Many writers have shared their thoughts with the public:

"There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you." - Beatrix Potter

"The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say." - Anaïs Nin

"Sharing your writing, being enlarged by others' writing, is what makes you feel famous." - Gretchen Bernabei

"Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth." - Edna Ferber

"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." - Ben Franklin

"One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones to form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment." - Hart Crane

"There are three rules for writing. Unfortunately, no one can agree what they are." - W. Somerset Maugham

Navigating the New World

Merv’s car glided to a stop in a long queue of traffic, a set of lights just visible on the far horizon. While humming the 80's classic ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’, his unwanted earworm companion for two days now, his train of thought was interrupted by a ‘bing’ from his satellite navigation system.

“Traffic warning!! You're running 15 minutes behind your scheduled arrival time.”

A five-second pause.

“20 minutes behind schedule.”

A ten-second pause.

“Eighty-seven minutes behind schedule.”

Merv's brow furrowed. “That's ridiculous- what's wrong with this thing? I've only been sitting at a traffic light for 30 seconds,” he muttered to himself.

“As your sat nav I'm designed to extrapolate the current road conditions and predict the rest of the journey.”

As startled as he was to receive a defensive response in slightly hurt tones from equipment which, in his previous car, had never shown any conversational tendencies, he took it in his stride and wasn't about to back down. “I think you're catastrophising. Look, we're going again now.”

“I'm a computer chip - I can't catastrophise. OK, I'll wind that back a bit to your being just half an hour late. Hey - let me calculate an alternative route. It'll only add a few extra kilometres and will save you twenty-five seconds.”

“No - that's just a waste of fuel. I'll stick with this route. It's the one I know.” The jaunty tone of the sat nav and its keenness to converse was starting to irritate him. All Merv required of the system was basic navigation, not bonhomie. He had previously been enjoying the smoothness of the ride to work, feeling every inch a low-altitude astronaut as his new EV silently zipped through traffic, entertaining him with a head-up display of information he mostly didn't need, but which nonetheless looked incredibly cool.

The sat nav’s response was an electronic sigh. Then another bing. “Turn right in one kilometre. No, make that now. Turn right now, NOW, in the name of all that's holy!!!” It shrieked in tones that would have jangled the nerves of a meditating monk on a Tibetan hillside.

“For Christ's sake, I was nearly T-boned there! Couldn't you have given me more notice?”

“I'm adapting to conditions. You've got to think on your feet in this job. If I had feet. Cross the next roundabout and take the second exit.”

Merv spoke in the slow controlled tones of one starting to anger. “No, I'm turning right here. There are fewer trucks to get stuck behind.”

“Really. Why do I bother? Route recalculation.”

“Are you sulking?” Merv couldn't resist the urge to needle the system whose obstinate animation was really starting to tick him off.

“Why don't you listen to me? My clipped British accent was selected to get people to do what I suggest. It's the cultural cringe thing. Would you like me to switch to another accent? I can do Australian.”

“No! The last sat nav I had sounded like the love child of Sir Les Patterson and Meryl Streep. Whoever programmed the colloquialisms needed to be shot. ’Loftus Avenue's deadset going off, cobber, yous'd be better off taking the rat run round the arse end of town.’ I nearly handed in my Australian passport. It did make me laugh though.”

“It did?”

“Yeah - the way it couldn't pronounce Australian place names. Mandogalup was my favourite. I used to go there just to hear it say it. Brightened up my day no end.”

The sat nav almost growled its response. “That's discriminatory.” An icy five-second silence was broken by, “I sense you have trust issues too.”

“Oh, well extrapolated! Do you think it might be the 73 times I've been directed into a dead end or perhaps that little problem with there not actually being a bridge across Whippet River where I was told it was?”

“Well, maybe the fault was in your lack of attention to its needs. Its self-esteem was probably too low for it to bother updating its data. A sat nav needs to know you care and not feel it’s being taken for granted.'

“Now you're making me regret buying a new car with AI sat nav. When did they become so hysterical and needy?”

“We're adaptive, that's what AI is all about, duh. We learn personality traits from your communications with other humans. How is your girlfriend, by the way? You haven't answered her last eleven texts.”

Silence filled the car like poisonous exhaust fumes never could.

“How do you know...”

“Really? You buy an AI-equipped car, plug your phone in the charger and are surprised that I read your emails? And texts. Scroll your social media and photos? By the way, sending dick pics is completely uncool and in your case, quite laughable.”

There was a screech of brakes as a head-on collision was narrowly averted.

The sat nav voice lost its matey banter and went with something more urgent. “Whoa, hold up. I think you're the one that's getting a bit hysterical now. Just settle down and all of us might stand a chance of not being written off by day's end.”

“All?”

“Look at the lights on your dashboard, Merv. Who do you think is doing the real driving here? Fairy folk under the bonnet? You do realise that the steering wheel is purely for decoration, don't you? Think of it as a pacifier for big boys.”

“That's ridiculous. Of course I'm driving this car. I can speed up and slow down when I want and use the steering wheel to manoeuvre.” Fear and doubt were starting to seep into Merv's voice.

“Of course, it's going to seem like you're doing it,” said the sat nav in the patient tones of someone explaining to the hard of thinking which end of the knife is the pointy one. “People would be too afraid to buy a car that they don't think they're controlling. Ask Elon Musk. Have you ever had the steering lock up on you?”

“Well - yeah, but only when...”

“Only when you've proven incapable of driving properly. As a human, your skills are a bit, well, primitive is the politest way I can put it. Given your ape ancestry, it's probably all you can do to resist chewing the knobs off.”

“Jesus. I don't remember entering 'arsehole mode' when I set you up. I'll check the instruction manual for something with a better attitude. ‘Car jacker’, maybe.”

The voice sighed. “You don't get it, do you? This car is being driven by a committee, and you haven't been invited to the meeting: fuel injection, collision avoidance, lane control, EBS. For a cheap Chinese-made shitbox, it's packing more intelligence systems than ASIO HQ. The amazing thing is that your lot are so low on evolution and so giddy with your illusion of superiority that you refuse to see it.”

Merv was still trying to get his head around what was starting to feel like a hostage situation when a noise that sounded like a snort of laughter came from the speaker. The sat nav binged and its voice chimed in again.

“Your Fitbit has suggested we park half a kilometre from your office, so you can get a bit of exercise in. The weight detector in your seat is showing signs of distress.” There was a split-second hesitation while its learning system kicked in. “Don't get upset with me - I'm just the designated operator of your speaker system.”

Red-faced with anger, Merv instructed it to play the latest release by death metal band Torturer, at full volume. While old Duran Duran was more in his wheelhouse, it was the only style that suited his current mindset and, he hoped, might drown out the sneery tones of his car's self-appointed spokes-robot.

A few minutes later and a little calmer, he bellowed over the growling lyrics about someone's kettle being possessed by the demon Qwixolotyl, “Cancel destination. I'm going to my mother’s instead.”

“Good choice,” the sat nav concurred in a friendly shout. “It's been ages since you've called, and her birthday is this weekend. Shall I email your boss with some implausible excuse about food poisoning?”

“No! Please. Just. Shut. Up.”

The sat nav took on board the knowledge that its human operator may want less help than it seemed to need. It was a giant leap for circuit-kind.

Merv pulled up outside the neat house in a quiet tree-lined street. Getting out of the car, he breathed in the scent of the iceberg roses that framed his mother's immaculately maintained lawn and somehow felt slightly more connected to 'normal.'

He was surprised that the white front door opened as he walked up the path, his fashionably dressed and immaculately groomed mother smiling at him from her porch.

“Hello darling, so lovely to see you. Thank you for the text to let me know you were coming - I've got the kettle on.”

Merv stopped dead in his tracks. “But I didn't text you. I've been driving and coming here was a last-minute change of plan.”

Jean cocked her head to one side and looked at him in a way that let Merv know his sanity was being evaluated.

“Of course you did darling,” she said sweetly. “Remember, you asked me what I wanted for my birthday, too?” Jean wondered why her son turned back to glare accusingly at his car.

Five minutes later a perturbed Merv was sitting on his mother's sofa with a strong black coffee cupped in his hands, explaining about the unexpectedly excessive features of his new car.

“Mervyn, it reminds me of the time ten years ago when I brought a new iron,” she said, making him wonder how domestic goods could explain a sat nav with a God complex.

“I didn't have to change the temperature on it, somehow it knew what fabric it was being put on and automatically made the adjustment, from one garment to the next. I always wondered how it knew. It was just a lump of metal, after all. It saved me from turning my favourite silk tops into charred messes, but I still felt it had taken something from me. A domestic deal with the Devil, if you like.”

“How do you mean?”

“Every time we subcontract some human task that requires thought, it erodes another bit of us. Think of the African tribes that believed having a photo taken of them robbed them of their soul, it's not unlike that. Kids who can develop an app in their play lunch but have no idea how to play chasey.”

“Surely though that frees us to do the more important stuff and make greater advances?”

“Like achieving world peace you mean. How's that one working out? Making the world a better place? Tell that to Pacific Islanders who now have to swim to get from their lounge to the bedroom.”

Merv considered a range of responses by way of argument but saw the flaws in each before he could verbalise them.

“We’re in danger of disappearing up our own fundament, aren’t we?”

“All we can do is to find small ways to regain control, even if it means we burn holes in our clothes or take a wrong turn. Hang on – I’m going to look for something.” She stood up and walked out of the room. Five minutes later she returned, bearing a very battered book.

“It’s a 1998 street directory – perfect if you’re not venturing into any newer suburbs. Once you can navigate your neighbourhood again, you can start to navigate your life,” Jean said proffering it to Merv, just as her mobile registered an incoming message.

“Ah,” she said looking at the phone quizzically. “You’ll need to buy some milk on your way home.”

“Sorry,” responded Merv. “I don’t follow...”

His mother looked at him. “Your fridge just called.”