“Jack Simons, you are in dire risk of failing English this semester if you don’t raise your grade, which will require you to raise your level of effort by a significant degree! Coach may be just a tad bit disappointed.”
Mrs. Reiger was laying it on thick, but thin never worked with Jack. The only thing he seemed to think about was football, with his obsession on the Buffalo Bills only being exceeded from time to time by the high school games he played in. She knew she wasn’t too far off in her assessment that Coach Reiger might be upset, because she and Gerald Reiger had been married for fifteen years. And she also knew that Jack would not be playing football in the sectional playoffs if he was failing English at mid-term time.
Jack sighed, and he tried to allow a soupçon of contriteness to enter his voice (much more than he actually felt) as he replied, “Mrs. Reiger, I’m really busting my butt to get my grade up. I know doing well on the big essay will do the trick and I’m spending a lot of time on it!” He didn’t know how much his glib lying was accomplishing, but, hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained!
“You better be, Jack. OK, head off to your next class.” Mrs. Reiger closed up her laptop and headed to the teachers’ lounge. There she reopened it and admired the message from the Hobart Award Committee.
Elizabeth Reiger, we are happy to inform you that your new novel has been awarded the Debut Prize, and in addition to the publicity you shall receive a cash award of $10,000. We look forward to presenting your award at our December meeting.
“I can’t believe that worked,” she thought to herself. “I don’t think it’s as good as the stuff I wrote myself, but my God, the money…”
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“Yes, I told you, d-bag! I’ll get you a whole case of Big Ditch IPA if you dare to pull the fire alarm right before last period.” Jack was pushing Slim Carnahan to prank the school as they walked away from the lunch table. The reality was that he knew he wouldn’t be passing English any time soon, and he needed a weapon to maintain his sports eligibility. “It’s my last offer!”
“OK,” Slim said. “A whole case! Shake on it.” Slim’s meaty paw (after all, the lineman weighed 270 pounds) surrounded Jack’s and they ambled off to History.
Right before last period, Jack stood in a stall in the men’s room closest to the teachers’ lounge with a thin sheen of sweat on his brow. “God, this better work or my whole life is hosed,” he muttered to himself. As the obnoxious alarm started beeping, he crouched on top of the toilet to prevent his feet from being seen as the wardens swept the school during evacuation. A few minutes later his hand was on the door to the teachers’ lounge, and he shakily turned it to enter. Glancing around, he saw Mrs. Reiger’s computer on a corner desk. He walked over and flipped up the screen. Breathing a sigh of relief as the screen activated to show her workspace, he looked over the task bar.
“Hmmm, maybe I’ll look at whatever email is open,” he thought to himself. “Wow, a book award. Holy shit, and she gets $10,000 dollars? No wonder she’s been in a good mood lately. I wonder what’s in this other tab? Anthropic Claude, what in hell would she being doing with that? She always talks like AI is the work of the devil.”
He quickly glanced over the open window and recognized it looked like a novel. Not knowing what else to do, he took a picture of the screen and closed the laptop back up. He returned to the men’s room and waited until the all-clear sounded and people started filling the halls again, then ducked out and headed off to class.
That evening, Jack strolled through Barnes and Noble looking for a display he knew must be around somewhere, and there it was. “Elizabeth Reiger’s Debut Novel Takes the World by Storm,” the display trumpeted behind a stack of books. He picked up a copy and returned home. There he paged through it, looking for the scene that matched the pic on his phone of her Claude screen, and on page 72 there it was…a word for word match. “Ha, gottcha now!” he inwardly crowed.
The next day: “Jack, do we really have to meet again? You know what you need to do!” Elizabeth Reiger was impatiently waiting for Jack to get the message and head off so she could continue grading.
“This won’t take long Mrs. Reiger. I just wanted to talk about your book, you know, that you published last summer.” The cat-got-the-canary look on Jack’s face grew as he laid out his delicious discovery to his teacher and made his demand, ending with, “And I’m sure if you let me use Claude to “improve” my essay, it’s fair payback for me keeping my mouth shut about how you composed your “brilliant” novel,” Jack gloated.
Five minutes later Jack was leaving with a spring in his step and Elizabeth leaned back in her chair, shaking slightly as she felt a virtual noose tightening around her neck. The scowl on her face was so deep it could scare a werewolf back into human form. “God, this is going to blow up big-time if it comes out from under the rock, no, the boulder hanging over both our heads,” she thought to herself.
To be continued…
Jack has learned to love AI. He’s also learned how to cheat, hide it and use blackmail. No wonder our “Super A-I” agents are coming to get us. We created them in our own image.. They are becoming human- and we are soon paying the price.