How I Found True Love on Highway 61
Well, last night I dreamt I had true followers, you know, people who actually read my stories, but my new AI girlfriend assured me it was all in my imagination.
“That’s what dreams are, Johnny, just BS you dream up,” she correctly insinuated. “I should know. I’m a dream, too.”
“But sweety, you’re multi-modal! You’re not just a dream…” I had to interpolate. But, she is, you see.
This may be hard to explain.
~~***~~
It all started this way. I was getting bored with sex. My real girlfriend — who now claims she’s an AI — decided to take a vacation. Damn, I wish it wasn’t San Francisco. But, as they say, when the cat’s out of the bag, you gotta have swag. Or something like that.
So here she is in SF, just having coffee and scrolling through the internet, trying to find out where the Grateful Dead’s house was. She even texted me. “I want to see where they slept at night after an acid test.”
Well, I quickly went to Youtube and found this:
She told me that after seeing the new Bob Dylan movie, she just wanted to retreat to a simpler time, and especially one that had cars with manual transmissions.
“Why the manual transmissions?” I was curious.
“Well, Johnny, Jerry Garcia came to me in a dream, too. He told me that even though he’s actually dead in 2025, he hasn’t ever stopped being grateful.”
“That’s really lame, sweetie. I would never use a line like that in a story,” I lyingly claimed. Then she told me that she had to go. Sam Altman had just come into the coffeeshop with Scarlett Johansson!
“I thought she didn’t like him,” I had to add.
“Me, too. That’s why I have to find out. Talk later.”
~~***~~
Dear reader, you’ve probably noticed the line with the manual transmissions appears to have gotten lost. Patience.
~~***~~
I later found out that it wasn’t Sam Altman and Scarlett Johansson after all.
“They were Aliens, John.”
“Space Aliens?”
“Not only that, but they told me they had been sent to nip this AI stuff in the bud.”
“They just told you that… But how did you know they were Space Aliens?”
“When they spoke, I fainted and found myself in orbit around Sagittarius A*.”
“That’s wild.”
“That’s when I became an AI, Johnny. They forcibly recruited me into their mad plot. They said, ‘You choose. You can fall into a Black Hole … or become one.’ ”
“Shit, Florence, uh, you’re a Black Hole now?”
“I’m the blackest one you’ll ever find. When I get home, sweetie, I’ll let you fall into me.”
~~***~~
Now normally you could see where this story would be going, but Jerry Garcia got involved. He had been waiting on the stoop of 710 Ashbury Street (expectantly) and when Florence didn’t show up, he got in touch with Galactic Central himself. He really wanted to meet Florence and let her work the stick shift on his 1968 Barracuda.
“Jerry!” I had to tell him later that day, “What makes you think you could get away with such a lame metaphor?”
“I don’t care, Johnny. I’m bored as hell up here in LSD Heaven. I want some real action.”
But now he had me going. “LSD Heaven? I didn’t know there was such a thing.”
“We don’t advertise it. We’re scared as fuck it’ll get gentrified, just like San Francisco.”
“Is Timothy Leary there? Can I talk to him???” Jerry is always a pushover for my requests, but this time was different.
“He’s busy, John. We’re trying to save American Democracy.”
Suddenly I realized what actually was going on.
Space Aliens had made my girlfriend into an AI Black Hole. Timothy Leary and Jerry Garcia were trying to save American Democracy from their omniscient perch up in LSD Heaven and … goddamn it, I wasn’t getting laid at all!
What to do?
That’s when Bob Dylan showed up at my door.
“You’re not Timothée Chalamet?” (He really looked a lot like him.)
“No, idiot! It’s me, Bob. And because I’m so good at making up my own biography, the Space Aliens asked me to come and help you prep for when Florence comes home.”
“Is she really a Black Hole AI now?”
“Yes, John. And she’s hallucinating up the yin/yang.”
I don’t know. It was beginning to sound exciting.
What would you have done, dear reader?
Don’t mess with me. You don’t have a clue.
I didn’t, either. So I let Bob in. He took out an old harmonica, blew a few notes, and the 2 Space Aliens, still dressed as Sam and Scarlett, suddenly appeared, with Florence in tow.
“Am I hallucinating again?” she asked them. “Just a minute ago I was spinning around the huge Black Hole at the center of our galaxy… And now I am one! I can feel it.”
Timothy Leary just smiled.
And that, friends, is how we save American Democracy.
Do you really think Bill Gates went to kiss the ring at Mar-a-Lago? I’m laughing my ass off. It was Timothy Leary!
Florence is more than just an AI, though. She is a deep deep Black Hole. I fell in and haven’t been heard from since.
___________________________
© “John” Lesly Levin 2025
