Choi Byung-min turned off the radio. Months, and nothing but beacons. Now, not even those. Earth and the other orbital stations had been eerily quiet for a year.
The brunette beside him, in a sari, had been a freckle-faced redhead yesterday.
“Giving up?” she asked. Practically a statement. Or an accusation.
“Yes. The plague has won.” He spun the black capsule between his fingers. “There’s no one left. I’m the last.”
She frowned. “You mean we are…”
He flipped the computer’s projector off. She vanished mid-sentence, dissolving. A single tear fell. He swallowed the obsidian pill and waited in silence.
A note about the above: This story appears in my book about using AI as an assistant for all kinds of writing. The book isn’t about using AI for writing—I wrote the story you see above for better or worse.
But AI did proofread it. But even more importantly, it helped in one other big way. I wanted a Korean protagonist. For an American, I’m pretty well-traveled, but I haven’t been to Korea. So I could have settled for “Park” or some other lazy Korean trope. But instead, I asked ChatGPT about a Korean name that might have some connection to “the end.” It gave me some choices, including this one, and also explained how the conventional ordering of names is in Korea (I knew that already).
So if you want to infuse your writing with diverse characters or locations, using a chatbot to help you is a great idea.