Could one imagine a project more distant from my usual writing habits than StorytellurX? I am, I told myself, the author of numerous short stories and science fiction novels that explore all sorts of questions, but with a marked preference for abstract concepts like time, truth, work, connections, memory… I even have characters who have no physical form. But bodies invite themselves more readily than I thought into my writings. Bodies of clones, of mothers, painful or menstruating bodies, in Saletés d’hormones et autres complications, for example. Bodies modified by work, in Tomies, or burned for ideas in L’Évangile selon Myriam. Only, erotic texts, I never write them, I would have been ready to swear, if it hadn’t seemed amusing to me to tell a scene as lesbian as it was gourmand in my Novella Foodistan. As often, I was slightly behind myself and Saul Pandelakis, who sometimes sees me better than I do, saw fit to propose that I participate in this somewhat particular project. Sure of not much apart from my desire to work with him and Anthony Masure, I said yes. “Yes” and also “Too bad for him, if he was wrong about my ability to write this kind of thing.” One of my principles being to see through what I’ve committed to, I didn’t consider for a single moment backing out. I had a mission and I would have to find how to carry it out well. How to get out of known patterns, how not to ring false? I have only one solution in these cases: to involve myself. To dig within me, to make connections between inside and outside, between concepts and sensations, between silicon and flesh, between the familiar and the strange. “I thought about it all day, which gave me, at inappropriate moments, an immense and mysterious smile. I don’t know if my colleagues noticed. I don’t really care. Anticipatory excitement is an unexpected and welcome effect of the subscription. These moments when the pussy, greedy, licks its lips and swallows its saliva.” One cannot say that I operated in a comfort zone, but I know how to handle discomfort, I know how to transform it into play. So I wrote my bits of text in the interstices of a full life, mainly on trains, surrounded by strangers. I played, I let myself be caught by narrative logic and this challenge of imagining sex differently, collective, programmable, inclusive. Besides the story fragments linked to the erotic-pornographic fiction generator, StorytellurX, I devoted a month of my microfiction creation routine to exploring carnal and emotional relationships with machines. The Writever of January 2025, in French and in English navigated the concrete and ethical implications of the hypothesis of a generalization of intimate human-machine relationships and created Igor, the companion. “I taught Igor a certain number of gestures for their own maintenance. Once a month, they therefore take a long rod and the oil bottle. They put two drops on each of their joints to lubricate them.” As the narrative game tamed its characters and situations, I got used to, on my side, the idea of having to write voluntarily, exclusively, about sex, drawing from my experience, my fantasies and my fears. The blue gloves of fiction even allowed me to engage in unknown places and to experiment, for real, for fake. “Silicone similiskin is outdated. For incomparable sensations, we use real skin cultivated in the laboratory from donor cells or even yours, if you prefer.” Writing for StorytellurX was an exciting experience, I’m delighted to have taken part in it. Saul was right, as often. More about Ketty Steward