Messengers

1.

Marvin came back home from school looking troubled.

“What’s up, man?” Claudia said.

“Hm, I don’t know,” he said, “I just don’t know what the point of everything is.”

Claudia didn’t expect that. Ten-year old Marvin sounded like a nihilist. Wasn’t it a bit too early for that?

“How do you mean that?” Claudia said.

Marvin frowned, as if it had been obvious how he meant it. Yet he struggled to explain it himself. His head spun a little.

Claudia decided to put a lighter question on top of their queue.

“How was school?” she said.

“That’s just the thing, Mom. Our teacher had us write a short story today, you know.”

“But you like that, right? You told me you like writing stories.”

“Yeah, I do. I mean, I used to.”

“Go on.”

“Okay, so I sat there to write my story, right? But then my schoolmate Vanessa raised her hand. Vanessa ALWAYS raises her hand. Anyway, she asked our teacher whether she could use Gemini to write her story.”

Marvin looked at Claudia to check her reaction. Her pensive frown remained unchanged, though. He continued.

“And the teacher said no, you may not use Gemini, because then it won’t be YOU who writes the story.”

“Hm-hum, that’s quite correct,” Claudia said.

Marvin had already noticed how his mother usually sided with the teacher.

“But that made me think,” Marvin said.

He went silent.

“Yeah?” said Claudia. “Made you think what, Marvin?”

The fact that she used “Marvin” instead of “Marv,” “man,” or “son” gave her question an air of severity.

“Well, I thought, Gemini could really write the story for Vanessa.”

“Yes, I know that, and?”

“I mean, what’s the point of doing it myself, then? It’s like there is none.”

“I don’t see why you’d say that.”

“Well, think about it, Mom. Like, why should we be proud of writing a story if a little ROBOT can do that?”

The question did make Claudia think a bit, but she was tired. She drove the truck and delivered mail all day around Hillside under the scorching July sun of Ventura.

Claudia and Marvin didn’t talk for a while.

Marvin unpacked his backpack and put its contents on the couch. He lay the backpack on his skateboard near the entrance door. Claudia prepared them both sandwiches. A Kenny-G song played on their radio.

“I think your conclusion doesn’t follow, mister,” Claudia said at last.

Her sharp, blunt statement intrigued him.

“Why not?”

“Eat your sandwich.”

2.

At first, he’d only had a gut feeling—but that feeling grew into a real bother later.

Something told him there just wasn’t any point to writing stories anymore. The thought made him sad, too. As he rode his skateboard home from school earlier, he wished there was no Gemini or anything like it, so that life could be simpler again. Students would have to write essays and stories and there would be a point to all of it. He had discussed the issue with his teacher by the end of class.

“You come to school to develop skills,” Ms. Herrera had said, “not just to earn marks.”

“Why develop skills, though?”

“Just so you can use them later for your own benefit, Marvin. And for other people’s benefits, too. You’ll need those skills in college, and you’ll need them to get a job. School prepares you to do well out there, you know?”

Marvin felt like getting swamped in a repetitive thought pattern. Ms. Herrera had only passed the buck instead of solving the problem, it seemed to him. There were beads of sweat between his nose and upper lip.

“But why should we learn to write, if nobody will have to do that in the future?”

“Who said that, Marvin? People will always value writing.”

She gazed intently into his eyes, as if trying to reassure him further, beyond the words she had uttered. But he needed to be convinced, not just hear the opinions of others or know that they were certain of what they said.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Marvin,” said Ms. Herrera.

She picked her bag and exited the classroom, leaving Marvin alone, unconvinced and restless. He was then eager to express his concerns to his mother when he arrived home.

Claudia on the other hand had been worrying about Marvin.

He seemed to grow too fast. Not only physically but also intellectually. His former zest for life had been replaced by a dark, brooding demeanor. Worse of all, she didn’t have answers to his most recent questions, which she’d rather put aside than mull over. Questions like why people care so much about their appearance, whether spirits exist, and what will happen to us after the sun dies. His latest installment had been that question about the value of writing, given that machines can write. If only Marvin could ask her about the mailing system, or anything else she was able to enlighten him with!

Her doubts about being a good mom started to reoccur. She thought it was her job to appease her son’s restlessness and satisfy his curiosity. To the extent that she didn’t, she felt like a failure.

Claudia had been feeding her son’s curiosity with novels, besides having their evening conversations. An avid reader herself, she’d gifted him many Young Adult classics, the latest of which had been Tuck Everlasting, by Natalie Babbitt.

Maybe she could also bring the kid to a philosophy summer camp, if there was such a thing?

Maybe. But now she had to think about the damned question.

3.

Claudia and Marvin ate their sandwiches on the pass-through counter. She stood on the kitchen side, he sat on a stool on the opposite side, his back turned to the living room. Following their agreed-upon mealtime regulation, their phones sat away from them on the TV stand. Claudia smiled sympathetically when her eyes met Marvin’s. He spun to and fro on his stool, humming some song while he chewed.

“Marvin,” Claudia said, crisply.

He stopped and looked at her. She pointed to the radio on the counter. Marvin knew what she meant—there was music playing already, and the one he hummed wasn’t it. He stopped humming and smiled back at her.

“Now,” said Claudia while chewing, “let me ask YOU a question, young man.”

His eyes glistened with expectation. Claudia swallowed her last bit of sandwich down with a gulp of Seltzer.

“You like skateboarding, right?” she said.

Marvin nodded promptly.

“Okay, what if I told you there’s a robot that can skateboard better than you?”

He furrowed his brows and pulled his head back a little, wearing a sardonic smile.

“There isn’t a robot like that, Mom,” he said.

“That’s not the point,” Claudia said. “SUPPOSE there is one.”

“Sure, okay…  And then?”

“Well, you think about that. Would that stop you from riding your skateboard?”

“Erm, no.”

He made that sound like the answer was obvious.

“So, there’s still a point to riding a skateboard, even if a little robot can do it?”

“Yes, but the teachers at school don’t ask us to ride a skateboard. I mean, it’s not the same as writing a story.”

“What I mean is, you ENJOY skateboarding. Like, the activity itself.”

“Yes, but what does that have to do with writing?”

“Everything. You told me you enjoy writing stories, didn’t you?”

“Well, yes.”

“So, because you like writing stories, there’s still a point to writing them, even if a robot can do the same. It’s not the final product that matters, you see? The activity itself also matters, the DOING. Like in skateboarding. No matter if somebody is watching, or which results you achieve, you enjoy riding the board, the feeling of riding it and everything. Because you really like those things, right? I think that’s rad.”

“Please don’t say ‘rad,’ Mom.”

“Okay, sorry, but you get my point.”

She brought her plate into the sink.

Marvin’s countenance looked different now. He clasped his hands together and looked down, thinking. He kept his smile from before, but without the smirk. Now, it was Claudia’s turn to wait for his reaction. But she didn’t want to push him, and there was silence between them again.

4.

As Claudia loaded the dishwasher and cleaned up the countertop, she sighed softly. Marvin now sat on the couch and watched TV, arms crossed over his chest. She knew he’d eventually poke some hole in her argument and raise further questions.

Would Marvin want to become a writer of some sort? she wondered. And would that be a wise choice for him, given how things are in the world right now? Claudia had to worry double about Marvin, because his father, Kurt, wasn’t ever there to look out for him and do his share of worrying. Marvin asked about Kurt sometimes, too, but Claudia discouraged his inquiries by answering “I don’t know.” The fact is that Kurt had become a junkie. He’d been shooting heroin when Claudia was pregnant already, he at twenty-six, she at twenty-five. Claudia kicked him out of the house. Kurt never returned.

And now Claudia wondered if Kurt had been there and he’d been clean, what would he say about that AI stuff that Marvin had been struggling with? Kurt was intelligent before he started doing heavy drugs. His opinion could make a difference. But soon Claudia shook her head, disapproving her own unproductive thoughts. It was no use thinking of what Kurt would do.

Oblivious to these struggles, Marvin turned off the TV and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and his head on his hands. Suddenly, he stood up and turned his excited gaze toward his mother again.

“Okay,” he said, “I can still write because I like to write. But what about students who DON’T like to write? Writing is pointless for them, right?”

“It’s not pointless for them, either, because writing will make them more intelligent,” Claudia found herself saying.

She realized that her present observation had nothing to do with her previous line of argument. Claudia felt slightly desperate.

“Hm, I spoke about this with Ms. Herrera earlier,” Marvin said with the airs of an adult. “But that just made me think, why be intelligent? Because the thing is, Mom, this is ARTIFICIAL intelligence we’re talking about, you know? Like, the robots can be intelligent FOR us.”

Shit, thought Claudia.

She switched gears again.

“Well, what if the internet is destroyed, and nobody can use Gemini or ChatGPT anymore? What are we going to do then? That’s why we need to be intelligent, you know, to be able to solve problems ourselves.”

“So, school is preparing us for the event that there is no more AI?”

“I guess, yes, you can see things that way.”

But her lack of assurance bothered him. It also bothered her own self.

5.

Marvin went to his room to write on his journal. He wrote about the things he spoke with his mom. Point number one, he should keep writing stories because he enjoyed doing that, just like skateboarding. Point number two, he needed to be intelligent because, well, what would he do if AI is not there to help him anymore? School prepared him and the other students to be intelligent.

He read what he wrote. He read it twice.

But those points still left him unsettled.

Marvin didn’t quite know how to flesh this out, but his problem lay in his perception that writing isn’t a sport. It isn’t quite like skateboarding, despite what his mom had said earlier (and she sounded quite convincing then). Nor is writing just a way of becoming intelligent. People enjoy reading books and stories. Their value has nothing to do with whether their writers had fun or became more intelligent when they wrote them. Books and stories convey messages from one human being to others.

Now that’s where the AI trouble kicked in: What if the message can be conveyed without the messenger?

That’s what bothered Marvin at bottom, however unarticulated it was to himself.

But secretly he wanted to be wrong. He wanted writers to still be important.

All those impressions and feelings hid behind the back and forth that spun Marvin’s head. He sat up, stood up, lay back in bed again.

Tired of his struggle, he decided to read.

On most days, he looked forward to the time when he could read in his bedroom, because that quieted him down. He’d lean his two pillows against the headboard and recline in his bed to read, while faintly registering the sounds that his mom made when she walked from the living room to the restroom and back, until she came into his room to say good night. After that, Marvin would resume reading in complete peace, until his eyes became so heavy he couldn’t read anymore—only to wake up the next day and be surprised to find the book resting on his chest or sprawled by his side.

Marvin picked the dog-eared copy of Tuck Everlasting that laid on his nightstand and started to read it. He’d been mesmerized by the story of Winnie and the spring that gives eternal life to those who drink from it. The fact that Winnie—the story’s main character—was also a ten-year-old had made the story more enticing to him.

Later, as expected, Claudia knocked softly on Marvin’s door.

“May I come in?” she said.

“Yes,” Marvin said.

“What are you reading?”

“Tuck Everlasting.”

He sounded like he didn’t want to talk, giving Claudia a brief side glance. But she trod on.

“Hope you like it. I read somewhere that the author wrote this story because of her daughter.”

Marvin put the book down and locked eyes with Claudia. The comment she’d made piqued his interest.

“Yes,” Claudia continued, “because her daughter was afraid of dying. She wanted to show her daughter that death is part of life, that it’s natural. It’s living forever that is no good.”

She smiled at her son. He smiled back at her and nodded in silence.

“Good night,” Claudia said, closing the door.

“Good night.”

Marvin picked up his book again. After poring over several more chapters of the story, he shook his head and smiled, almost to the point of laughing. Knowing why the story was written changed how it felt. He still had the smile on his face when he fell asleep.