Copyright 2023 - Gene Kendall All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permission requests, contact [include publisher/author contact info]. The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred. MODERN SENSIBILITIES I t was ten years ago, but time had done little to wither the memory. Benny Stack was appearing at Himmel University that spring morning, speaking to a class of English-Lit majors. Specifically, he’d been asked to deliver a guest lecture for a course with the exhilarating title “Contemporary Applications and Studies of Literary Heritage in the Western World.” Benny didn’t make any claims on being a literary scholar. He’d barely made it out of college back in the seventies with the most basic of basic English degrees. A minor detail to scribble on his resumé when applying for those short-order cook positions. What Benny did have, after those many years clacking at keyboards in the morning while fighting grease fires at night, was a dozen hit novels under his belt. That, and a prepared speech he’d delivered to countless fresh faced and inquisitive students at America’s universities. He’d speak about learning life’s lessons the hard way, the years he wasted watching TV instead of reading Shakespeare, that kind of thing. The follow-up Q&As were the true highlights, a chance for Benny to joke around with the kids and nab some idea on what the youth were thinking. Sometimes shocking, sometimes amusing, always something worth knowing. Especially for a suspense author who maintained a youthful demo that made both King and Koontz’s audiences look geriatric. It wasn’t rocket science, but few contemporaries bothered to follow Benny’s example. The lead should be a high school senior on the cusp of manhood, a hospital attendant who’s taken her first job, a surfer who resists his father’s pleas to join him at the firm, something like that. The love interest will either have butterscotch blond or obsidian black hair, their body as taut as a mousetrap. The antagonist should be obscenely ugly—scars, liver spots, either grotesquely undernourished or corpulently obese. Young readers enjoyed seeing their lives reflected in his stories of unearthed danger and persistent betrayal. Older readers enjoyed reminders of easier, simpler days before the burdens of mortgage payments and missed orthodontist appointments. Again, not rocket science. It was ten years ago, a sweet-smelling morning, cottony white clouds peppering a turquoise-blue sky. Benny walked with cheerful steps to the classroom, a Peppermint Mocha in his right hand and a small collection of notecards tucked into his breast pocket. He’d give the standard talk, then make mention that his latest novel was on-sale this week. Would invite the kids to his signing at the Barnes & Noble the next evening. The talk seemed to go over okay. The students weren’t as enthusiastic as his typical crowd, a few too many were swiping robotically at their phones, but Benny didn’t mind. He mentioned the new book, stated with pride that the protagonist was a recent college dropout (“Clearly not as intelligent and motivated as you fine folks!”), and plugged the book signing. Then, he opened the floor to questions. “Mr. Stack, in your novel Virgins of Valhalla , was the aggressive tone against women of Romani descent intentional on your part?” “Sir, are you aware that a recent study of your work found that over eighty percent of your novels fail the Bechdel Test? Fail it rather spectacularly?” “Mr. Stack, I just finished Little Cherub Lost and have to admit that I am aghast at your portrayal of sex workers of color.” “Why did you cast the villain in Silent Detective as a larger-bodied individual? Did we really need to know about his ‘nauseating body stench’ and ‘odious folds of fatty flesh?’” “Why did you cast the villain in Painted Lights as a deficiently-weighted individual? Was it necessary to describe her as a ‘gaunt, rawboned skeleton with emaciated arms and lifeless, sunken eyes?’” “I’d like to know if you were intentionally elevating colonialist philosophy in Lasting Roads ? Because that’s certainly my reading.” “By making the antagonist of Virginia, Come Home a racist cult leader, were you merely using a fictional construct as cover to spew your own hateful beliefs?” “Don’t you think the leering descriptions of Sleeping Daughter ’s protagonist and her ‘lean, unimpeachable form’ reflects the toxic moral hierarchy of diet culture? Are you willing to acknowledge your role in contributing to the contemporary epidemic of body dysmorphia?” “Those Arabic terrorists in Gone Astray ...really, sir? Really? ” “Look, no disrespect intended, but why are you even here? Why should my classmates suffer through another diatribe from an avatar of white male mediocrity?” That comment elicited a thunderous round of finger snaps from the class. Not applause. Finger snaps. Benny teetered out of the classroom with his hand on his chest. Pinwheeling within his gut were conflicting emotions of anger, shame, and embarrassment. The harshest question he’d ever faced from a student previously involved a continuity blunder from Night Desires, one he could credibly pin on his former editor. This—the indignation, the casual accusations of rank bigotry, the moral superiority—what was this? After he’d calmed himself down, practiced some Qigong breathing exercises, Benny had almost convinced himself that the incident was an aberration. It was a comforting lie, one that lasted less than six hours. That afternoon, the Publishers Quarterly review of his newest novel debuted online. It was the story of a first-year associate navigating his way through San Francisco’s elite; the young man’s attempts to reconcile his trailer park past with his new life, as his law firm defends a CEO falsely accused of murder. Five years of work for Benny, probably the novel he was most proud of. The reviewer assailed Benny for his “tin-eared, sophistic narrative” and “appalling attempt to humanize a beneficiary of obscene capitalistic privilege.” Six paragraphs of the review were spent eviscerating Benny for a bacchanalian party sequence set on a luxury yacht. That scene was inspired by a conversation Benny once had with a college sophomore, the kid’s fantasy of what his life would be one day, after college and law school and all the other nonsense. That kid wanted a wicked three-day bender out on the water. Benny figured the lad probably spoke for many others in his generation, so he decided to give those babyfaced hedonists what they wanted. (Before everything went to hell in Act Three, of course.) This chat, and The Great Gatsby , one of the few high school assignments Benny could actually finish, inspired this somehow profane sequence. A critical moment in the novel’s structure, rich with symbolic significance, something the reviewer didn’t seem to notice at all. The Great Gatsby— the book that motivated him to try “novelist” as a career instead of “aimless vagabond”—how problematic would it be today? Benny did a decent impersonation of Mr. Fitzgerald that evening, obliterating himself with gin rickeys, clover clubs, and whiskey cocktails with bitters. Didn’t feel any better the next morning when he awoke, though. Didn’t feel like moving, let alone writing. The sentiment didn’t improve that morning, or during the thousands that followed. Occasionally, Benny would have phone conversations with his fellow authors, people who expressed similar bewilderment over the changing mores. A few of his friends, more than a few, had placed their latest manuscripts in the drawer. Others had been dropped by their agents. Benny still received sporadic calls from his, with assurances that his back catalog was selling “all right.” Maybe the stars would align later, maybe Benny wasn’t a total has-been. N o, the sentiment did not improve. Not until Benny was struck by sudden inspiration, late one morning while shaving. An eager young journalist who suspects his next-door neighbor is a notorious serial killer. Problem is, the town’s hero cop has already arrested a likely suspect. Worse, that hero cop is the eager young journalist’s father. The best ideas tended to hit Benny in those unexpected moments. Pumping gas at a filling station somewhere in rural Utah twenty years ago, the major beats of Black Widow’s Lament arrived unexpectedly. Six weeks after purchasing his first home, after a laborious fight against writer’s block, Benny somehow conceived the spine of Run, Angel, Run while pulling weeds. The ambitious kid reporter, the father he knows he can never truly please, the conflict between father and son, youth and experience, right and wrong, guilt and innocence...this was going to be a good one. By the afternoon, Benny had completed a rough outline. He made an excited call to his agent, who then made an equally excited call to an editor at Benny’s old publisher. “ S o you do realize that I barely know how to turn this thing on, right?” Benny asked his editor, winking into the webcam. “This thing” was a sleek and silver laptop. Benny had purchased it only yesterday, after typing so vigorously he thought he saw sparks shooting from his aging desktop. Getting back into the game had been a Spanish fandango of elation and goosebumps. Could he really do this? Did the public desire anything new from Benny Stack? Could he once again become relevant to the literary critics and college kids who’d dismissed him as a repulsive relic? Looking back at Benny was Donald Etheredge, a gawky man in his mid-thirties with thick-rimmed glasses and long cinnamon-colored hair. On his cluttered desk were manuscripts from other authors, action figures, and canned energy drinks. “I get that you’re trepidatious, Benny, but the program’s darn easy to use.” “It’s just...AI? I mean, I realize this is the most hack of hack observations, but did everyone just forget about The Terminator ?” “We’re recommending all our authors try it out. Just think of it as a tool, right? Do you really want to spend all day wrestling with descriptions of, like, the fullness of a character’s cheeks or the way midmorning sunlight glistens off a canal when there’s software that can do it for you?” Benny’s lips rubbed lightly against each other. “I mean, maybe it could help.” “And there’s the new Sensitivity Reader add-on. That could help you avoid that, ah, unpleasantness you’d experienced earlier.” “Well, yeah,” Benny said with something resembling a laugh, “anything to avoid that.” S even weeks. Somehow, the words kept flowing. The subtext, the recurring themes, the character dynamics—they all streamed from Benny’s subconscious like water from a broken dam. Seven weeks. He’d finished the first draft in seven weeks. Never in Benny’s life had he written with such urgency, such purpose. And that AI stuff...Benny didn’t even pay it the slightest mind. When he needed a quick description for a peripheral character or just the right colors to illustrate a sunset, he did the work the old-fashioned way, using that brain his mysterious creator had endowed upon him. Seven weeks. A manuscript in the drawer. Not officially a manuscript until he’d printed it out, though. This was Benny’s rule going back to the first novel he wrote on his Macintosh SE. And before he printed this tour-de-force thriller, he figured he should investigate why the word processing program had inserted hazy red lines under so much of the manuscript. He clicked on the text, summoning a green pop-up balloon to appear onscreen. Benny was instructed that he had forty-one uses of the term “policeman.” The program suggested “police officer” instead. “But he is a man...” muttered Benny, clicking on the next prompt. This one suggested he reconsider casting a police officer—not a police- man , of course—as a lead character. The pop-up questioned if Benny was aware of “copaganda,” a concept the text explained as “a form of propaganda that depicts police in a positive light while minimizing a history of abuse, corruption, racial bias, and unchecked masculine egotism.” “Aw, cripes,” Benny sighed, clicking on another prompt. This pop-up probed Benny on the necessity of having the lead’s female love interest placed in jeopardy during the novel’s climax. “Are you aware of the damsel in distress trope?” asked the pop-up. “Please be wary of perpetrating regressive and patronizing myths about women and femme-identifying individuals,” it warned. He was then lectured on his twenty-four references to this female as a “girl.” With another click, advised to “de-sexualize” a description of the character’s feminine form. There were seven references to minority characters with food or beverage used to describe their skin tone; the helpful green balloon recommended all be replaced. A chapter that detailed a local laundromat owned by a family of Chinese immigrants was given the note: “Please refer to the linked list of ethnic stereotypes to avoid.” Gunplay between the hero and villain summoned a pop-up warning Benny against glamorizing gun violence, accompanied by stats and charts detailing last year’s firearm-related deaths. One scene had Benny’s tyro protagonist investigating the gnarly fetishes of the killer in a neighborhood known as “Whore Alley.” His new pop-up friend was not kind to this sequence. Benny spent an hour that afternoon on the phone with his editor, sipping blended bourbon and arguing that this was all nonsense. Donald was sympathetic and patient during the conversation, but assured Benny he would be doing the right thing, following those pop-up suggestions. “Modern sensibilities are a real issue, my friend,” Donald told him, “and it’s not as if you haven’t been burned by this sort of thing in the past...” Benny stiffened in his chair and felt a familiar, unwanted sensation in his chest. Those students who’d reamed him out ten years back, he wondered if maybe they had a point. If perhaps he’d overreacted, let some of that old self-doubt creep in, when it would’ve been much healthier to educate himself and open his ears to a younger point of view. After all, listening to the kids—that’s what he’d built his career on, right? By the next sunset, there were no more hazy crimson lines under his text. Benny had humbled himself before the wisdom of his green pop-up allies and made the appropriate edits. B enny told himself that this morning wasn’t a twin of that other morning, over a decade ago now. Whatever this morning held, it would not be a repeat of the incident that crippled his artistic spirit. He was back at Himmel University, yes, speaking to another English-Lit course, carrying the same flavor of coffee in hand. All true, but he was imagining that the same scent was drifting through the air, dreaming that the birds were chirping an identical song. He had to be. This morning, this brand-new day, would not be a rehash of his previous talk at this esteemed institution of learning. Some old dogs refuse to learn new lessons, but Benny was confident he wouldn’t be lumped in with those worthless hounds. Approaching the classroom, overhearing the commotion of anxious students, Benny tried to untangle a knot of worry in his stomach before touching the door handle. With a cleansing breath, a brief prayer, he entered the room, allowing a shy smile to crinkle his lips. The professor introduced Benny and made mention of his new novel, Father Forgive Me . The nebbish gentleman had ordered a copy for every student, as it turned out. The kids seemed normal enough, by Benny’s estimation. Not that “normal” meant much today. In fact, in his journey of pop-up enlightenment, he’d been advised that normalcy was itself a problematic concept. Benny walked to the lectern, swallowed enough coffee to hopefully evaporate the cotton on his tongue, and launched into his prepared talk. Not so different from his previous speech, but revised for those modern sensibilities, naturally. Gripping the wooden lectern, resisting thoughts of any impending disasters, Benny invited the young aspiring wordsmiths to ask whatever was on their minds. “Yeah, Mr. Stack, I’ve been wondering...is there a reason why the girlfriend in your new book...well, can I ask why you keep describing her body as ‘humble and achievable?’” “Why did you avoid any descriptions of what the serial killer actually does to his victims? You made all that gruesome stuff just sing in your old novels.” “Did you really need to have the protagonist discuss consent with his partner before every love scene?” “So I’m guessing you were an outright slave to the Bechdel Test while writing this, huh?” “I’m not sure why the cop character has to repudiate policing and the whole criminal justice system during that scene where they’re discussing doughnut toppings. Actually, I’m not sure why he has to keep doing that throughout the book.” “How come your characters used to be total babes and now they’re so...frumpy? Why does the girlfriend wear a ‘formless sweater’ in every scene?” “What does it mean when the reporter guy is described as ‘handsome in his plainness?’ Isn’t that an oxymoron?” “Don’t you think it’s silly that the elderly dock worker who witnessed the murder kept calling those women ‘sex workers’ instead of...well...c’mon.” After a long breath, after hopefully wiping away whatever dumbstruck expression was on his face, Benny stepped closer to the students. Leaning against a female coed’s desk, he addressed the crowd with befuddled hand gestures and words that didn’t quite form sentences. “The last time I was here, I was told...this doesn’t...you kids today, this is what...no, the last time I spoke to a class like this...” “And when was that?” asked the young lady before him. “A little over ten years ago.” She turned to her classmate. Impish laughter was in her eyes. “Can you believe it? This guy thinks we’re millennials. ” The girl practically spat that last word out. In response, a wave of jeers and cackles rumbled throughout the classroom. Benny looked to the professor, desperate for any enlightenment. “Well, Mr. Stack,” the nebbish man tried to explain, “every generation is a rebellion against the last, I suppose. And these kids...I think they feel they were given a lot to rebel against.” Soon, Benny was walking to his car with faltering steps. By the time he’d hit the highway, Benny was tinkering with an idea for his next novel, contemplating a story about a man well past middle age. A different kind of protagonist. Someone who doesn’t care if skinny ties are in fashion again, if trousers should be pleated or slim-fit, if it’s cool to say “cool” anymore. Yes, it inspired a certain warmth in Benny’s guts, dreaming up a hero too old and too tired to give a damn about a kid’s opinion on anything.