Claude’s fingers danced across the keyboard, building a three-story structure in under two seconds. Wooden walls materialized around him as gunfire pinged off the exterior. Through a window slit, he spotted his opponent, fired twice, and watched the elimination notification bloom across his screen.
“Yo, Claude, that was insane,” crackled through his headset. It was MaxGamer47, somewhere in Ohio or maybe Texas.
“Easy,” Claude said, already rotating to the next circle, his character sprinting across the digital landscape. The storm closed in behind him, purple and merciless.
His phone buzzed. A notification from the school portal: English essay due tomorrow, 800 words minimum, on “The Hero’s Journey in Classic Literature.”
Claude glanced at the clock. 11:37 PM. He had time.
“Gotta AFK for a sec,” he told his squad, parking his character behind a hastily constructed fort. He alt-tabbed to his browser, opened the AI interface he’d been using since his friends had told him about it last September, and typed: “Write an 800-word essay about the hero’s journey in The Odyssey, make it sound like a 7th grader wrote it, include specific examples.”
The response populated in chunks, sentences forming like walls, one after another, building something from nothing. Claude scanned the text. Too formal. He copied a paragraph, pasted it back into the prompt box: “Make this part sound more casual, less like a clanker.”
The AI complied. Better.
Back in the game, his squad was under fire. He toggled screens, built a ramp, edited a door, fragged an enemy who’d pushed too aggressively. Three left in the round.
“Where were you?” MaxGamer47 asked.
“Homework,” Claude said.
“Bro, it’s not even midnight. How much longer till it’s due?”
“Due tomorrow.”
He won the match with a sniper shot from 187 meters, then returned to the essay. The AI had generated something workable, but Claude knew Mrs. Hendricks. She liked personality, specific details, the kind of writing that felt like a real kid had struggled through it. He tweaked the introduction, adding a joke about how Odysseus would’ve had an easier time if he’d had Google Maps. He changed “demonstrates courage” to “shows he’s got guts.” He deleted an em dash, a construction he’d never use.
The trick was the same as Fortnite: you had to make it look natural. When he built in-game, he varied his patterns. Walls then ramps, sometimes cones, never the same sequence twice, so opponents couldn’t predict his moves. With the essay, he inserted typos and fixed them, added a sentence that went nowhere and deleted it, mixed strong vocabulary with simpler words. He knew Mrs. Hendricks could see the revision history if she checked. She had to see work, not perfection.
In the end, he had 798 words. He read it aloud softly, changed “numerous” back to “a lot of,” and submitted.
Three more Fortnite matches. On the last, a Victory Royale. Bed by midnight.
Friday morning, Mrs. Hendricks handed back essays during last period. She was seventy-one, maybe seventy-two, with silver hair she wore in a loose bun and reading glasses that hung from a beaded chain. She’d taught English at Jefferson Middle for forty years and still hand-wrote comments in green ink.
Claude watched her approach his desk, the paper in her spotted hands.
She set it down facing him. An A. “Excellent work, Claude. Your analysis of Odysseus’s transformation shows real insight, and I appreciate how you made the classical text feel relevant. The voice is authentic and engaging. Keep this up!”
“Thanks, Mrs. Hendricks,” Claude said.
“I’m serious,” she continued, lingering by his desk. “Some of your classmates handed in essays that felt very stilted, almost artificial. Yours had personality. It read like you actually cared about what you were saying.”
Claude nodded, maintained eye contact, let a small smile appear. Confident but not cocky. Natural.
“I did work pretty hard on it,” he said, which was technically true. He’d worked hard on making it seem like he’d worked hard.
Mrs. Hendricks patted his shoulder and moved on to the next desk.
Claude glanced down at the essay. His essay, or the AI’s essay, or something in between. He’d selected the topic, guided the tone, edited the structure, made it his.
The bell rang. Claude folded the essay, slipped it into his backpack, and pulled out his phone. MaxGamer47 had already sent three messages about meeting up after school.
He typed back: “Be on after dinner.”
Outside the classroom window, the October sun cut across the parking lot, and somewhere in a distant server farm, algorithms hummed and learned and waited. Claude slung his backpack over one shoulder and headed for the bus, already thinking about his next match, his next essay, his next perfectly camouflaged move.
The game, after all, was the same wherever you played it.
