![]() Later that day I hear Isha crying in her room. The new essays were like a child babbling down a crackly phone line. Then he asked it to churn out new essays, unoriginal but unique. He fed it essays and the bot learned their rules. “ ‘Is Hamlet mad’ isn’t the same as ‘Can I have extra mozzarella’.” Now, there are databases full of essays, articles… If I create something smart, it can pull them in, and answer an essay question.” “Yeah, dinner! The smart–thing checks restaurant locations, menus, reviews. “Dinner for my girlfriend, who helped me with my thesis today?” You ask a question, the smart–thing pulls in data and filters it and personalises the output. Smart is when you have huge datasets, and a bit of processing power. “It’s a problem crying out for a smart solution. He started to talk a lot about undetectable plagiarism.įirst, he was going to write software that would generate essays. Seriously.” He found that the text of the anti–plagiarism document had been copied directly from another institution’s anti–plagiarism agreement and rolled on his bedroom floor with hysteria.īut he signed it. ![]() He argued it out with his tutor, and his tutor said “Yes, but Linton. He got philosophical and then incredulous and then paranoid and then did them all again, drunk. It took him a week to reason himself into it. Relationships need momentum to get going, too.Īround the same time, Linton’s University made him sign a four–page document stating that he wouldn’t plagiarise. He told me when we met: we dance with giants in the air, man. We weren’t just standing on the shoulders of giants the giants threw us in the air, and we hauled them up with us. ![]() Anything ‘new’ grew out of revision, transformation and theft. Linton began to see inter–textuality everywhere. So you generalise a little, add a slug of confirmation bias, so you can believe you’ve got something huge. He was writing a doctorate on a handful of black American writers and their inter–textual influences. My ex–boyfriend, Linton, became entranced by plagiarism. I crack open my paper notebook, and he smiles because I’m old fashioned. Zach and I sit next to one another, and our knees touch as Zach gets out his department–issue device, logs on and thumb–prints in to type his notes. I wish I could be more original, but it feels risky. A few of them are wearing gold eye–shadow. I can see twenty women who look a bit like me. “I totally would,” I say, “But I’ve always got a lecture the next day, first thing.” Whenever I pass the Union it smells of bleach, beer and vomit. We all shove through the doors together.īarb issues a significant invitation: “You should come to Club Sandwich at the Union with us. She swipes her card to and fro, fast as a hummingbird. “Decadence is the least of our fucking problems.” We’ve reached the card–slots and cameras of the security doors. “What did you get for the Decadence essay, Lin?” asks Isha. I don’t talk about it, but the girls have guessed that I still live with my parents, and they’re academically pushy.Ĭomplaints about how much everyone is paying in fees, how much everyone is working, how much everyone is expected to write, are passed up and down the queue like a bag of crisps. I say something bland about fear and failure.īarb bellows at me: “You don’t have to worry about failing, you swot!” Then backpedals: “You’re totally not a swot, sorry.” My family’s Chinese, and perhaps Barb doesn’t want to stereotype me. Isha reminds everyone that plagiarism is foul and most unnatural. “He’s not doing any work, just twiddling his thumbs, and he’s going to stroll out with a First.” “My mate said his friend’s, like, cracked the code,” Zach tells us. A vision of a grubby grail hovers before us: undetectable plagiarism. So we keep talking about plagiarism, probation, punishment. Maybe it’s too personal, or too easy to say something clueless. We don’t discuss the subject we’re studying. I don’t want a reputation for being a know–it–all. I don’t tell them that truth drugs don’t work. This is a peril of studying literature: scientific illiteracy. “What do they do if you fail the brain–rec?” Isha asks. Now, in their second year, they’re renting a house together. Not well–suited, they nevertheless became fiercely loyal and emotionally pot–bound. ![]() Isha is sweet, Barb is melodramatic and Zach is nerdy. The gang were thrown together in a hall of residence in their first year of University. So the department put me on brain–rec, too.” She frowns. “I didn’t cheat! I was on face–rec,” Isha explains, “but then I was writing my Decadence essay and the face–rec didn’t know who I was, because I was wearing a hat. “Lin,” Isha asks me, “you totally don’t have to tell me, but are you on brain–rec?” I wait with the gang - Isha, Barb and Zach - in the underground atrium. The lecture theatre I’m trying to enter holds three hundred, but the security doors only admit two people at a time. Saxey | Narrated by Windy Bowlsby, Tim Wick, and Lolly Foy
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