What Do You Read?

A veteran writer is asked by his bureau to assess an automated story-generating laboratory whose machines are producing popular, cost-effective fiction that may displace human authors. He moves through a crowded, indifferent city, encounters street violence and rudeness, and confronts personal anxieties about age and relevance before visiting the lab and its engineers. Officials outline the machines' programmed memory of plots and dialog and the institutional pressures to expand computerized production. The narrative examines conflicts between individual creativity and mechanized output, the bureaucratic evaluation of entertainment value, and the emotional consequences for creators facing potential obsolescence.