and determining the best way to present it.10

Thus I claim that the process of writing is that of exploration. Regardless of a piece’s intention, the work is exploration, too—of a new place or feeling or time or scientific knowledge—for both the author and the reader. A piece of writing then, the bag of words rather than the process behind them, is then akin to a map, guiding the reader along the author’s chosen path to the destination of her intent, rough edges smoothed away and pitfalls markedly avoided. To write then is to explore, then refining the path so that it may be a guide to others.


    Historically, cartographers have had a disproportionate influence on their society’s perception of land and the world. Take, for instance, cartographers during the colonization of the Americas. Beyond the colonies, many of these maps were simply blank. “Blanks within the borders of a map can represent many things, among them the deliberately withheld [. . . or] what is known, but deemed unimportant. [. . .] More ominously, Native American tribal regions on early European maps of the Americas, giving readers of most of those maps the impression that no one lived there — at least, no one of consequence. No landowners.”11 “A blank on a map became a symbol of rigorous standards; the presence of absences lent authority to all on the map that was unblank. The logical end to such a scientific approach would be a comprehensive map of a verified world.”12 This leads to a notion that the blanks then, must be empty, reducing what nature or hidden places, or, in more nefarious cases, people simply do not exist. Over these blanks, colonial expansion would, over time, march ever wast-ward, filling in these supposed blanks with something new. “Renaming was one the principal instruments with which colonists erased the prior meanings of conquered landscapes. [. . .] In such acts of renaming, the adjective ‘New’ comes to be invested with an extraordinary semantic and symbolic violence. Not only does it create a tabula rasa, erasing the past, but it also invests a place with meanings derived from faraway places, ‘our dear native country.’”13
    This is not to say that each and every blank within a given piece of writing must be agonized over, but rather that blanks are powerful—that intentionally saying things in a given way, or perhaps not at all—can shape meaning and perception; changing the relation from one word to another shifts the meaning of our bundle of words. The most basic of blanks in writing are perhaps those which denote the end of an idea and the transition to the next, those that are considered to be grammatically correct. In literature, however, blanks can often instead coincide with the passage of time.







    Artificial Intelligence removes this from writing perhaps most of all. The networks of data that form a given model’s training is mathematically transformed in a way that gets from one word to its most likely successor, with no regard for what is or could be between and even less for what could be around—where else the map could meander. Whereas writers avoid recreating the same thing as another, from the same base of shared knowledge, through creativity and their own perception and understanding of world and words, LLM models avoid recreating identical content from identical prompts via different words being assigned as ‘more probable’ than another based entirely on the occurrence of that word in a given database next to words associated with the prompt given. With enough permeations, enough different layers of compute, the likelihood that a prompt will receive the same output as the exact same prompt is approaching zero, giving an illusion of newness built on probabilities of words derived from authors past.
   Within the model of our map, this allows AI to evoke a vague shape of something that we could reasonably recognize as such. Borders will separate countries; oceans and mountains will separate land. A prompt given to AI may be able to influence those basic shapes—make the countries have harsh, square borders or make islands more or less common. Telling it to make a map of the Earth may make the shape vaguely familiar. It does not know what a map of the Earth would look like, but can impart the shapes it has associated with the word “earth” onto the map, giving it an uncanny appearance, but far from accurate. Importantly, this also means that its tendencies and biases will echo that of its database. Today, we live in a world divided into nation-states whose borders were the result of colonial expansion; our mapping AI’s database is similarly skewed by modern perceptions of the world (the parts of it that have internet presence enough to be scraped for data, anyway), as there simply exists more modern works than surviving historical ones. Our mapping AI then must be prone to leaving blanks where it perhaps should not, whether for making the piece worse or for whatever implicit implications may be present.

But simply discovering [the rules] isn’t enough. We need to devote ourselves to the ongoing practice of questioning the rules we have found most useful (including those we hear ourselves offering as advice) and the fundamental assumptions of our work, constantly checking for empty routine, thoughtless employment.14

    AI models, by their very nature, are unable to question the rules of its creation; cannot decide to stray from its algorithm outside of randomness determined by yet another algorithm; an ‘empty routine, thoughtless employment,’ of mathematics to recreate the illusion of human writing. This leads to a misplaced attribution, removing the data from which the words were pulled from and imposing a new sort of tabula rasa on them: this is new, this has no other authors. Writing like this leads to a sort of formulaic reproduction—redundant and reductive facsimiles of literature.

When we grow frustrated with received literary forms, it is because we feel the forms are reductive, placing artificial constraints on what can be represented on the page. But no matter whether we work within those forms or try to make them more elastic, the challenge is to find ways to express, not everything in the world, but some part of the world in its complexity. The tension between our vision for the work and the form we choose mirrors the tension between the world and its incomprehensible vastness and our attempts to make sense of it.15

Most notably, AI is incapable of any worldly experience; has no attempts to make sense of the world. Sure, perhaps it was trained on several thousand different recounts of walks through different forests along different trails, but it has not walked them; it has no experience to make sense of. Its reductive recreations not only lack originality in thought, but in experience.


    This necessitates that whatever use one could conceive for AI it has no place within writing. Perhaps it could help one jump the process; to create a meaningless product or—in the case of many students—a product whose sole meaning is to check off an assignment they have no interest in. But to create something new requires creativity and the ability to have thoughts that are uniquely the writer’s and have been shaped by the world and their understanding of it from every moment of their life until a given piece is finished. AI, by its very nature, lacks both. Its “creativity” is randomness weighted by the frequency of words strung together across the internet and its “thoughts” are a mindless echo of a congealed average of everyone on the internet. The words it spits out have no relation to another in its sentence but a shared, algorithmically defined, relation to every word in the training data, resulting in the inability to impart real meaning into whatever it supposedly creates. Words bear no meaning when they are not held in that “particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.”16

1. Le Guin, Ursula K. “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction.” In Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places. Grove Press, 1989.

2. Turchi, Peter. Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as a Cartographer. Trinity University Press, 2004. (p. 33)

3. Hao, Karen. Empire of AI: Dreams and nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI. Penguin Press, 2025. (p. 89)

4. Foster, John Bellamy. The Vulnerable Planet: A Short Economic History of the Environment. Monthly Review Press, 1999. (p. 124)

5. Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and The Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions, 2013. (p. 308)

6. Kost, Danielle. “AI Companies Don’t Have a Profitable Business Model. Does That Matter?” Harvard Business Review, November 12, 2025. https://hbr.org/2025/11/ai-companies-dont-have-a-profitable-business-model-does-that-matter

7. Karma, Rogé. “Something Ominous Is Happening in the AI Economy.” The Atlantic, December 10, 2025. https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/2025/12/nvidia-ai-financing-deals/685197/

8. Minsky, Hyman P. “The Financial Instability Hypothesis” Levy Economics Institute Working Papers Collection, no. 74. https://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp74.pdf

9. Macrotrends. “NVIDIA Revenue 2012-2026.” Accessed February 21, 2026. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NVDA/nvidia/revenue

10. Turchi, 14

11. Turchi, 33

12. Turchi, 37

13. Ghosh, Amitav. The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis. University of Chicago Press, 2021. (p. 49)

14. Turchi, 102

15. Turchi, 157

16. Le Guin

Mills’s portrayal of Zemolai’s fall from grace at the beginning of the book is done incredibly, giving the first impressions of the city from one who is disillusioned by it, where then after the truth can be found in a much less picturesque version of the city. Similarly, the city-state’s fascist innerworkings can be seen relatively early, too, if you know where to look. Take for example the basis of the city, its five gods who’s realms hover above the city. They chose us, not them; divine right, othering. We are stronger than them, they are weak; they are a threat. It happens elsewhere, too, between the city’s different factions. There are other examples too, though this is the most immediately obvious to the reader and to those less engaged in political theory.

The book’s explorations on themes of abuse are, I think, done well. It not only shows how people are affected by manipulation, but also why it can be so hard to break the cycle. “She imagined leaving … the panic attack hooked so deep she thought she’d suffocate. Just a little longer, she thought. Just a little longer when the timing is right,” and “you’ve had it before, you can have it again.” This addiction and abuse and betrayal are integrally interwoven into the story, complimenting the main themes of the overall story by being reflections in the character arcs, culminating into the idea of what it means to be disillusioned.

The development of the main character, Zemolai, is done in a way that is both engaging and captivating as the reader watches her struggle to change. Simultaneously, the chapters following a younger Zemolai start to show her transform into who she was at the onset of the book in an all too real manner as she starts to become another cog in the machine. This dichotomy is done in a masterful way that had me both cheering for and cursing her as a character depending on the point of view and progression into the book. Truly, I don’t think there is another novel that does POV-switching across time instead of characters so well.

Overall, this book is my favorite stand-alone fantasy novel at the moment, and certainly favorite stand-alone from 2024. Partly, this is likely due to my background as an activist and having an interest in political science, but even without that background, I’d still think that the Wings Upon Her Back is an incredible piece and highly recommend it to everyone. The incredible story coupled with a unique writing style (in the form of little clarifying blurbs, not unlike this) and a unique and compelling setting makes for one of the best fantasy novels I’ve read this year, and is nearing the top of my favorite stand-alones of all time.

Lastly, while The Wings Upon Her Back might be Mills’s first published full-length novel, its far from her first work that cuts deep into modern life. Rabbit Test is a short story about abortion rights and the history of abortion set in a dystopian nearish future. You should read it too, which you can, for free from Uncanny Magazine.