Editor’s note: This is a serial novel, with each chapter written by a different published author. There will be eight chapters in all. Catch up on the previous five (they’re short and fun to read) by clicking these links: Chapter One by Rachel Siegel, Chapter Two by Jess Bennett, Chapter Three by Sam Bittman, Chapter Four by Daniel Tawczynski and Chapter Five by Matt Tanenbaum. And come back for the remaining two. Lots of surprises in store.
Carson seemed off his game. Distracted? Worried? He wasn’t paying much attention to his TV shows, and he was doing the foot-tapping thing.
Marion had always found him hard to read, and she knew that was part of the deal, but she had always secretly hoped that at some point she would be familiar enough with his behavior to be able to intuit what he was thinking and feeling. She’d spent many nights in bed, turning it over in her mind, trying to get some sense of what his consciousness must be like. Was there some state of mind that she might recognize if she could tease it out? Or was he in some state of “dreaming innocence?”
She remembered that phrase from her childhood, when she had heard Rabbi Halpern use it to describe the state that Adam and Eve were supposedly in before the Fall. She had always loved the poetry of that phrase. And Carson was definitely “before the Fall” in some sense.
Come to think of it, that was sort of the state Kit and Charlie and Henry were in before they lost their innocence. And maybe in a way she too had been in a state of dreaming innocence, knowing in some vague way that the world wasn’t as it appeared on the surface, but not having enough detailed information—or even wanting it—to really believe it in her gut. Plus, having been burnt by her disclosure to Tim, she had never told any of the men she dated, adding to the ghostly unreality of what she had done.
She imagined that perhaps at some level Carson realized that the world had changed, that there was something new in the air, and that it related somehow to him. But she had to admit that she was probably making it all up.
The night before, she had dreamed that he had miraculously become a “normie,” as his classmates called them, and that he had been admitted to Yale on a full scholarship. In the dream, she remembered thinking, “He doesn’t need a scholarship! He has $500,000.”
Speaking of which, wasn’t it odd that “the kids” hadn’t asked why he would be receiving a trust fund at the age of 21? Jesus, the world really had shifted in so many ways, with her head pondering a whole set of questions she couldn’t have imagined a month ago.
To distract herself from the whirl of thoughts and feelings, she opened her phone and checked her email. At the top of her inbox was one called “The Secret Life of Charlemagne and his Progeny” from Henry Reagan. Her first thought was, “How the hell did he get my email address?” but she quickly realized that, given his age and intelligence, he had probably just ferreted it out on the web somehow. Then she noticed that Henry had also sent the email to Kit and Charlie and both his parents.
There was no message, just an attachment called, “Charlemagne”. She opened it to find a paper headed,
“The Secret Life of Charlemagne and his Progeny
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of AP European History.
Teacher: Mr. Rose”
Marion read quickly down through it until she came to the following: “Charlemagne’s first child was Pippin the Hunchback, son of Charlemagne and his concubine, Himiltrude. It is through Pippin and Himiltrude that my mother’s family traces its lineage to Charlemagne. Unfortunately, Himiltrude was widely known as ‘a woman of easy virtue,’ so my descent from Charlemagne is highly unlikely.”
* * * * * *
Henry got a text that he should see Mr. Rose, at his “earliest convenience.” This was not unexpected. Henry had engaged another party to write his paper on Charlemagne: an AI bot called ChatGPT that was in Phase B development, and he was waiting for the summons from Mr. Rose.
Henry always got a chuckle out of the answer Larry Platt, not the brightest kid in the class, had given in Biology: “The only thing I know about the heart is that it is shaped like a Valentine.” But he had to admit that the only thing he knew about Charlemagne was his having formed the Holy Roman Empire—and that he did it in an easy-to-remember year, 800. So, he gave the job of writing the paper to the chatbot. Then he edited a few facts.
Mr. Rose led off with “Henry, I know that ChatGPT wrote this paper, but, more importantly, I see that you changed a few facts for reasons best known to yourself. Yes, historians think that Charlemagne’s ‘wife’ Himiltrude was probably a concubine, but there is no evidence whatever that she was a ‘woman of easy virtue.’ Where in the world did you come up with that idea? And why did you have a chatbot write this paper? This is not like you, and, in fact, it’s beneath you.”
“Well, Mr. Rose, to tell you the truth, it was sort of an experiment that I was doing for my AP Computer Science course. I had read somewhere that a good teacher can always tell if ChatGPT wrote the paper, so I was testing two hypotheses:1) that a good teacher can determine that (and you’re definitely my best teacher) and 2) that a good teacher will always fact-check a paper to see if any of the ‘facts’ are wrong. You passed on both counts. I know your ethics dictate that you have to flunk me on this paper, and that’s okay. It was worth it to prove my hypotheses.”
“Henry, if I flunked you, your fans on the Faculty Council would make sure I never teach again. How about if you just write another paper: say, about his other seventeen wives and concubines and his eighteen children?”
“Deal!”
* * * * *
“So why did you really write it, you little con man?” Kit.
“Why do you think? Like everybody else, I’ve been trying to make sense out of this change in my mental landscape. Then it occurred to me: over the centuries there have probably been lots of secret departures from the way things seem, genetically speaking. I thought, do I really give a shit? This one’s a little jarring because it’s so close. But truth to tell, based on what we’ve seen so far, I’d rather Marion were my mom.”
“Are you high?”
“Define ‘high’.”
* * * * * *
Marion stood and looked at Carson as he slept. Are we really supposed to think that Adam and Eve were better off when they were dreamy as cows? Rather than falling, they were just trying to “get real.” She wondered what Rabbi Halpern would say to that.
