The First Short Story

The guy realizes that he wants some short stories on his website. Interested in getting started quickly he loads up his favorite text editor and gets to work on it.

He's at the library, his favorite place. This isn't his first short story, its just the first one he's writing for his website.

He tries to think of an idea for something that he could write. A few things cross his mind; there's even an idea to just copy over some of his older short stories. He discards this idea on account of those stories being horrible.

He knows that the story is going to be an introduction to his writing style, the first story anyone on his site is going to read. He wants it to be an encapsulation of everything he cares about in writing, and he wants it to show off what he's best at.

And then the idea hits him: Write about writing the first short story on his website!

He immediately gets to work. It starts off pretty simple, if not a little meta. Any reader with half a brain would notice that he was literally writing about himself writing the post, but he makes sure its obvious that its intentional. He gets down into the nitty gritty details about how the guy is in his favorite place (in his small closet, sitting on a bean bag chair, door closed), and how the guy wants his first short story to be indicative of all the ways that his writing is going to be different.

Eventually the guy in the guy's story gets to the part where he would start writing about the actual writing of his guy's writing. The first-layer guy figures it would be hilarious to make some sort of recursive guy-writing where each guy writes about a guy writing a story about a guy writing a story about a guy writing a story. He decides that this loop will go on until his brain runs out of RAM and commits seppuku.

He (the one in the library) makes a naming convention: Since he's the only person actually writing all of the meta-layers, he will be "Guy-0". His first "Guy" (the one who likes writing in the closet) will be "Guy-1", and his guy will be "Guy-2".

So with a slight grin (not enough to actually be suspicious to anyone in the library, of course), Guy-0 begins to stack the layers, laughing internally at his genius.

Guy-2 is on his lunch break trying to keep his mind occupied with writing some insipid short story for his new website. He thinks that it would be a good idea to do some absurdist meta-thing where he writes a story about himself writing the first story of his website.

He likes the idea. The challenge of keeping up with all of the shit will keep his mind occupied until he has to get back to work.

Since he's the only person actually writing all of the meta-levels, he will be "Guy-A". He decides to add some funny obscure thoughts about how silly it would be if he was actually in a meta-layer and wasn't actually the "first guy", but doesn't actually take the idea seriously.

Guy-A writes about Guy-B, who's on a space ship traveling to Mars. He thinks the extra-terrestrial setting will add some flare to the whole thing. He writes a pastiche of his own situation, except with the trivialities of space ship flights instead of menial working conditions.

Guy-B, Guy-A realized, would probably come to the same "am I the real Guy-A?" question. In a stroke of pure genius Guy-A decides to let Guy-B make up his own silly convention for keeping track of the Guys, while giggling with the audience about who's really in charge.

Guy-B, sitting in his uncomfortable starship beanbag chair (that cost $100,000,000 for no damn reason) is writing his starship report. It took a while for Guy-B to get to the point where he didn't give a rats ass what his superiors (or even humanity) thought of his reports. He's been writing short stories and blog post in his reports, and according to Space X the stories are huge hits back on Earth. He decides that he wants to melt the brains of his fellow humans by writing a story about a guy writing a story on a starship trying to mess up the Human race and build up endless recursion.

Guy-B reasonably comes to the conclusion that this shit will get crazy really fast, and decides that life is too short to hold back. Instead of a starship, Guy-B decides that Guy-Beta (he decided that he would be Guy-Alpha, since he's the original and would be the only person actually writing the meta-layers) would be walking on the surface of the sun and somehow still worrying about writing a story about a guy writing a story.

Guy-Beta is on the surface of the sun. It doesn't burn, on account of the sun have been replaced with a gigantic plastic Transformers fist; Its actually just Planet Hasbro, now. The only light source in the galaxy, after the My Little Pony apocalypse (don't ask) was a dim star called "Disney Owns this Star". Its with a bleak expression that Guy-Beta decides its time to subvert the rule that every single piece of writing has to be a Harry Potter fanfiction. He's been isolated his whole life (ad revenue sky rockets when you force people to imprint on your brands from birth), so his only point of reference for something to write about is himself.

He decides that he will write about himself. The most interesting thing he ever will do is write about himself, so the only thing he really could think to write about is writing about himself writing about himself.

He's been so starved for creative outlets it all just comes gushing out.

Guy-BestBuy (He decided to be Guy-Apple, since he was the only person actually writing the meta-layers. The Apple-bet went something like "A is for Apple, B is for Best Buy, C is for Comcast, D is for Dinosaurs, E is for Extreme nachos at Taco Bell for only $4.99...") went to the supermarket/church that everyone knows exist. After rubbing Ronald McDonald's nose in the off chance he would be blessed with the benediction of a Big Mac, he decided that he was going to write a story about writing a story.

He gets home. Looking out at the Got Milkyway, Bic in hand, he writes.

He writes about a library. One filled with more than just pop-up ads and people in blue suits. It's, in Guy-BestBuy's unfathomable imagination, an old library. One that was made before the advent of the Corporate Solar System. He'd only heard small bits and pieces from the 9999 x 10 ^ 42 hour newscast.

In this old library, there's himself. He's alone, and everything is blessedly quiet. He has his laptop in front of him, and there isn't a single advertisement in his text editor. The library is his favorite place. His name is Tim.

Tim has just made his own website. He decides that he wants to write the first short story for that website. With a stroke of insight he decides that he will make the first short story about someone writing their website's first short story...