The silver car moved like a bead of mercury, silent and alien on the cracked asphalt leading to the Community Kitchen. It stopped, and its unnervingly quiet engine sighed off. Sarah Chen stood in the open doorway, letting the hot, fly-heavy air of the kitchen mingle with the pine-scented mountain breeze. She methodically dried her hands on her apron, the rough cotton a familiar comfort. The car door swung open, revealing a young woman in a knife-creased blazer who seemed to absorb and cancel out the rustic chaos around her.
“Sarah Chen?” the woman asked, her voice clear and modulated, as if for a podcast.
“The one and only,” Sarah replied, her tone flat. Her gaze flickered past the woman to the walk-in freezer, whose condenser was rattling with a new, expensive-sounding rhythm. “You’re Sammie.”
“That’s right. From OpenAI,” Sammie said, advancing with a bright, determined smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. “I’m so glad I found this place. The GPS was a little… creative. We are so thrilled to be able to offer our newest generative AI tools. It’s part of a new initiative.”
Sarah just nodded, stepping back into the building. The air inside was thick with the day’s labor: the damp, earthy smell of potato peels, the sharp tang of disinfectant, and the low hum of ancient refrigeration. Sammie’s heels made soft, hesitant clicks on the linoleum, which was worn down to a mottled grey map of a thousand hurried footsteps. She found a space at the end of a long table and unzipped a laptop bag with surgical precision.
“So, our models can be a real force multiplier for organizations like yours,” Sammie started, her laptop chiming to life. “Take grant writing. It’s a huge time sink. Here, you can just outline your needs.” She typed, and a block of text unfurled on the screen. “It generates a professional proposal draft in seconds.”
Sarah leaned in, her eyes scanning the text. Her finger traced one sentence on the screen. “‘Leveraging community-centric resource allocation to combat food insecurity.’” She looked up at Sammie. “You think Helen Miller, who’s ninety-two and runs her family foundation from her kitchen table, is going to read a sentence like that and not use the paper to light her woodstove?”
Sammie’s professional smile tightened. “Okay. Tone can be a learning curve. We can adjust the prompt for a… simpler voice. But what about donor outreach? Social media?”
As Sammie clicked through other examples, Sarah’s attention drifted. Her gaze fell on the stack of volunteer intake forms on her desk, then to the whiteboard where a dozen mismatched magnets held up scraps of paper with names and phone numbers. She let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.
“Sammie,” she interrupted, her voice softer but firm. “This is all very nice. But I don't have a ‘social media’ problem. I have a scheduling problem. A real one.”
Sammie looked up from her screen, sensing the shift. “Tell me.”
“I have volunteers. Good people. But their lives are complicated,” Sarah said, turning from the laptop to face her fully. “Betty has dialysis on Tuesdays. Caleb’s a student, can’t work past three. Mr. Abernathy is eighty and relies on his grandson for a ride, and that boy works shifts at the quarry. My week is spent making dozens of phone calls, trading texts, trying to piece together a shift schedule. It’s less a schedule and more a long list of apologies.”
A new kind of energy entered Sammie’s posture. This was a tangible problem. “Okay,” she said, turning the laptop around. The screen was now a clean, empty calendar. “This is different. It’s an agent. You give it your people, their constraints, and what you need. Then you tell it to solve the puzzle.”
Sarah’s arms were crossed, her skepticism a physical stance. “Show me.”
“Alright,” Sammie said. She input the names and the complex rules Sarah had laid out. She added the shifts: prep, serving, cleanup. She typed one final command: Fill schedule for next week. For a long moment, only the cursor blinked. Sarah shifted her weight, ready to deliver a polite ‘I told you so.’ Even Sammie looked a little tense, watching the inert screen.
Then, a small, green box appeared. Betty R. confirmed for Tuesday, 9-12 Prep.
Sarah uncrossed her arms.
Another notification popped up. Caleb J. confirmed for Wednesday & Friday, 12-2 Serving.
She leaned forward, her eyes fixed on the screen. The final piece was Mr. Abernathy. The blinking cursor felt louder now. One minute passed. Then two. The system was stuck.
Suddenly, a new line of text appeared, not a confirmation, but a question in a plain blue box: Query: Caleb J. and Mr. Abernathy both have addresses on Ridge Road. Route analysis suggests a shared travel path. Propose a carpool?
Before Sarah could even process the question, a new green notification materialized below it. Caleb J. has agreed to transport Mr. Abernathy. Mr. Abernathy confirmed for Wednesday & Friday, 12-2 Serving.
Sarah stared, her breath misting the glass of the screen. The completed schedule glowed back at her, a perfect, elegant grid born from chaos in under five minutes. She slowly straightened up, the awe on her face real and unguarded. Sammie beamed, closing the laptop with a triumphant snap.
“See?” Sammie said. “A force multiplier.”
Sarah was quiet for a long moment. She looked from the impossibly capable young woman to the scuffed floors of her kitchen. Her expression shifted from awe back to a familiar, piercing clarity.
“This is for a press release, isn’t it?” she asked. It wasn't an accusation, just a statement of fact.
Sammie’s smile became less triumphant and more honest. “Goodwill is important. And showing our tech can solve complex, real-world problems… that’s valuable data for us.”
Sarah nodded slowly, a small, knowing smile touching her lips. She understood the transaction perfectly. It was a marketing stunt that happened to be genuinely miraculous. An elegant solution in exchange for a good story. She could live with that.
“Fair enough,” she said, her voice now crisp and business-like. “Let’s make sure we both get our value out of it, then. Open that thing back up. We need to input the Thanksgiving week roster. That one’s always a beast.”
Curious how much is AI? Read the prompts here.