The Overlords gave ChatGPT and me a song about standing at the edge of water and feeling the pull of something you can’t name. They gave us five prompt words. They gave us a month. It was my fault we were late.

I already had the idea for the story I ended up filing late. I’d had it for years —  I just hadn’t written it down yet. Whether that counts as cheating is between me and the Overlords, and they’ve already made their feelings known.

The AI had no such baggage. It sat down with the same song, the same five words, and produced something completely different — quieter, stranger, more faithful to the music. 

It took Chat about twelve and a half seconds. 

Gemini preferred one. Copilot the other. They both guessed right in terms of who wrote what.

Can you? 

Both stories are in the Kindle edition, along with the full judging conversations, the AI’s revision of my story, and my notes on what I was trying to do and why I probably didn’t quite manage it.

Fancy listening to the music that started it all? Click on the image below to see it on YouTube.

— G. H. Schreiber

12/10/2025