That Can't Be Right / Perhaps That Is the Case

I pretended to crumple up a spoiled sheet of manuscript paper and throw it into the trash can. In reality, I hadn't written a single character. Even though it was just one sheet of manuscript paper, I had wasted a lot of time. Wouldn't it have been better to just fill it with something, anything? If I had just turned it into a manuscript and handed it to the editor, wouldn't the manuscript have moved one step closer to completion, no matter how many times it was rejected? Trying to just write sentences on a new sheet of manuscript paper, I started by writing, "I crumpled up the spoiled manuscript paper." This time, I really did crumple it up and throw it. It hit the face of Yoshikawa, the editor who had entered the room without knocking.

"What is this?" Yoshikawa spread out the manuscript paper, confirmed clearly what it was, and then threw it into the trash can again. The value of my half-written manuscript was vividly demonstrated to me.
"I can't write." The deadline was approaching. The end of the series was also drawing near. Yet, my pen had stopped. Yoshikawa and I had held many meetings, and the concept for the final phase should have been decided even before the series began. Because I had impulsively changed the development of the middle phase, contradictions with the beginning had emerged. It was too late to head toward the ending as originally conceived.
"If only you hadn't brought out the rocket launcher."
"You're the one who said, 'It's interesting, let's do it.'"
"I didn't think you'd actually do it."
"I didn't think you'd actually let it pass."
"The editor-in-chief loved it, so what else could I do?"
It was becoming a situation where it was my fault for putting a rocket launcher into a novel based on Taisho literary romance. It's the fault of those who bring stories of romance novels to someone like me who has only ever written slapstick gag comedies.

"Since you won't make it in time now, why not just take a break from the series?"
"I'm keeping the printing plant on standby."
"I wish you hadn't made it such a big deal."
"Our literary magazine is the best-selling one in our company, and you are, for better or worse, one of our top-class popular authors, so it can't be helped."
"I'm flattered when you put it that way."
"That's a lie, so don't be flattered and just write."

While feeling a little hurt, I decided to proceed with the story, including the development where the rocket launcher also awakens to love.
"I wish there were a machine that could write a novel if I just gave it instructions like, 'With this kind of development, in my style, and with an ending like this,' at a time like this."
A machine called a word processor had appeared, and it was rumored that writing manuscripts would become several times faster. It seemed to be something like a typewriter. In that vein, I wondered if a machine that could finish the content of a novel itself at high speed would appear.
"If such a machine were created, all authors would be out on the street. Because even without asking an author, an editor would be able to create a work exactly as they imagined it themselves."

"No, but the ideas would be different, right? A machine wouldn't be able to move people or make them laugh, would it?"
"That might be the case at first, but wouldn't it learn in the blink of an eye and leave humans behind? Are you going to make the rocket launcher that appears now a male character, or a heroine?"
I see. If I set it up so that the rocket launcher the narrator is carrying is the heroine herself, it would naturally connect to Taisho romance.
"I wonder if the speed is different between machines and humans."
"As long as you provide electricity, wouldn't it continue to learn and evolve without rest?"
I know there is something called a microcomputer. If a word processor is just a machine for typing characters, a microcomputer seems to be a machine that also has a brain to think. As Yoshikawa says, the day when a literary magazine is created without an author at the end of endless evolution might not be so far in the future. The thought that "that can't be right" and "perhaps that is the case" come to me alternately.

"As soon as your manuscript arrives, I will start printing. Until then, I will keep the people working at the printing plant on standby. You are whittling away, moment by moment, the time they want to spend leisurely with their families or the time they want to spend intimately with their lovers. Before you get swayed by the theory of microcomputer evolution, please let me run the offset rotary press."
Unable to withstand the pressure Yoshikawa was putting on me, I began writing a story about a rocket launcher heroine who had reincarnated from the modern era and intruded into a romance novel by Taisho romanticist authors. With this, the Taisho era and the rocket launcher were able to intersect quite naturally. From there on, whatever happens, happens. In the not-too-distant future, the day might come when I leave it to a machine, saying, "I've written this far without thinking of an ending, so I'll leave the rest to you." However, I will then intervene further and say, "The ending you wrote for me is no good. I will rewrite it."

"Then I'll take it." Yoshikawa snatched the manuscript I had written in messy handwriting. I felt that the profession of editor would survive even in that future.

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