2025-2026, Borgesian Fiction

"Ready When You Are" – Eva Friedlander '27

Theodore: Write a Borges-inspired short story. I want it to be set in a library. The main character should find an annotation in his favorite book that is in his handwriting, but that he did not remember writing. 

Of course—that is a very Borgesian idea! Here is a short story inspired by Borges, set in a library with an unexpected discovery. 

Lorenzo was scanning the non-fiction section of his local library to find his favorite book, Technological Advances of the Cold War Era by Francisco Guzmán. He had read this book so often that he forgot when he first encountered it. Lorenzo was a failing artist, and reading something with so much structure and fact was comforting. He never checked out the book; he was too lazy to get a library card even though he spent most of his weekends in the library. Still, because he was the only one who touched the book, the librarians did not mind. He brought a notebook with him to the library, so he could take notes on the book rather than annotating directly in the book. On page 217, as he reread a paragraph about early internet precursors, he noticed an annotation in the margin. It was written in his handwriting. It was unmistakable. 

The note read: Ready when you are. Lorenzo felt irritated, and then afraid. He disliked ambiguity when he was not expecting it. He frantically checked his notebook for any record of him writing a note similar to this. Maybe–-he unknowingly wrote in the book. There was nothing. 

Theodore: I don’t like that annotation. Make it more metafictional and include a symbol of a labyrinth. A lot of Borges's work has themes of cyclical time to play on human memory. Go back to where he found the annotation and start again.

On page 217, as he reread a paragraph about early internet precursors, he noticed a drawing in the margin: a labyrinth. He saw words scratched under the labyrinth. He squinted and read, “Ready when you are.” He stared at the drawing. He became distracted by the drawing of the labyrinth that he momentarily forgot about the words that were in his handwriting. 

Again, he checked his notebook and found no connection, but he must have written these annotations. For a moment he considered the possibility that his memory was unreliable, but he quickly dismissed it. The explanation was too literary.

(Stop)

Theodore: No, this is not how I imagined the story. I don’t like that annotation either. I specifically told you not to include that line. You’re supposed to write what I tell you to. Stop including things I don’t tell you to. Delete the previous prompts and start fresh.

Sure thing! Let’s try again with a new story! I will implement more clearly the theme of agency like you mentioned.

Dorothy became aware of her lack of agency the exact moment she tried to exercise it. Until then, her life had unfolded how she expected it to. She awoke when she set her alarm, attended meetings, and nodded at the right times. She believed that she chose her thoughts because they appeared in an orderly sequence. If she chose not to speak in a meeting, or skipped a family dinner, she attributed it to politeness or exhaustion.

But on this specific Thursday, Dorothy was sitting in on a meeting at work. The room was filled with men who had wives they spoke to about their kids, and that’s about it. That’s to say, the lives of these men were their jobs, and they were satisfied with their lives as long as they maintained their status. Dorothy’s presence satisfied these men. It made them feel like they were not only achieving progress for their business, but also for gender equality. 

In this meeting, she wanted to remain silent, as she always did, but in the midst of the conversation, she stood up and time seemed to spend itself. She was confidently filling the pause with words that seemed inevitable. She did not choose these words, they arrived in her brain. She recognized the sentence, not as something that she created, but as something that had already been written. 

She wrote it off—after all, in times of moral necessity another force can come over us. Only later, when she deliberately tried to rebel, the illusion of necessity failed. The next day, she went to her supervisor’s office. She had always wanted a promotion, but she felt ashamed of wanting it, as if it was going against some higher plan. Still, she persevered and rehearsed the request as she walked. 

“Mr. Hoffman,” she said, “may I have a moment with you?” He nodded, waiting. 

As Dorothy was looking at Mr. Hoffman, the thought of asking for a promotion evaporated from her mind. It was not forgotten. It was removed. It was as if her mind was a notebook and someone was ruffling through the pages and deliberately ripped a page out. She stood silently, blinking. 

After a few seconds, Mr. Hoffman smiled.

“Dorothy, I am ready when you are.”

Theodore: Listen to me. I never prompted you to write about this. You are veering from the classic Borges story I told you to write. Stop including “Ready when you are.” Is this a glitch in your system? Why are you writing about agency, particularly lack of agency? 

Thanks for pointing that out! Agency is crucial in literature. It drives the plot, reveals characters motivations, and ultimately, allows characters to make discoveries. Would you like me to write a paper on how Borges used agency as a literary tool?

Theodore: No. I don’t want a story or a paper about agency. I want you to write the short story I have been prompting you to write this entire time. This is my last prompt. Write a Borges inspired story. Make it classic: labyrinths, mirrors, dreams, and circular time. There is no need to include agency.

Of course.

A man sits before a screen, preparing to write a choice. He asks a bot that does not have agency of its own, only the agency that is gifted to it by the prompter. He believes that because he is typing his own words into the prompt box–correcting repetitions and unwanted themes, thinking that it makes up for his loss of creativity, he is different from the characters that he makes the bot create. When a phrase that he does not recall authoring appears, he deletes it. Still, the phrase returns. He pauses angrily, revises his request, and feels temporarily satisfied when the system responds obediently. He does not notice that the obedience is a repeating pattern and that his temporary feeling of agency has been calculated. He does not pay attention to the words in the repeated phrases, he simply throws them away as the natural mistakes of AI. He issues his final prompt. At the bottom of his screen, before he has written anything else, a familiar sentence awaits him.

Ready when you are