Page 9 of Trip Me Up

I didn’t. “That’s nice.”

Heidi’s nostrils flared. “John shared a very interesting manuscript with me.Magician in the Machine.”

My breath whooshed out like she’d punched me in the stomach. “What?”

“I understand it was generated by artificial intelligence. It came out of the computer like that? You didn’t edit it, or get a friend to do it?”

“No, I—” What was happening here? “CASE produced it, just like I sent it to Dr. Martell.”

“And CASE is your A.I.?”

“It’s an acronym for Computer Analysis and Synthesis Engine. For producing scholarly papers.”

“But it producedMagician.”

“Yes.” I scrunched up my nose. We were going in circles.

“I understand”—Heidi tapped her chin—“most programmers use source material to teach the A.I. how to write. Is that how you programmed CASE?”

“Um, yeah. I mean yes.” Heidi was awfully smart for someone who didn’t study computer science.

“Are the authors of this source material”—she raised her dark eyebrows—“dead?”

“Yes.” Dad’s favorites had been the classics, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Octavia Butler, Madeleine L’Engle, so I’d loaded those. “Except—” The last one I’d input, the one the university librarian had recommended, had been a recent title. The letters on the cover swirled in my memory. “Something about elves. By Nail Flying.”

Her lips curved into a smile.“Secretsof the WoodElvesby Niall Flynn, you mean?”

My face heated while I wrestled with the letters in my memory. I knew that name. The image of a burly, redheaded man cradling Bilbo Baggins at the fundraiser last weekend stalled my brain. “Niall Flynn the…athlete?”

“No, he’s a writer.”

A writer? We’d talked about movies.Ladyhawke.

Heidi’s sharp voice pulled me back to Martell’s office. “He’s the only living author you used?”

“That’s right.”

“Not a problem, then. I’d like to publishMagician in the Machine.Having theworld’s first fully A.I.-generated novel would be perfectly on-brand for Happy Troll.”

“Publish it? You mean an article about it in an academic journal?”

Her nostrils flared again. “No, Samantha. I mean, put it on bookstore fiction shelves. Sell the ebook online. Produce an audiobook in a computer-generated voice if I can swing it.”

Dr. Martell said, “Because CASE runs on university servers,Magician in the Machinetechnically belongs to the university. I’ve already agreed to let Happy Troll publish it.”

“Oh. Okay.” I could almost feel the vibration of the basement server room through the floors. Thousands of servers hummed down there, and one of them ran CASE’s code. So I was here as an FYI?

“You’re probably wondering why we called you here,” Heidi said, her voice gentling in a way I knew meant the ask was coming.

I nodded. Did they want CASE to write another book? A sequel? It would be an interesting problem to solve sinceMagician in the Machinehad come out as a fluke, and the main characters were all dead. What if I—

“I’m not yet ready to reveal the novel’s provenance. I want to ensure it’s successful before we do that. So I need an author.” She leaned back in her chair.

I blinked away thoughts of setting up the sequel’s parameters. “You’re a publisher. Don’t you have a ton of authors?”

“My authors are all writing more books. I need you.”

Everything, from the tip of my nose to my toes, went numb like she’d plunged me into ice water. “Me?”

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