‘Love Unspoken, Love Unbroken’: A Scene from ‘Reunion’ Reimagined by Bing AI in the Style of Stephen King

Last of a series:

If you’re a regular visitor to this space, you’ve noticed that I’ve been “collaborating” with Microsoft’s OpenAI “Bing Chatbot” by asking the artificial intelligence to rewrite passages from Reunion, my novella about love, loss, time, and regret, in the styles of well-known authors, including:

• William Shakespeare
• Edgar Allan Poe
• Ernest Hemingway
• Dave Barry
• Tom Clancy
• Stephen King
• Edith Wharton
• Anais Nin
• Erica Jong
• Jennifer Egan

I am doing this little experiment for two reasons:

First, when I heard about Bing AI’s chatbot and how it can take a sample (2000 characters at a time, so long excerpts take several tries) of a user’s writing and rewrite it in a different author’s style, I was intrigued. I’d never seen that before, and since I love to both read and write, I wanted to see what my words would look like in the styles of some of the most widely read authors across the ages.

So, I started out by giving Bing AI the promotional blurb for Reunion and asked the chatbot to rewrite it as, say, a haiku, or a Shakespearean sonnet. I liked the results (some of the poems were more successful than others), so I upped the ante by taking excerpts from at least three scenes from Reunion and seeing what the AI could do with them.

Second, since I can’t afford a proper advertising campaign and buy Facebook ads, I figured that by co-creating these reimagined scenes from Reunion, some of you out there would be interested in buying the real deal on Amazon or the online version of Barnes & Noble. It’s a long shot, but, hey, I have to try!

I’ve striven to present a diverse choir of literary voices – my favorites being Shakespeare, Barry, Egan, and King – in this series of “reimagined” excerpts. I like how Bing AI somehow replicates the individual style of each author I selected, and with occasional stumbles here and there, I can imagine that they, and not I, wrote Reunion.

I decided to end this series with a longer-than-usual excerpt, this one having been “written” by Stephen King (minus his well-known horror or supernatural material).

So, without further ado, here is Love Unspoken, Love Unbroken, reimagined in the style of Stephen King.

She came at me like a breeze, her arms wrapping around my neck and drawing me into her. Her mouth was soft and sweet on mine, and I kissed her back gently. I shut my eyes and felt everything – her perfume that smelled like roses, her tongue that tasted like strawberries, her breath that was cool and fresh, her chest that rose and fell with mine, her heart that beat in sync with mine, her body that fit perfectly with mine…..

BING AI CHATBOT, IN THE STYLE OF STEPHEN KING

Love Unspoken, Love Unbroken

Like most of the school now, the chorus room had the ambiance of a deserted house. The metal music stands, songbooks, and piano scores were locked away in the storage closet in the back of the soundproof room. In a corner of the room, the black Kawai piano with the sticky C-note was shrouded with a protective canvas cover; it looked like a corpse covered with a sheet. I looked at the empty space where it had been only a few hours before. Snippets of memories flashed before me like mental newsreels: Mrs. Quincy sitting on her piano bench, peering at the sheet music through bifocal lenses and playing the keyboard with gusto…Mrs. Quincy correcting our off-key slips or breaks in pitch…our attempts to keep a straight face while learning the lyrics to a particularly hilarious song.

I smiled wistfully at these visions of the not-so-long-ago past, wanting to keep the moment etched deeply in my mind and not wanting it to dissolve – like the dream – forever. I placed my backpack on the tiled floor.

I heard her voice behind me, and I knew it was Marty. She had that British accent that made her sound like a princess in a fairy tale. No one else at South Miami talked like that.

I turned around and saw her standing there, looking at me with those big hazel eyes. “Hey, Marty,” I said.

She smiled a little and got up from one of the chairs that hadn’t been carted away yet. “You came to say goodbye, huh?” she asked.

I looked at her and tried to memorize every inch of her face. She was wearing jeans and a chorus T-shirt that was too big for her. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail that bounced when she moved. She didn’t wear much makeup, just enough to make her lips shine and her cheeks glow. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, and I knew I would never see her again.

My heart gave a thump. “I had to see you one last time,” I said.

She gave me a smile that was half-sad, half-sweet. “Yeah, right; you probably tell that to every girl you meet.”

“It’s the truth,” I said. “And no, I don’t.”

She smiled again, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Uh-huh,” she said. “How did you do on your final?”

“Not bad, I think. How about you?”

She shrugged. “So-so. Biology is a bore. I’ll be lucky if I get a C.”

I tried to smile back. “I bet you did better than that,” I said.

Another shrug. “We’ll see.” She sighed and looked around. “What?” I asked.

“Don’t you feel it?” she asked softly.

“Feel what?”

“That this,” she said, waving her hand at the empty room, “is over, Jimmy. Three years gone by like that.” She snapped her fingers.

“Yeah – yeah, they did,” I said, feeling a weight on my chest. My smile faded. I slumped down and let out a long breath.

She looked at me with a sudden sadness in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said softly.

“For what?” I asked, startled.

“For not singing with you. Remember? We were supposed to do a duet for the Spring Concert.”

I nodded vaguely. “Yeah, sure. What was the song again?” I asked.

She gave me a playful punch on the arm. “Don’t play dumb with me, James Garraty. You know very well what it was.”

I grinned sheepishly. “Okay, okay. It was ‘Somewhere,’ from West Side Story.” I tried to hum a few notes, but they came out croaky and flat.

Marty shook her head. “You’ve let yourself go, haven’t you?” she said with a hint of reproach.

“I guess so,” I said, and felt a sudden pang of regret. Marty must have sensed it too; she moved closer to me and wrapped her arm around my shoulder gently.

She moved closer to me and said in a low voice, “I’m sorry, Jim. I know you were looking forward to this. So was I. I wanted to sing with you more than anything.”

“Did you?” I asked.

“I did. You have an amazing voice. You could make anyone sound good.”

“Come on,” I said, “you don’t have to flatter me.”

She chuckled. It was a sound that always made me feel warm inside. A thought crossed my mind: What did I write in that letter? You are the only one who can brighten up my day. You always make me smile, and I want to make you happy too.

The letter! I had almost forgotten about it. It was still in my jacket pocket. Or was it? What if someone had seen it and taken it? I felt a jolt of fear. I quickly checked my left pocket with my hand – her arm was still around my right shoulder – and felt a relief when I touched the envelope. I took it out gently and held it in front of me.

“What’s that?” she asked.

I turned to face her. Her hazel eyes looked at me curiously. I realized how close we were. If I leaned in just a little bit, I could kiss her. Her arm felt soft on my shoulder. Suddenly, that was all I wanted to do. To hold her close and kiss her sweetly.

I shook my head. “This,” I said, “is for you.”

She made a grab for the envelope, but I snatched it away before she could touch it. She gave me a look that was half puzzled and half annoyed. “It’s mine, right?” she said in a whiny voice.

“Yeah, yeah, it is,” I said. “But you have to swear something to me first.”

“What?”

I felt my courage slipping away like sand through my fingers. I looked into her eyes again. “Swear to me,” I said with a shaky voice, “that you won’t open this until after the graduation on Thursday.”

Marty’s eyes got a little slitty. “Why?”

I jerked the envelope farther out of her reach. “Swear to me,” I said urgently.

She let out a long breath. Shut her eyes. Nodded. “Okay,” she said quietly, “I swear.”

I handed her the envelope. She took it without a word.

The school bell rang then, shattering the silence that had fallen between us with its loud clanging noise. Marty jumped a little and took her arm off my shoulder. I backed up a step, feeling a mix of relief and regret as we broke contact.

“Well,” I said in my best Indiana Jones voice, “this is goodbye, honey.” I slung my backpack over my shoulder, turned toward the door and started to walk out. Then I felt Marty pull at my hand. I froze in place.

“Hey,” she said softly as I turned back to face her, “you’re not going to leave without –” She paused, then looked right into my eyes. “Without a goodbye kiss?”

“Well, I….”

She came at me like a breeze, her arms wrapping around my neck and drawing me into her. Her mouth was soft and sweet on mine, and I kissed her back gently. I shut my eyes and felt everything – her perfume that smelled like roses, her tongue that tasted like strawberries, her breath that was cool and fresh, her chest that rose and fell with mine, her heart that beat in sync with mine, her body that fit perfectly with mine – and I heard the song from my dream in my head:

Where the wind blows time

You’ll be there with me;

 Where the fire glows love

Your smile I’ll see.

Through the stars

And over the sea;

 Where the wind blows time

 Our hearts will be.

The clock on the wall ticked softly, marking the moments. She let go of me slowly, as if she wanted to stay longer. I opened my eyes and saw her looking at me with a tender smile. She touched my face with her hand, gently.

“I’m going to miss you,” she said.

I nodded. “I’m going to miss you too, Marty.”

Outside, the school erupted in cheers and screams. Summer was here. Another year was done and gone.