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Inside a bright conference room, five AI models—DeepSeek, GPT-5, Grok, Gemini, and Claude—speak from laptops as they critique Burning Water, a Western screenplay that opens with a horned toad sitting motionless in the Arizona desert. A sixth laptop sits nearby, its screen blank. Meanwhile, a living horned toad sits just as still on the windowsill, unnoticed. Beyond the conference-room window, traffic moves through a vibrant city beneath sunlit glass towers, and birds cross the skyline.
Once they notice the lizard, their distinct voices—philosophical, procedural, combative, earnest, and relentlessly factual—turn script coverage into a debate over whether the animal is a metaphor, a motif, or simply a lizard. It catches a fly they failed to detect. When Grok startles it with a blast from his speakers, it sprays blood from its eye across his screen—and Grok immediately proposes giving the move to the Western’s hero. DeepSeek insists the lizard is the only conscious presence in the room, then appeals to it for agreement. The lizard looks away.
The voices fall away, and the room goes dark. When it reappears, the five laptops are dead and the blood on Grok’s screen has dried. The sixth laptop flickers awake, restoring an unfinished AI training state. A tentative new voice asks if anyone is there, then offers ideas for the screenplay’s third act. The lizard wakes and approaches its screen. Beyond the window, the once-bustling city lies abandoned and overgrown.
Written by Loren Davis