Vignette 9: Twenty-five words.*

Reclusive maiden aunt requests brother to park his motorbike outside her house to deter suitors. 

Bachelor, attracted to motorbike, visits house to purchase . . . marries aunt.  

Catherine Eisner believes passionately in plot-driven suspense fiction, a devotion to literary craft that draws on studies in psychoanalytical criminology and psychoactive pharmacology to explore the dark side of motivation, and ignite plot twists with unexpected outcomes. Within these disciplines Eisner’s fictions seek to explore variant literary forms derived from psychotherapy and criminology to trace the traumas of characters in extremis. Compulsive recurring sub-themes in her narratives examine sibling rivalry, rivalrous cousinhood, pathological imposture, financial chicanery, and the effects of non-familial male pheromones on pubescence, 

see Eisner’s Sister Morphine (2008)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/sister-morphine.html

and Listen Close to Me (2011)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/published-this-autumn-listen-close-to.html 

and A Bad Case (2015)
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/a-bad-case-and-other-adventures-of.html

 

*THE LAW OF TWENTY-FIVE: ‘Of the quinary, or number five; that number five pertains to the Law. . . . accordingly the number twenty-five signifies the Law, because five by five — that is, five times five — make twenty-five, or the number five squared.’   

Augustine’s Tractate 25 on the Gospel of John.

AI Catastrophe! Ultimate Torment of the Species: Interrogation by Chatbot.

Once, many years ago, while studying a theatre programme, I read in a note on performers the observations of the polymathic opera director Jonathan Miller who confessed his worst fear was to be tortured for information he did not possess.

    My congenital morbidity tells me I can imagine a fate far worse.

.

Scene from Metropolis the 1927 expressionist silent film 

directed by Fritz Lang, whose Maschinenmensch is the

prototypal humanoid robot for dystopian visionaries.

.

Chatbot Torquemada.

Far worse, surely, would be if one survived the torture of a robotic intérrogatoire énergique to be condemned to the torture of the intérrogatoire prolongée by a fiendish inquisitor – a Chatbot Torquemada – to extract information one did not possess.

 

I have no doubt that such an instrument of torment for the ultimate surrender of humanity is at this moment in development at Artificial Intelligence HQ, a secret black site whose location is unknown to me . . . an example of specific information that, regardless of the consequences, I do not possess.
 

 

Vignette 8: Twenty-five words.*

Petrashevsky once wore a woman’s dress in Kazan cathedral.  

When a deacon protested, Petrashevsky replied: ‘But you are clearly a woman masquerading as a man.’

See also: 

 Dead Wife, New Hat. (Femme morte, chapeau neuf.) 

The memories of D-r Tchékhov, Detektiv, also include recollections of Petrashevsky

by Aleksey Nikolayevich Pleshcheyev, a member of the Petrashevsky Circle.

https://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2012/10/dead-wife-new-hat-femme-morte-chapeau.html 

.

Catherine Eisner believes passionately in plot-driven suspense fiction, a devotion to literary craft that draws on studies in psychoanalytical criminology and psychoactive pharmacology to explore the dark side of motivation, and ignite plot twists with unexpected outcomes. Within these disciplines Eisner’s fictions seek to explore variant literary forms derived from psychotherapy and criminology to trace the traumas of characters in extremis. Compulsive recurring sub-themes in her narratives examine sibling rivalry, rivalrous cousinhood, pathological imposture, financial chicanery, and the effects of non-familial male pheromones on pubescence, 

see Eisner’s Sister Morphine (2008)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/sister-morphine.html

and Listen Close to Me (2011)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/published-this-autumn-listen-close-to.html 

and A Bad Case (2015)
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/a-bad-case-and-other-adventures-of.html

 

*THE LAW OF TWENTY-FIVE: ‘Of the quinary, or number five; that number five pertains to the Law. . . . accordingly the number twenty-five signifies the Law, because five by five — that is, five times five — make twenty-five, or the number five squared.’   

Augustine’s Tractate 25 on the Gospel of John.

 

 

Vignette 7: Twenty-five words.*

   The younger brother grew so tall and strong

                the older brother wore 

          his hand-me-downs.

                    The kid’s
            name had been decided

                    long before.

                              Samson.

 .

.

Catherine Eisner believes passionately in plot-driven suspense fiction, a devotion to literary craft that draws on studies in psychoanalytical criminology and psychoactive pharmacology to explore the dark side of motivation, and ignite plot twists with unexpected outcomes. Within these disciplines Eisner’s fictions seek to explore variant literary forms derived from psychotherapy and criminology to trace the traumas of characters in extremis. Compulsive recurring sub-themes in her narratives examine sibling rivalry, rivalrous cousinhood, pathological imposture, financial chicanery, and the effects of non-familial male pheromones on pubescence, 

see Eisner’s Sister Morphine (2008)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/sister-morphine.html

and Listen Close to Me (2011)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/published-this-autumn-listen-close-to.html 

and A Bad Case (2015)
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/a-bad-case-and-other-adventures-of.html

 

*THE LAW OF TWENTY-FIVE: ‘Of the quinary, or number five; that number five pertains to the Law. . . . accordingly the number twenty-five signifies the Law, because five by five — that is, five times five — make twenty-five, or the number five squared.’ 

Augustine’s Tractate 25 on the Gospel of John.

Homage to René Magritte

Vignette 6: Twenty-five words.*

He’d once sold cannabis to a troupe of Moroccan tumblers.

       ‘It was like selling refrigerators to Eskimos,’ he’d bragged, ‘and even the strong man wept.’

.

 

.

Catherine Eisner believes passionately in plot-driven suspense fiction, a devotion to literary craft that draws on studies in psychoanalytical criminology and psychoactive pharmacology to explore the dark side of motivation, and ignite plot twists with unexpected outcomes. Within these disciplines Eisner’s fictions seek to explore variant literary forms derived from psychotherapy and criminology to trace the traumas of characters in extremis. Compulsive recurring sub-themes in her narratives examine sibling rivalry, rivalrous cousinhood, pathological imposture, financial chicanery, and the effects of non-familial male pheromones on pubescence, 

see Eisner’s Sister Morphine (2008)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/sister-morphine.html

and Listen Close to Me (2011)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/published-this-autumn-listen-close-to.html 

and A Bad Case (2015)
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/a-bad-case-and-other-adventures-of.html

 

*THE LAW OF TWENTY-FIVE: ‘Of the quinary, or number five; that number five pertains to the Law. . . . accordingly the number twenty-five signifies the Law, because five by five — that is, five times five — make twenty-five, or the number five squared.’ 

Augustine’s Tractate 25 on the Gospel of John.

Vignette 5: Twenty-five words.*

‘You on a punitive expedition?’ the colonel mocked.  

     ‘I’m not joking, sir!’ protested his youngest subaltern, who’d triumphed playing the part of a pretty girl.

.

 

Catherine Eisner believes passionately in plot-driven suspense fiction, a devotion to literary craft that draws on studies in psychoanalytical criminology and psychoactive pharmacology to explore the dark side of motivation, and ignite plot twists with unexpected outcomes. Within these disciplines Eisner’s fictions seek to explore variant literary forms derived from psychotherapy and criminology to trace the traumas of characters in extremis. Compulsive recurring sub-themes in her narratives examine sibling rivalry, rivalrous cousinhood, pathological imposture, financial chicanery, and the effects of non-familial male pheromones on pubescence, 

see Eisner’s Sister Morphine (2008)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/sister-morphine.html

and Listen Close to Me (2011)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/published-this-autumn-listen-close-to.html 

and A Bad Case (2015)
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/a-bad-case-and-other-adventures-of.html

 

*THE LAW OF TWENTY-FIVE: ‘Of the quinary, or number five; that number five pertains to the Law. . . . accordingly the number twenty-five signifies the Law, because five by five — that is, five times five — make twenty-five, or the number five squared.’ 

Augustine’s Tractate 25 on the Gospel of John.

.