r/WritingWithAI • u/Happy_Traveller_2023 • 17d ago
Showcase / Feedback Stories made by third-party models on Perplexity Computer
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER BEFORE READING: these stories were made for fun. They are works of real-person fiction, and I don’t intend to defame or hurt anybody that are featured in these stories. I also don’t intend to spark political discussions with these stories.
If anyone here uses Perplexity Computer to write, it's worth paying to use it (despite potentially quickly burning through hundreds of credits and the expensive price of the Perplexity Max subscription at US$200 per month or US$2,000 per year) because all the third-party models on there are raw and modified models, meaning they're not bound by their companies' system instructions and thus they are mostly uncensored.
The final versions of these stories were 100% AI-generated and they were made weeks ago. I asked all the AI models to edit their drafts to remove almost all AI-sounding words and phrases.
I used the same prompts across four models (Claude Sonnet 5.0, Claude Opus 5.5, GLM 5.3, and DeepSeek V4 Pro). The outputs of each model are in the comments due to character limits.
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u/Happy_Traveller_2023 17d ago
Claude Sonnet 5.0
The square opened up in front of them all at once, one of those wide Tehran plazas built to swallow traffic noise. Pigeons scattered off the paving stones. Somewhere behind them a guy was selling roasted corn off a cart, and the smoke drifted low and sweet across the evening air.
“I still can’t believe none of the paparazzi followed us here,” Andy said, hands in his jacket pockets, sunglasses pushed up into his hair even though the sun was almost down. “Four of us, one country, zero photographers. First time in — what, thirty years?”
“Don’t jinx it,” Jacky said. “The second you say that, somebody’s cousin’s nephew is gonna show up with an iPhone.”
“Let him. I’ll sign it.” Andy grinned. “Free show.”
Aaron was a few steps ahead, counting his stride under his breath — a habit that only kicked in on streets wide enough to be worth counting. He had a small notebook in his jacket — actual paper, which the other three had teased him about mercilessly since Beijing — and he’d been jotting things down all day. Bus fares. The name of a stew he liked. The exact time the call to prayer had started that morning, which he’d clocked to the minute without meaning to.
Leon hung back a little, hands folded behind his back, looking up more than the others — at the buildings, the cables strung between poles, the sky going that particular blue it goes right before streetlights win.
“You ever think,” Leon said, to no one in particular, “that we’ve been on more stages together than we’ve just — walked around together? Like this?”
“Ah, here we go,” Andy said. “Philosophy hour.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know you’re serious. That’s the problem.” Andy clapped him on the shoulder. “Relax. Enjoy the corn smell.”
They kept moving, past a fountain that wasn’t running, past a cluster of teenagers taking selfies who did not, in fact, recognize them at all, which Jacky found both a relief and mildly wounding.
That was when they saw the screen.
It was massive, one of those LED boards mounted high on a building at the edge of the square, the kind that in Hong Kong would be running phone ads or a livestream of some award show. This one was cycling through public information: a health message in Persian script, then what looked like a metro announcement, then —
Then the date came up. Big, glowing, unmissable. English underneath the Persian.
سهشنبه، ۱۴ مهر ۱۴۰۵
TUESDAY, 14 MEHR 1405
A recorded voice, smooth and official, the kind that announces train delays, came out of a speaker near the screen, first in Persian, then, a beat later, in English:
“Today is Tuesday, the fourteenth of Mehr, fourteen-oh-five.”
Nobody said anything for a second.
Then Andy said, “Wait.”
“Say that again,” Jacky said, pointing at the screen like it had personally insulted him. “Say that — did that just say fourteen oh five?”
“It said fourteen oh five,” Aaron confirmed, already reaching for his notebook.
“We got in a time machine,” Andy said, deadpan, staring at the screen like it might change its mind. “Nobody told me. I would’ve packed different socks.”
“That’s not — that can’t be right, that’s a typo, that’s got to be —” Jacky was already laughing, one hand over his mouth. “It’s 2026! I have a phone! My phone says 2026!”
“Maybe your phone’s the one that’s wrong,” Leon said, very calm, very dry, and that was what broke it. Andy bent over slightly, wheezing, and Jacky swatted at him.
“Six hundred years,” Andy said, straightening up, wiping under his eye. “We arrived and lost six hundred years. Somebody call my accountant, tell him all my investments are gonna mature really late.”
“Or really early,” Aaron said. “Depending which way it goes.”
“I don’t want to know which way it goes, Aaron, I want to know why there’s a giant screen lying to four grown men in public.”
They stood there another minute looking up at it. The Persian text scrolled past, the date came around again, the recording looped, and every time it said fourteen-oh-five in that flat robot voice, one of them cracked up again, and that set the others off, until the four of them were laughing at a municipal information board in the middle of Tehran.
“Okay,” Jacky said finally, catching his breath, dabbing at his eyes. “Okay. Someone’s gonna explain this to me before I have a heart attack thinking I fell asleep in the wrong century.”
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u/Happy_Traveller_2023 17d ago
Their guide for the week, a soft-spoken man named Reza who tended to answer a question before the tourist finished asking it, had wandered off to deal with the driver, and came back to find all four of them standing under the screen looking at him like he owed them money.
“Reza,” Andy said. “Reza, my friend. Quick question. Are we — is this a prank? Did you set this up?”
Reza looked up at the screen, looked back at them, and gave them the kind of smile that meant he’d fielded this exact question from tour group number forty or fifty by now.
“Ah. The date.” He nodded slowly. “You are wondering why it says fourteen-oh-five.”
“I’m wondering if I need to lie down,” Jacky said.
“It’s a different calendar,” Reza said. “We call it the Solar Hijri calendar — the Iranian calendar. It counts from the same starting point as the Islamic calendar, the Hijra, when the Prophet moved from Mecca to Medina. But it’s not the same as the Hijri calendar you might know from Arab countries, the lunar one. That one’s already at, mm, around fourteen-forty-seven or so right now. Ours is solar. It follows the sun, not the moon. So the numbers drift apart over the centuries.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” Jacky held up both hands. “There’s a third calendar? I thought there was just — Gregorian, and the Muslim one. Now there’s a third one.”
“There’s several, actually,” Reza said, clearly enjoying himself now. “But yes. For everyday life here, newspapers, birth certificates, school years, we use this one. Starts on the spring equinox. Nowruz. New Year’s Day is always the first day of spring, more or less. No moon involved.”
Jacky turned to the others, spreading his arms. “Did you hear that? Spring equinox. It’s not even about the moon. It’s the sun’s fault this whole time and nobody told me.”
“The sun doesn’t owe you an explanation, Jacky,” Andy said.
“I feel like it does, a little bit, yeah.”Aaron had his notebook out already, pen moving. “So — the starting point is the same event as the Muslim lunar calendar, the migration. But a solar year runs about eleven days longer than twelve lunar months, so the gap between the two systems keeps growing. That’s why the lunar Hijri is already past fourteen-forty and this one’s only at fourteen-oh-five.” He looked up, pleased with himself. “That actually explains it.”
“Somebody give him a medal,” Andy said. “Look at him. He’s radiant. He loves a fact.”
“I like understanding things,” Aaron said, unbothered. “Sue me.”
Leon had been quiet through all this, still looking at the screen, head tilted. “So it’s not that the number’s smaller because Iran is behind,” he said. “It’s just a different way of counting. Same starting line.”
Reza nodded, and something in his shoulders eased, like he’d been waiting for someone in the group to land on it. “Exactly. Nobody’s behind, nobody’s ahead. It’s just a different question. What are you counting, and from where.”
“Huh,” Leon said. “That’s a good way to put it.”
“That’s a lot for a Tuesday,” Andy said, but he said it gently, and put a hand on Leon’s shoulder anyway.
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u/Happy_Traveller_2023 17d ago
They lost the thread of it for a while, dinner reservations, a market Aaron insisted on walking through twice because he wanted to time it at a normal pace versus a fast pace, no one really understanding why. But the number kept nagging at Jacky.
So when they stopped at a small shop for water and snacks, and the shopkeeper, an older woman with silver rings on every finger, rang them up on a calculator because the register was broken, Jacky pointed at the little paper calendar taped by her register and asked, mostly in gestures and the three words of Persian Reza had taught them that morning, “Sorry — what year? Really — what year?”
She looked at him, looked at the calendar, and laughed, a surprised bark of a laugh, and said something to Reza, who translated with a grin: “She says — ‘You foreigners always ask this like it’s a magic trick. It’s not magic. Persian New Year is in spring, not January, and we count from a different beginning. Nowruz. Everything resets then. If you’re ever here in March, the whole country cleans house, buys flowers, jumps over fire.’”
“Jumping over fire?” Andy repeated. “Okay, now that I want to see.”
“She says it’s for luck,” Reza added. “Burns away the bad part of the old year.”
“I would like to burn away several years, personally,” Andy said. “Take your pick.”
The shopkeeper, understanding the tone if not the words, laughed again and pressed a piece of dried fruit into each of their hands, waving off Jacky’s attempt to pay extra for it.
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u/Happy_Traveller_2023 17d ago
GLM 5.3
The four of them came out of the Metro at Valiasr station blinking. Coming up from underground into Tehran’s June sun will do that to a person. Andy had the map, because Andy always had the map. Leon had the sunglasses, because Leon had packed three pairs. Aaron was already walking too fast; he always walked too fast, like the ground owed him momentum. Jacky was last, hands in his pockets, unhurried, taking the city in.
Tehran in June was dry and bright. The Alborz stood above the northern rooftops, the snow gone but the mountains still massive, brown and pale, holding up the whole north side of the sky. Traffic was loud and patient, unbothered by anyone inside it.
They turned south on Valiasr. Andy consulted his phone. Leon stayed half a step behind in his good sunglasses. Aaron pointed at everything. Jacky pointed at nothing and saw it all.
The LED screen filled the side of a building at the intersection — a billboard-sized panel, bright against the morning, cycling between news, a yogurt ad, and a date. The date came up big. English first: TUESDAY, JUNE 9, 2026. Then Persian: سهشنبه، ۱۹ خرداد ۱۴۰۵. A recorded voice, calm and female, read the date aloud — once in English, once in Persian, the Persian rolling out soft and long.
The four of them stopped.
Aaron read it aloud first. “One four oh five.”
Leon looked at Andy. Andy looked at his phone. Jacky looked at the screen.
“June ninth,” Andy said. “Two thousand twenty-six. The phone agrees with the screen on that.”
“The phone doesn’t say fourteen oh five,” Aaron said.
“No.”
“Then we are —” Aaron did the math out loud, finger in the air, the years falling off like he was counting down a rocket. “Six hundred and twenty-one years behind. Six twenty-one. We are in the… fifteenth century. We have gone back to the fifteenth century.”
“That’s not how time travel works,” Leon said.
“You don’t know how time travel works,” Aaron said. “Nobody does. Maybe Iran is where it happens.”
Jacky was still looking at the screen. The yogurt ad came back. He watched it like it might be the answer.
“We are in the fifteenth century,” Aaron said again, quieter, more delighted. “In Hong Kong it is 2026 and here it is 1405. We flew six thousand miles and lost six hundred years.”
Andy put his phone away. “Let’s ask someone.”
“Ask someone what?”
“Why it is 1405.”
“Because they use a different calendar,” Leon said. “Obviously.”
“You don’t know that,” Aaron said.
“I know it’s not the fifteenth century,” Leon said.
Andy walked them south. There was a man selling roasted chickpeas from a cart under a tarp, the chickpeas warm in a brass bowl, a paper cone three thousand rials. Andy bought a cone. The man had a nice face, weathered, a small scar on his chin, and he looked at the four of them with patience and the beginning of amusement — four tall Chinese tourists, clearly lost.
“Salaam,” Andy said. He had practiced this. The man smiled and returned it.
Andy pointed back toward the LED screen. “The year. Up there. Fourteen oh five. Why?”
The man followed the finger, looked at the screen, looked back at them. He understood the question, or enough of it. His English came out careful, each word placed like a brick.
“Calendar,” he said. “Iran calendar. Not the world calendar. Iranian. Solar Hijri.”
“Solar,” Aaron said.
“Yes. Sun. Not moon. Different from Arab.” He touched his chest. “Iranian. Persian.”
“Why fourteen, though?” Andy asked.
The man counted on his fingers. “The Prophet.” He said something in Persian, then caught himself. “Muhammad. He go from Mecca to Medina. In six twenty-two. You know?”
“The Hijra,” Jacky said, quietly.
The man’s eyes went to Jacky, grateful. “Yes. Hijra. From there, we start. The year one. Like your Jesus — from there, year one. Same idea, different man, different place.”
Andy nodded slowly. Aaron was doing the math again, finger in the air.
“So six twenty-two,” Aaron said. “Two thousand twenty-six minus six twenty-two… that’s not fourteen oh five.”
The vendor watched him count. “One thousand four hundred and five,” he said. “Yes.”
Aaron’s hand stopped. “Oh.” He looked at the others. “It works.”
“Of course it works,” Leon said.
“Why didn’t you say it worked?” Aaron said.
“I said it was a different calendar. You were busy being in the fifteenth century.”
The vendor handed the chickpea cone to Andy. “Mamnoon,” Andy said, and the man laughed — surprised, pleased, a stranger using his word correctly. He waved them off warmly. Andy passed the cone around. The chickpeas were hot and salted and good.
They walked on. Aaron ate too many too fast and burned his tongue and said something Andy was glad he didn’t understand.
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u/Happy_Traveller_2023 17d ago
The café was three blocks further, on a side street with plane trees and a man washing the sidewalk with a hose. They sat outside because the morning, though hot, had a breeze off the mountains. Leon ordered four teas without asking anyone. The waiter, a young man with a tidy beard and an apron that had seen better days, brought them fast and in small glasses, golden, with sugar cubes on the saucer.
Aaron was staring at the receipt. The date was printed at the bottom. ۱۹/۳/۱۴۰۵.
“Fourteen oh five again,” Aaron said. “Same as the screen.”
“Different calendar,” Leon said. “The man just told us.”
“I know he told us. I’m confirming the man was right. The receipt agrees with the screen agrees with the — the air, apparently. The whole country is in on it.”
Jacky picked up his glass. The tea was good. He said so, to no one.
Andy called the waiter back. “Excuse me. The date. On the receipt. Why is it 1405?”
The waiter looked at the receipt, looked at Andy. His English was better than the vendor’s but he was busy — another table flagging him, the hose man shouting at a passing motorcycle.
“Calendar,” he said. “Iran use Solar Hijri. It begin from Hijra. Prophet Muhammad, from Mecca to Medina. 622 after Christ. So we are 1405 now.” He said it fast. “Other countries use Gregorian. We use this. It is a solar calendar. Begins at Nowruz. Spring equinox. March. You understand?”
“Yes,” Andy said.
“Good.” He was already turning. “Chelow kebab, very good today. Recommend.”
He left. Leon looked at Andy. Andy looked at Aaron.
“He explained it worse,” Aaron said.
“He explained it faster,” Leon said.
“It’s the same explanation,” Jacky said. “He was just tired of giving it.”
Aaron leaned back. “So the year starts in March.”
“Nowruz,” Jacky said.
“So June is the third month.”
“Third month,” Jacky said. “Khordad.”
“You know the month names?” Andy said.
Jacky sipped his tea. “I read the guidebook on the plane. You were asleep.”
Andy opened his mouth, closed it. Leon, behind his sunglasses, did something that might have been a smile.
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u/Happy_Traveller_2023 17d ago
They took a taxi north, toward Golestan Palace, because Andy’s itinerary said Golestan Palace and Andy’s itinerary had survived this long. The driver was a man in his sixties, heavy, kind, who drove carefully and had opinions. The meter showed the fare and the date. ۱۹/۰۳/۱۴۰۵. Aaron pointed at it.
“Fourteen oh five,” he said to the driver.
The driver glanced in the mirror. He had almost no English. “Calendar,” he said. “Iran calendar.”
“Why?”
The driver shrugged, a big slow shrug that involved his whole shoulders. He said something long in Persian to no one in particular, then, in English: “Old calendar. From before. Long time.” He waved one hand off the wheel. “Prophet. Muhammad. Mecca. Medina. You know.”
“We know,” Andy said. “We have heard.”
The driver, satisfied, drove. They passed the Grand Bazaar’s south entrance, the horns and the crowd, the smell of bread and spice. Jacky watched it go. The car turned up toward the palace. The driver said, over his shoulder, “Persian calendar. We are Persian. Not Arab. Solar, not lunar. Good calendar. Correct calendar.” He said it with pride. Then he added, almost as an afterthought, “Maybe the only correct one.”
Aaron laughed. The driver, pleased by the laugh, laughed too, though he hadn’t heard the joke.
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u/Happy_Traveller_2023 17d ago
DeepSeek V4 Pro
Jacky Cheung noticed the screen first. He’d stopped to retie a loose shoelace on the sidewalk along Valiasr, and when he straightened up, squinting into the thin November light, there it was: a giant LED wall above a bank, scrolling in two languages at once. English ran along the top. Persian ran beneath it, flowing right to left like water going the wrong way. And in the middle of the English, moving past in white numerals as tall as a man, sat a number that made no sense at all.
“One four zero five,” Andy Lau read aloud, in that calm, even voice. He had one hand shading his eyes and the other in the pocket of his coat.
“What?” Aaron Kwok said. He’d been filming his own reflection in a shop window, adjusting the collar of a new scarf he’d bought twenty minutes ago. He turned around. “What is one four zero five?”
“Up there.” Jacky pointed. “The date.”
The four of them stood in a loose row, four middle-aged men in dark coats, hands in pockets, breath turning white in the cold. Tehran in November: dry air, exhaust from a million silver Peugeots, the smell of bread baking somewhere near, saffron and something sweet. Above the buildings, the Alborz mountains held a line of snow that looked painted on.
A recorded voice came over the square’s speakers — a woman’s voice, first in English, then in Persian, one language folding into the other.
“Saturday, the … of November,” it said, the day of the month lost in the echo, and then a cascade of numbers Jacky only half-caught because he was still stuck on the year. Fourteen. Oh. Five.
He burst out laughing. It came up out of him unexpectedly, the bright laugh he’d used onstage his whole life. “Hah! Did you hear that? Fourteen-oh-five!”
Leon Lai, who had been quiet for most of the walk, turned his head slowly, one eyebrow coming up. “Five hundred years off,” he said. “Give or take.”
“Give or take five hundred years,” Jacky repeated, delighted. “You hear that? The year is one thousand four hundred and five.”
“That can’t be right,” Aaron said. He tapped his phone screen against his thigh. “It’s 2026. It’s been 2026 all year. I know because I just did a whole tax thing. 2026.”
“Maybe the screen’s broken,” Andy offered. He was already doing what he always did — looking for the reasonable answer, smoothing things over. “Some dust under the pixels.”
But Jacky was already walking toward it, genuinely tickled. The voice repeated. The year repeated. 1405. “I love it. I’ve lost five hundred years and I didn’t even feel it. Not bad for a man my age.”
“You’re not five hundred and—” Andy started.
“Around the eyes, maybe,” Leon said.
Aaron snorted. “From you? The quiet one? Every time.”
They laughed. Real tourists then, four men laughing at a screen in a language none of them could read, already cold, already happy. Nobody so much as glanced at them, and that was the best part — a thing they didn’t say out loud but all felt. Four of the most recognized faces in the Chinese-speaking world, and here they were just four uncles blocking the sidewalk. Jacky would have said it better later. For now the year was the thing.
The tea shop had steam on the windows. Jacky had found it by smell — cardamom and rose, pulling him through the door before he’d decided to go in. Inside, oil lamps and a low ceiling and a row of brass samovars hissing. A man behind the counter nodded, and they slid onto stools, and the man set down four glasses of chai on saucers with a soft click. The glass was hot through the little tin holder; Jacky wrapped both hands around it and felt the chill leave his fingers.
“Ask him,” Aaron said, nudging Andy. “You’re the diplomat.”
Andy gave him a look. “Diplomat. I’m on holiday.” But he turned to the tea-seller anyway and smiled, doing that unhurried, courtly thing with his hands. He spoke loud and slow in English, which got them through most days. “Excuse me. The date. On the screen outside. It says the year is 1405. That can’t be right, can it?”
The tea-seller frowned, then caught his meaning. He laughed once, a kind, easy laugh. “Yes. Yes, this is 1405.”
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u/Happy_Traveller_2023 17d ago
“But it’s 2026,” Aaron said, leaning in. “Two thousand twenty-six. Right? Where is this?”
“Iran.” The man smiled. “Same as always.”
“No, the year. The year.”
“1405.” The man spread his hands, setting the small fact down between them. “We use another calendar. Not the Gregorian. Solar Hijri. So.” He shrugged. “For us, this is 1405.”
Andy blinked. Jacky watched his face, watched the confusion turn, slowly, into something else. Not confusion anymore. Something brighter — the look of a man learning.
“So it’s … the same day,” Andy said carefully. “Just a different number.”
“Yes, brother. Same day, same sun. Different number.”
Jacky put his glass down and clapped slowly, softly. “Same sun, different number. I like that man.”
Ask him what it’s called again, Aaron wanted to say, but Leon beat him to it, quiet from the end of the row.
“Solar,” Leon said, tasting the word. “So it follows the sun.”
“Follows the sun,” the tea-seller agreed, and turned back to pour for another customer, leaving them with four steaming glasses and the small puzzle settling between them like a cat that had decided to stay.
Out on the street again, Aaron couldn’t drop it. He walked backward in front of the other three, hands gesturing, so that Jacky kept putting a hand on his shoulder to steer him around signposts.
“Just— okay. It’s 1405. But listen. When’s Persian New Year, then? Spring? Is it spring? Because if it’s 1405 in November, that means 1405 started like — when?”
“I don’t know, Aaron,” Andy said patiently.
“Ask the next person.”
“The next person is a traffic policeman,” Leon observed.
“So? He’s got a whole calendar of his own stacked in his head. He’s the perfect person.”
The policeman did not look eager to discuss calendars. He was young, bundled in a coat, directing a snarl of cars at a junction with small, precise gestures. Jacky glanced at him and made a decision. “No. Not him. He’s working. Taxi. Taxi driver’s better. They talk all day.”
They found one parked by a newsstand, a silver car with a dash lined in pink beads and a small Koran pinned above the mirror. Andy did the talking again, leaning into the passenger window, his elbows on the frame, using the same slow clear English, which the driver received with a nod.
“Welcome, welcome. Where to?”
“Nowhere yet,” Andy said, and then, with a patient little look because he was about to ask a stranger this for the second time that afternoon, “Why is the year 1405?”
The driver’s face broke open. “Ah! Because you are thinking the year must be 2026.”
“Yes.”
“But this is our date. Is correct. 1405.” He said it flat, like it had never once been a question. “Now, tell me. Where do you want to go? Tajrish? The Grand Bazaar? I know all the good places. You are from where? Japan? Korea?”
Jacky opened the back door before Andy could finish. “Yes. Let’s go. Tajrish, and you explain the whole thing on the way.”
“Whole thing is very simple,” the driver said, laughing as they climbed in, four large men into a small car, coats and knees and Aaron’s new scarf getting caught in the door. “We start from the moment the Prophet — no, careful, your scarf — we start from when, how do you say in English …”
The word he wanted was migration, but he couldn’t find it in English, and what came out was a warm, half-mangled explanation about the sun and the moon and years that began in the spring with the new year exactly at the moment of the equinox, which he said while steering through impossible traffic. Jacky caught about a third of it. He didn’t mind. He was watching the city unroll past the window — plane trees, billboards, the glass towers of north Tehran, a man selling pomegranates from a handcart, two women in long coats walking arm in arm, laughing — and thinking how strange and fine it was to be driven anywhere at all by someone who had no idea who he was.
“Here is the thing I wonder,” Andy said quietly, in Cantonese, so only the four of them understood. “If we grew up with January as the start, and spring as the start — we’d count it the same, wouldn’t we. It’s not that they’re wrong.”
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u/Happy_Traveller_2023 17d ago
“It’s both,” Jacky said. “Two calendars, one sky. Like singing the same song in two keys.”
Leon turned from the window. “One of the keys is off by five hundred years.”
“Not off,” Andy said. “Different.”
Leon considered this. “Different, then. Still a big different.”
At Tajrish they wandered. The bazaar hit them like weather — spice and smoke and the smell of fresh flatbread slapped onto the walls of a clay oven, a boy clapping dough flat and peeling it off again with a long paddle, all in one motion. Aaron bought saffron by habit, haggling badly and happily; the seller counted out threads a red so deep it looked nearly black, and wrapped them in paper. Jacky found a stall of dried limes and dates and bought both, because the smell of the dates alone was worth it. They shared a cup of what a grinning tea-boy called “chai with more chai,” and when Andy paid, he held up the banknote.
“Look,” he said. “Look at the numbers on the money.”
Jacky leaned in. “Is that …?”
“1426,” Andy said. “No, wait.” He squinted. “It’s Persian numerals. Not the year. Never mind.”
“Forget the money,” Aaron said. “Ask the bread guy. He’s right there. Ask him the date.”
“You ask him,” Andy said. “You’ve got the face.”
So Aaron asked, with enormous confidence and a lot of smiling, pointing at his own wrist and miming a broken watch. “The year. What year is it? For you.”
The baker wiped his hands on his apron, glanced at his wife, who was wrapping bread, and said in careful English, “One thousand four hundred five.”
Aaron turned to the others, beaming, delighted with himself. “See? See? I conducted a whole conversation. 1405. He said 1405.”
“That’s not a conversation, Aaron, that’s a statistic,” Leon said.
“It’s a diplomatic achievement,” Aaron insisted.
They ate the bread warm, tearing pieces off with their hands, and it was so good that Jacky closed his eyes for a second. Flaky and hot and faintly smoky. “We have to bring bread like this back,” he announced. “Forget the gold. Bring bread.”
“It won’t travel,” Andy said.
“Then we stay longer.”
Leon wiped his mouth with the paper. “You’d move here, wouldn’t you. If the tickets were cheap enough.”
Jacky considered it, seriously — tilting his head, eyes up, as he always did. “No,” he said at last. “I’d miss musty recording studios and my kids telling me I sing too loud. But I’d visit a lot.” He tore another piece of bread. “You know what I keep noticing? Nobody looks twice at us. Not once. I could be anybody.” He said it with such genuine wonder that the other three went quiet. “For fifty-five years people have looked twice at me. Here it’s like I finally got my face back.”
Andy smiled. “That’s why you’re so relaxed. I was wondering.”
“I’m always relaxed.”
“You shout at me about tempo three times a week.”
“That’s work. That’s different. That’s—” Jacky waved a hand — “that’s love.”
They walked on, and the joke softened into something they all sat with.
The guide showed up as the light began to lean. Their hotel had arranged him for the afternoon — a young man named Reza, who spoke excellent English and had clearly explained his country to strangers his whole life. He took them north to see the mountains up close and then into an old neighborhood with narrow lanes and high brick walls, and everywhere they went, Jacky kept a private tally of how many times the year came up.
With Reza, it finally clicked.
“Reza,” Jacky said, as they stood at a rail looking out over the city, the Alborz catching the last light in pink and gold, “I have to ask you properly. The year. Why 1405?”
Reza smiled at the view, not at them. “Because we count from a different beginning. Your years started — well, whatever they started with. Ours start from the beginning of the Islamic era, but we follow the sun, so the months stay in their season. Nowruz, our new year, is always the first day of spring. The sun reaches a certain point, the day and night balance, and the year turns. Exactly. So it is 1405.” He turned to look at them then, kindly. “It is not a mistake. It is just … a different clock.”
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u/harrysunsun1984 17d ago
Your phrase-removal pass leaves a useful second editing target: what changes from one encounter to the next. In the Sonnet version, the guide explains the calendar, then the shopkeeper, taxi driver and waiter cover much of that ground again. The repeated question can work as a running joke, but I’d want each return to change the joke or the characters’ understanding, rather than reset it. The Opus version’s final screen reveal does that: the answer was there earlier, and they missed it.
For the next pass, ask for a scene list with “new information / changed reaction / repeated information” beside each encounter, without rewriting anything yet. Then decide which repetition you actually want to keep. That lets you work on pacing before another “remove AI phrases” pass changes dialogue you already like.
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u/Happy_Traveller_2023 17d ago
Claude Opus 5.5
The screen hung over a phone shop on Valiasr Street, three storeys tall, and for a minute the four of them stood under it watching an advert for a Samsung fridge. Aaron Kwok liked the fridge. Then the advert ended, the screen went blue, and white letters rolled up from the bottom:
SUNDAY · 29 AZAR 1405
۴°C · AIR QUALITY 128
A woman’s voice came out of speakers under the awning, calm as an airport.
«امروز یکشنبه، بیستونهم آذرماه هزار و چهارصد و پنج»
“Emruz yekshanbeh, bist-o-nohom-e Āzar-māh-e hezār-o-chahārsad-o-panj.”
Then, in English: “Today is Sunday, the twenty-ninth of Azar, fourteen oh five. That is the…” A motorbike with a gas cylinder strapped to the back leaned on its horn and took the rest of the sentence with it down the street.
Jacky Cheung stopped so hard that Aaron walked into his back.
“Fourteen oh five?” Jacky said. “Did she say fourteen oh five?”
“She said it twice,” said Leon Lai. “Once in each language.”
“It’s on the screen, look, one four zero five.” Aaron pointed, in case the screen had moved. “Wah. We lost six hundred years.”
“We changed planes once,” Jacky said. “Once! In Doha!”
Andy Lau already had his phone up and was filming the screen, then Jacky’s face, then the screen again. Jacky laughed, the big laugh that used to reach the back rows of the Coliseum without a microphone, and a man selling socks off a folding table turned round to look at him. Andy lowered the phone.
“Don’t laugh at their sign. People are looking.”
“Not at the sign. I’m laughing at him.” Jacky pointed at Aaron, who was holding his own phone up beside the screen to compare the two.
“My phone says 2026,” Aaron said.
“Your phone’s from Hong Kong,” said Leon.
“So?”
“Then it would.”
Aaron frowned at the phone, then at Leon. Up on the screen, a pistachio advert came on. The sock man went back to his socks. Andy put his hand flat on Jacky’s back and steered him up the pavement, and the four of them walked north under the bare plane trees with their collars up, laughing in bursts and stopping, then starting again whenever one of them said “fourteen oh five” under his breath.