After Caramel City

It’s now been six years since I wrote Caramel City as a draft in this same blog and lots has happened since then, so I thought I’d put together some words about the situation.

What hasn’t happened is me editing or otherwise improving what I considered a rough draft barely worth publishing in this little blog; I sometimes wonder if I will ever come back and actually edit Flancia into something legible to a significant readership. But I digress (as usual, and this is how I never get to editing).

What has happened is more interesting. To start with, several of the situations I wrote about in the original short story have started happening or are being hinted at. My day job resembles the satirical workplace of the story more than it did before, and what is more: technology has progressed to the point where some of the devices within the story now seem within reach. Six years ago I was experimenting with GPT-2 and this led me to believe what is now possible would be possible, but I have been surprised by the degree and speed of development like many others.

Beyond that, there was that visit to the supermarket when I realized Caramel City had disappeared from the shelves. See, the protein puddings that are part of the story were real – these were the flavors I could buy in the supermarket that is a block away from where I live. This one Saturday afternoon when I visited Choco Mountain and Vanilla Drive were still there, but Caramel City was gone, and I sought for an explanation. I visited the makers’ website and mentions of it had also gone; it was as if it had been erased. The simplest explanation, as usual a priori the most likely, was that it was an unpopular flavor not worth producing and marketing anymore; I just happened to have chosen a loss-making flavor as the title and plot device for my short story, and that was that.

Why had I chosen Caramel City in the first place? Probably because it was the flavour with the strongest connection to Flancia – as flan includes caramel in most manifestations. Maybe because it reminded me a bit of dulce de leche flavoured pudding as well, a staple of my childhood.

I thought of extending the story, or indeed following it up, incorporating this occurrence to the plot. Maybe Caramel City could disappear in either baseline reality or the simulated reality in which the doppelgänger live; or otherwise the list of available flavours could diverge via additions and removals, giving further opportunity to consider the nature of real and simulated qualia.

Then I thought of writing another story, a story about a person who writes a story with a very idiosyncratic plot device, and then finds themselves surprised by an event involving the plot device in real life.

And here I am. Or am I?