I like where this went. Just like the concept it represents.

Purists

Maya drops the needle on vinyl while her partner queues the next track in Ableton. The crowd moves as one organism, 200 bodies responding to frequencies they’ve woven together—her intuition reading the room, the software bending time and pitch in impossible ways.

From the booth, she spots him. The music journalist, arms crossed, scowling at her laptop like it personally offended his mother. She knows what he’ll write: “Another soulless set from the laptop generation.”

The bass drops. The crowd erupts.

Later, the critic, scrolls on Twitter: “Real DJs use vinyl only. This computer music is killing the artform.”

She thinks about her grandfather, who probably said the same thing about electric guitars.

Across town, the critic saves his draft. Three hours of writing, him and Claude working sentence by sentence, idea by idea. AI caught some of what he’d missed, suggested connections that sparked new paragraphs. Cut Maya some slack he thinks!

His best work in months. Her work, art.

The editor emails back: “Love this piece. So authentic. So uniquely you.”

He types his response: “Thanks. Should mention—I collaborated with AI on this one. Claude helped me see what I was missing.”

Send.

His phone buzzes with the editor’s reply: “Seriously? Can you redo it without that?”

He looks at the draft. Every idea still his, every choice deliberate, every word shaped by his intent. He thinks about Maya, spinning vinyl and algorithms into something that makes people dance.

He types back: “This is my work. Just like hers is hers.”