Tag: Generated by AI

Posted in AI and Creativity

Seventeen Minutes

Posted on by Mike

The queue moved one pace forward every seventeen minutes. I counted. Always seventeen. Never sixteen, never eighteen. The woman in front of me wore a grey coat too large for her frame; the sleeves swallowed her hands. She kept them tucked inside anyway.

A child, perhaps seven, stood two places ahead. His mother held his wrist so tightly the skin around her fingers turned white. He did not cry. None of them cried any longer. The sound had been removed from them before they reached the gate.

At the front the officer’s booth stood glass on three sides. We could see everything. The officer wore no expression. His uniform was pressed, the creases sharp enough to draw blood. He asked questions in a voice that carried on the wind even to where I stood.

Name. Age. Occupation before. Reason for travel.

The answers never varied much. A name, a number, a factory code or a domestic designation, then the same three words: Seeking reassignment. The officer tapped something into the terminal. A green light flashed once. The barrier lifted. The person stepped through without turning.

Sometimes the light stayed red.When it did, two attendants appeared from the side doors. Always the same two: one tall, one short, both in unmarked coveralls. They took the person by the elbows. No struggle. The person allowed himself to be led away through the unmarked door on the left. The door closed without sound.

The queue moved forward again.Seventeen minutes.

Today the child reached the booth. His mother released his wrist only when the officer nodded. The boy stepped onto the low wooden block kept there for the smaller ones. He recited his details in a voice too old for his body.

Name. Age. Occupation before. The officer asked the final question.Reason for travel.The boy said nothing.

His mother, three paces behind now, opened her mouth but made no sound. The officer waited exactly seven seconds. Then he pressed the button.Red light.The attendants came. The tall one lifted the boy under the arms. The short one took his ankles. They carried him like a parcel through the left-hand door.

The mother remained where she was. She did not move forward. She did not step back. She stood exactly in the place her son had occupied, staring at the closed door.The queue shifted. Seventeen minutes passed. The officer called the next name.

The mother stayed.I watched her coat sleeves tremble once, then still. Her hands never emerged.The line continued. Another green light. Another red. Another set of coveralls disappearing through the unmarked door.

Seventeen minutes.I counted.

Generated by AI. Selected by me.

Posted in AI and Creativity

Northern Quarter, Half Past Six

Posted on by Mike

The boy couldn’t have been more than nineteen. He stood outside Afflecks, one hand pressed flat against the window where the vintage jackets hung on their chrome rails. His reflection overlapped with a leather bomber from the seventies, brown and creased and priced at something I couldn’t see from across Oldham Street.

Rain started. Not heavy, just that fine Manchester drizzle that settles into everything. He didn’t move. His jacket, thin and synthetic, began to darken at the shoulders.

A woman came out of the building, keys in hand, and locked the main door. She said something to him. He stepped back, nodding, hands now in his pockets. She walked away towards Piccadilly Gardens without looking back. He stayed.

I ordered another coffee from the place with the steamed-up windows, the one that does the flat whites too hot. From my seat I could watch him through the condensation, a shape against the lit shopfronts. The after-work crowd moved around him, umbrellas up, all heads down. He checked his phone twice. The second time, his thumb moved across the screen for a long while before he put it away.

The lights inside Afflecks went off, section by section. First the ground floor, then the upper levels, until only the emergency signs glowed red behind the glass. The leather jacket disappeared into shadow. Still he waited.

A group of lads passed, loud with Friday energy, and one of them called something out. The boy didn’t react. He’d taken his hand from his pocket and was holding a folded piece of paper, creased many times over, the kind of worn you get from reading something too often. He looked at it without unfolding it.

The rain thickened. Proper rain now, the kind that means it. Water ran down the window beside me in long uneven tracks. Through them, I watched him finally move. He crossed the street, walked to the bin on the corner, and stood there.

His hand hung over the opening. Ten seconds. Fifteen. He put the paper back in his pocket and turned down Tib Street, shoulders hunched, disappearing into the dark between the bars and the curry houses.

I finished my coffee, cold now. The rain kept falling. Someone took his spot outside the window, a girl with bright hair, and began her own vigil.

It wasn’t my business. None of it was.

Generated by AI. Selected by me.