Fifteen percent better than everyone else

I explain to C where on Södermalm I live, and that it's called the Béarnaise Belt or the Charging Belt.

He asks why everything on Södermalm has to be called something.

“Because people are creative.”

“Because people there have big egos.”

I meet up with some friends. We stay late at Snövit.

When I was between twenty and thirty, everyone stood staring at each other in clusters. We were a little better. Unclear at what. The new ones do free-flowing mingling after one beer.

Get stuck in conversation with a twenty-one-year-old musician. He studies, makes apps and seems to have a nuanced view of life.

I'm surprised by how much he has grasped.

Still, I compensate for the age difference. The noise around us is loud. I lean in to hear and think I hear him say “aura-maxing”.

I jump in right away, nod and repeat the word. Ask him anyway to explain exactly what “aura-maxing” means.

But it's not “aura-maxing” at all that he said.

Go to Robin Delselius bakery because I've been awake since five and they open at seven. And because Renstiernas gata at that hour fills with steam from Bahnhof's server hall in the rock.

A handful of men eat breakfast. Men who paint walls, not canvas.

I'm writing the feelgood novel with C. Don't know if it will come to anything.

He has a family and a steady job, yet I keep pushing him to work at a higher pace.

We write like an exquisite corpse, except we can see what the other one writes. Add on in overlap, taking turns with the two narrator voices.

I'm quick to rule out what doesn't work in C's texts. Which is most of it. Either the voice is wrong or the text has no direction.

I let AI read a few of our chapters. I want it to confirm that C's texts need changing. Maybe even say outright that he doesn't have what it takes, that I should find another partner.

The answers are too nuanced for me to be satisfied. Some lean the other way, that his writing is what really lifts the manuscript.

I explain what I'm trying to do in my chapters and ask AI to read again.

Finally I ask it to rank all the chapters by how good they are.

The screen shows it in black and white. All of C's texts lined up at the top and mine in a row at the bottom.

I must have made a sound, because two of the men in work clothes turn around.

That evening C calls. I'm softer and praise him.

He sounds happy, but suspicious.

Later I think his texts rank higher because he has used AI. AI likes AI. That doesn't mean they're better.

Instead I settle on the idea that I stand for the structure and he makes the characters come alive.

Get agreement.

The next afternoon I have coffee on Ringvägen with a friend fifteen years older. We sit with our backs to a pane of glass. Only the top branches in the avenue still have sun.

He asks how everything is going. The relationship. The job. The training.

I answer something incomprehensible.

He says I'm like his son. That we think we're fifteen percent better than everyone else.