He stretched, arms raised to the ceiling, adjusted his glasses, and gave a satisfied nod.

  This was it. Another good story.

  He read the lines again. Yes. Everything made sense. Every sentence did exactly what it needed to do. The prose was simple but polished. He would publish this contentedly.

  A frown crept in. His arms lowered; without knowing it, his hands were stroking his beard.

  He had written a nice story — but it all looked too clean.

  He exhaled. “Pfff.”

  What if the Inquisition came for it? Quickly, he ran it through some site. Sixty percent AI. A slop score of forty. He pursed his lips and let the air out. “Pfffff. It looks like AI again.”

  Disappointed, he pushed his chair back, stood, and walked to the window. A cup of coffee rested on the sill, forgotten, yet still warm enough to drink. He took a sip. Stared into his garden.

  “Stupid Inquisition,” he muttered.

  He picked up his phone, made the face that unlocked it, and opened the website — a place meant for amateur writers who, supposedly, were there to have fun with creative writing.

  “Yup,” he whispered while shaking his head.

  The comments were already there beneath his last short story.

  This is A.I., one said.

  Clearly prompted by a program, another.

  He skimmed the piece. A decent story. Well written. Good prose.

  The remarks and hateful comments always came from the same few people — enough to make him stop reading altogether.

  Enough to make him dislike writing.

  He walked back to his computer.

  On the screen, the new story waited, proud and pristine.

  “Hmmm.” He felt it grow in his stomach, like a stone growing there, heavier with every breath.

  This story was also well written. Decent but similar prose. Same-ish style.

  Again, it would be commented on, insulted and condemned by the Inquisition.

  ***

  He put his glasses back on and reached for his notebook and pen. Scribbling remained preferable to computer notes.

  “Let’s see,” he said to himself.

  I can remove the em dashes.

  He considered it, then looked at the story again.

  They added something. Something important. Pauses in reading.

  He removed one. Looked at the sentence — immediately he put it back.

  “No.”

  Em dashes were used in the books he enjoyed most. It was only natural they appeared in his own work. “The thing is more than two hundred years old,” his voice sharp, annoyed.

  He shook his head. Writing is supposed to be fun. This — this is just annoying.

  He crossed the line out in the notebook.

  What else?

  He wrote bold and italics. Hm. He did not really use them much. Italics for thoughts or unspoken quotes were common enough. Bold for hard statements, occasionally. Should he remove them too, just to be safe? Just to avoid looking like AI?

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  He shook his head and crossed that out as well. This was getting on his nerves quickly.

  What else was there?

  He scanned his notes.

  Adverbs ending in -y.

  He read it again. It really said that.

  A smile formed. Peculiarly enough, those words were simply part of ordinary English.

  “This is getting stupid,” he muttered, taking another sip of rapidly cooling coffee.

  One item remained.

  He read it. His face tightened. He read it again.

  The use of commas, semicolons and colons.

  “Wait — what?”

  He looked at the story on the screen. “I am not removing those. Without these and em dashes, there is nothing left.”

  He sat still for a few seconds, deciding.

  “Let’s do this the other way around,” he said, already thinking about fresh coffee. The cup beside him was on the brink of no longer being coffee.

  ***

  “Let’s see.”

  Steam curled from the mug in his hand as his pencil moved across a new list.

  The Inquisition. A perfect name. It did not matter whether the accusations were true. They only wanted to remain in their own biased bubble — where everything was against them, where they were the victims.

  The A.I. Inquisition, the notebook read. Who are you?

  Usually anonymous. Of course they were. If he himself was making accusations of cheating, plagiarism, or other personal and threatening claims, he would want to hide as well. Preferably under a bridge.

  They usually claimed expertise — employment at some untraceable or well known software company. Affiliation with a university or intellectual institution that either did not exist or could not be verified.

  They always claimed to have “the eye.” An unnamed gift with which they could spot prompted writing in a heartbeat. Unfailable. A sort of superheroes — moral temple knights out for common justice, in their own mind only.

  They could not be bothered with proof, or such things as ‘Presumption of Innocence’ what we consider one of the proud achievements of civilised human culture.

  Because they could not care less.

  There is no program that can either verify or disprove what they claimed. No software existed that could determine whether a piece of writing was generated or assisted. In that case very close to aspects of religion.

  Ironically the most famous sacred texts would nowadays be considered AI-prompted, as they were written with a certain algorithmic structure.

  The man looked at the ceiling.

  Wait.

  ***

  “So, Inquisitors,” he said aloud, voicing what he already knew.

  He had once written an excellent piece for one of them on another platform — The Phantom Troll. His mouth curved into a smile again. That was fun.

  Of course there had been backlash. Bad ratings. Threatening e-mails. Hate comments that he had refused to remove. As it was their shame not his.

  The bad ratings seemed to pull readers in rather than push them away.

  In the window, his reflection shifted. He sat upright again.

  A grin stretched from ear to ear.

  “Let’s own this.”

  ***

  On his screen sat a new piece. Not so much a story as a complaint in story form. It was littered with em dashes; semicolons; and — for the sake of it — a few italics and bold statements.

  He nodded to himself while sipping his coffee. The smirk remained.

  The people claiming to be professors, software developers, or NSA agents would likely stay far away from this one.

  Still, he hoped it would reach someone else. A writer who felt insecure. Bad. Attacked by the Inquisition. Someone who might read it and remember:

  There are no programs or humans that are accurate at detecting AI. Not ninety percent. Not fifty percent. They do not exist. Anyone claiming otherwise is either lying or has been lied to. Your writing, no matter what other people say, remains your writing. Do not fear the Inquisition. The only view that matters is from the people you know and trust — not random weirdos on the internet.

  People who claim expertise without credentials you can verify are not experts. Real experts use their own names. They make themselves checkable.

  Em dashes. Semicolons. Italics. Adverbs ending in -y. Clean grammar. Consistent tone. Controlled prose. The overuse of the word looked. None of these are proof of A.I.

  The Inquisition is exactly that — like the inquisitions of old. A small group of like-minded individuals: paranoid, conspiratorial, or simply malicious. Some genuinely believe computer programs will take their lives and jobs, which in some cases they definitely will. Others are just trolls, waiting anonymously under a bridge for someone they can harass with baseless claims or illegal accusations of cheating or plagiarism.

  Anyway, if there is only one thing to remember from all of this, it is this:

  Never adjust how you write to appease lunatics.

  Never lose joy in creating.

  Never fear the effect words can have.

  Never err on pupose.