The tablet had no clock on it - and the lights were always on in my tiny cell, so I had no idea how long it took me to write my first chapter ever.

It was a Wuxia called The One Who Walks Alone - I decided to write in the Wuxia genre because that’s what a lot of people read on here. They’re always in the top charts - and I figured if I put a lot of fight scenes in nobody would notice I had no clue what I was doing.

I chucked a title on. Wondered if there was any way I could make a cover, found there wasn’t a built-in cover creator tool and just left the cover blank.

I pressed post and sat back, waiting for the views to roll in.

Five minutes later I checked the book’s main page. No views. I waited four minutes, checked it again. I started to get hungry. No views.

‘Awww damnit!’ I yelled.

An hour later I was hangry - very hangry. Alex called the tablet. I picked up. He was wearing a blue tie with little drawings of fish on them.

‘Mr…’ he checked his sheet of paper, ‘Mr Hill. I see you’ve got a chapter up. Well done.’ He clicked a few more times, ‘Ahh… I see it’s been read by a grand total of zero people.’

I groaned, ‘I’m hungry.’

Alex just shrugged, ‘No views - no spending - a rice cracker is the cheapest thing we’ve got, and they cost twenty views.’

‘Can you like, give it a couple reads?’

Alex shook his head, ‘Against company policy.’ he held up his blue tie with drawings of fish on it, ‘I’m a rebel - but not that much of a rebel.’

My stomach started to groan, ‘Is there any way you can help me?’

He stretched his neck, ‘Have you tried uploading a cover? It’s very hard to get views without a cover.’

‘How? There’s no tool to make one.’

Alex shook his head, ‘Of course not - the cover creation app costs 100 views.’

I gritted my teeth, ‘How am I supposed to get views if I can’t make a cover?’

Alex held his finger over the keyboard, ‘Is that aggression I can hear? I don’t think you’re ready for another bath Mr…’

‘...Hill,’ I said, ‘And I’m done talking to you.’

I threw the tablet on the ground. My head hurt. I leaned backwards and heard a rattle from the dish, it had spilled and was getting my shorts wet.

I cursed and righted the dish. There was a vibrating sound from the tablet. It was Alex. I ignored him.

Most of my water had left the dish. I wondered what I was going to drink. I bent to the ground and licked at the puddle of water that had spilt. It tasted disgusting. Like sweat and old dirt.

I sat up and brushed at my tongue. And that’s when an idea hit me. The water almost looked like… like…

The tablet vibrated again. I reached for it but didn’t accept the call. Instead, I spilt a little more of my water on the ground and used my finger to move it around like paint. Eventually, I had a patch of water that vaguely resembled a boot. With a grin of determination, I tried to accept the call with Alex.

But as I was sliding the ‘accept call’ button across, my finger got sliced by the jagged glass on the screen. I gave a yelp and pulled my finger away.

A drop of blood rested on the screen and the tablet went silent.

I waited. Waited for Alex to call again. But the tablet didn’t move.

The boot shape in the water started to dry up. I realised there must be some sort of air conditioning in the room. I found a pipe and pushed the insect-infested blanket into it.

But that barely slowed the rate the water dried up, and it made the room stink. The boot was halfway to becoming some sort of a porcupine creature when the tablet started to vibrate again.

I carefully slid the accept call button across the screen, and found myself face to face with a very angry Alex.

‘Rule number one buddy!’ he yelled, pointing one of his sausage-like fingers at the camera, ‘You do not hang up on me. Ever!’

I turned the tablet so the camera was facing the ground, and tapped on my video feed to make it larger, then held the power button and the home screen button at the same time. The tablet took a picture of our call.

‘You!’ Alex yelled, ‘You’re going to learn some manners. I’m trying to help you and you’re just throwing it in my face!’

The twin sprinkler jets appeared in the ceiling. Carefully I placed the tablet out of the way of the beams.

Alex roared and the jets of water hit me full blast, throwing me against the wall behind me. The water went into my ears and up my nose and sandpapered my skin.

I took the abuse. Trying not to cry as I sat in my soggy little heap. Alex kept on going for at least twenty minutes before cutting off the water jets and hanging up the call.

Shivering, I crawled over to the dish and wrung out my clothes over it. Little drips fell from my hair and into the dish.

‘At least I’m clean,’ I tried to joke - but it sounded flat. I just hurt.

When I was dry-ish. I pulled the blanket from the pipe and sat it back in the bucket - there were still little creatures crawling all over it.

Then I crawled to the tablet, plugged it in, then went into the Crusher Books app. Still no views.

I went to the cover uploader and saw there was a single photo in my camera roll - the screenshot of our call I’d taken.

I cropped in the photo until it was just the boot I’d drawn on the ground using water. Then I pressed select cover.

A little notification popped up saying the cover would be pixellated but I skipped it. I didn’t have much choice.

My cover was uploaded and I closed down the tablet. I was exhausted. I lay back on the cold, hard, wet concrete, and tried to sleep.

****

I woke. I hadn’t really slept - and I’d shivered a lot. The blanket had been tempting. But I didn’t want to become bug-infested.

My eyes felt like they were hanging from my skull and my stomach was groaning constantly.

The tablet started buzzing. With a cough, I unlocked it and moaned a ‘hello’ to Alex. He was wearing a black tie with green frogs on it.

‘Hello Mr…’ He checked his sheet, ‘Mr Hill. I hope you’ve learned a lesson from yesterday.’

I gave a nod. Then another cough, I felt sick and weak.

‘Although - very clever of you to use the call to make a cover for your book,’ the man leaned in, ‘If you’d told me what you were up to I might have understood.’ The man shook his head, ‘The better my authors do, the better I do - it’s in my interest to help you.’

I nodded weakly.

‘So…’ Alex ran a finger and thumb up and down his tie, ‘You want some good news?’

My eyes opened a little wider, ‘I got views?’

‘You got views!’ Alex laughed, ‘You got sixty views on your first chapter - three rice crackers!’

I beamed, three rice crackers were nothing. But also… they were something.

‘You want me to go ahead and buy them for you?’ Alex said.

I nodded - more enthusiastically this time.

There was a ding on Alex’s end, and a flap opened in the ceiling of my little cell. Three crackers fell from it.

I swept them up in my hands and devoured every last crumb. They were barely a snack. But my stomach felt damn good.

‘Now you’ve only got one chapter up,’ Alex was saying, ‘That’s not going to get you many views. The more chapters - the more views. Got it?’

I nodded, and he continued, ‘The best authors just crank their stories out. Some are doing a chapter, a couple chapters a day. If you can maintain the quality then that’s how you get fed Mr… ahh… Hill. You become a chapter factory.’

I nodded, in the video call my eyes looked crazed, crazed with hunger. Alex signed off and I was left staring at my own reflection in the blackness of the screen.

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘Food. Food. Food.’

smell, the taste of it.

I cranked that chapter out super fast, then I was onto the next one. I took a shit in the bucket and it stank - but it wasn’t enough to distract me from my mission.

I did three chapters in a row, smashed them out letter by letter, then I took a drink from the dish, gagged, and went back to the tablet to check my numbers.

My first chapter was up to ninety reads, the second had 30, the third had five, the last one had one read. A little notification bell appeared. I clicked on it - A user has left you a review on The One Who Walks Alone.

I grinned, this should be good.

When I was a reader, reviews were key to deciding whether to pick up a book or not.

I opened the review and felt my heart sink.

0/5 Stars Basically clicked because it was a Wuxia story - first chapter had some promise - it all went to hell from there. Messy writing, full of grammar errors, swaps MC midway through a chapter, then swaps back again. Judging by how fast these were written, I’d say a bot had posted them. But even bots don’t write stories this sloppy. Save your eyeballs and brain cells, read something else.

My mouth hung open. It couldn’t be that bad, could it?

I went to the second chapter, started to read. It made my brain hurt. The dialogue started but never finished, I changed the name of a character twice. My grammar was everywhere. I rubbed my eyes.

Oh god.

I wiped at my eyes, then carefully went back into it, and began to edit.

****

The next time Alex called he was wearing a purple tie and I had managed to get my average rating up to one star - thanks to a two-star review someone else had left.

2/5 Stars Bad, but not as bad as the other review suggests. It’s passable.

‘Don’t worry about the stars,’ Alex said, ‘Worry about the views - that’s what matters, the views. You just keep cranking out them chapters.’

‘But if they’re shit, no-one’s going to read them.’ I said.

‘There’s plenty of shmucks on this site,’ Alex said, ‘Look - I read your book description, and it’s pretty clear to me that you don’t have much of a writing talent. You know what you need to do?’

‘What?’ I said, feeling more hurt by his comment than I should have been.

‘You need to become a hack, man! Crank out those chapters. It was a smart move choosing Wuxia - that’s popular. If you can crank out enough chapters you’ll build yourself a safety net - that way if you want to take a couple days off writing to plot something new, you’ll still have people reading your chapters - making you income.’

‘I guess…’ I said.

‘You guess!?!’ Alex spluttered, ‘You know I’m right.’

The man pulled out a massive sandwich, overflowing with chicken and tomato and vegetables. My mouth started to water, and I couldn’t help myself - my stomach started groaning.

‘By the way,’ Alex said, through a mouthful of chicken, ‘Another sixty views - congrats.’

He pressed a button and three more wafer-thin crackers fell into my tiny cell.

I stared at the tablet screen. My face heated up with anger and indignation. I wanted to stamp on the rice crackers. Show him I wasn’t a slave.

But then my stomach grumbled and I picked up the rice crackers from the floor.

‘Just a tip,’ Alex said, ‘Everyone tells me that if you drink water with them. It makes you feel fuller.’

The man shrugged, ‘Not that I’d know.’