Write an Argument Between Two People in which No One Says What the Argument is About

The Human

Her: Which way?

Him: Left.

Her: Right.

Him: No, left.

Her: I know that.

Him: Right.

(Pause)

Her: You could have warned me.

Him: I just told you—

Her: No.

Him: Right.

Her: Don’t take that—

Him: No, right.

Her: Fuck.

Him: You can turn around in that driveway.

Her: How about I just go home?

Him: Because—

Her: Whatever’s about to come out of your mouth had better be good.

Him: Because I’m asking you to.

Her: Good, remember?

Him: I’m not a good reason?

Her: You used to be.

Him: What do you want from me?

Her: I want you to—

Him: (Pause) Want me to what?

Her: I want you to undo it.

Him: I can’t.

Her: I know.

Him: I’m sorry.

Her: Not good enough.

Him: It never is.

Her: Don’t start.

Him: It’s true.

Her: My fault again.

Him: Light’s green.

Her: All you see are green lights.

Him: Not always.

The AI

“You always do this.”

“Do what, exactly?”

“You know what.”

“I really don’t. Enlighten me.”

Maren set down the mug harder than she meant to. Coffee slopped over the rim, pooling on the counter. “The thing where you agree to something and then act like you never agreed to it.”

“When have I ever done that?”

“Tuesday.”

“Tuesday I was at work until nine.”

“That’s not — I’m not talking about Tuesday specifically. I’m talking about the pattern.”

Dev leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. “There’s no pattern. You’re inventing a pattern because you’re mad about something else.”

“Don’t do that. Don’t tell me what I’m actually mad about.”

“I’m not telling you, I’m asking. What are you actually mad about?”

“I just told you.”

“You told me I have a pattern. That’s not an answer, that’s a diagnosis.”

Maren laughed, but it wasn’t a real laugh. “Oh, so now I’m the one with the problem.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You implied it.”

“I implied that maybe — and I’m just floating this — maybe you’re upset about something specific and it’s easier to make it about some big abstract thing I supposedly always do.”

“See, this is exactly it. This right here. You take one thing and you make it into me having some kind of character flaw.”

“I never said character flaw.”

“You didn’t have to.”

Dev exhaled slowly, dragging a hand down his face. “Can we just — can you tell me what happened. Concretely. One sentence.”

“I shouldn’t have to spell it out.”

“Apparently you do, because I’m standing here with genuinely no idea.”

“That’s the problem! That’s the whole problem, Dev. You not knowing. After everything.”

“After everything what?”

“Forget it.”

“No, don’t do the forget-it thing, that’s worse than the pattern thing.”

“There’s no winning with you tonight.”

“There’s no winning because I don’t know what game we’re playing!”

The mug sat between them, coffee still spreading in a thin lake toward the edge of the counter. Neither of them wiped it up.

“I just wanted you to notice,” Maren said finally, quieter. “That’s all. I wanted you to notice without me having to ask.”

“Notice what? I can’t read your mind.”

“I know. I know you can’t. That’s not — ” She stopped, pressed her palm flat against the counter, into the spilled coffee, not seeming to care. “It’s fine. It doesn’t matter now anyway.”

“It clearly matters.”

“Well, it’s too late for it to matter, so.”

Dev opened his mouth, closed it again. Somewhere down the hall, a door that hadn’t been touched in weeks creaked faintly, as if settling under its own weight.

“I’m going to bed,” Maren said.

“Maren.”

But she was already gone, and the coffee kept spreading, slow and dark, toward the edge of the counter, where it would eventually drip, unnoticed, onto the floor.

The Analysis

Some rule breaking happened here.

I did make a slight edit to my piece, which was to reformat it to improve readability on the web (I right-aligned one character’s lines, where previously they were in a single column because I wasn’t fucking with spacing while on a timer).

The AI, meanwhile, seems to have disregarded the rule about not stating what the characters are fighting about. While we may not know the inciting incident, we are told that Maren is upset about not feeling seen in the relationship and we’re told Dev is upset Maren doesn’t communicate.

I suspected before starting this one that it would prove particularly challenging for an AI model to write. These models are made to chat, to explain, to maximize engagement (not unlike my grandmother, who famously shouted at my grandfather: “Get back down here and fight with me, Stephen.”). They (and my grandmother) are not made for the silent treatment, the “it’s fine,” the “I don’t want to talk about it.” But humans are masters at it. It’s easy to forget, as we get into our analytical thinking caps about art and how we interact with the machines we built, that we are, at the end of the day, animals. Forget how much can be said with the body, in the interstices. What, for example, is the difference between a pause in the conversation and a pause that comes after a speaker is assigned? Have you never been in fight with someone, in a confined space, and known which silences are anyone’s for the breaking and which belong to someone? The ones that come between the finally blurted thoughts and the ones that come only after an in-breath, a claiming. This is the intimacy we have with each other, as social creatures, that AI simply cannot engage in, and therefore cannot capture.

Get back down here and fight with me. Say what you want to say. Or don’t.

Perhaps our humanity is in the silence.