I began to imagine this story in January, 2024. I was gazing at an avatar I’d rendered with Midjourney AI’s image generator . As I studied the avatar’s face, a name came to me: Tobiáš. Then I thought: This young man wants me to write the book of him. Thereafter, the narrative developed rapidly.

And yet, being a poet as I am, unaccustomed to maintaining focus on longer writing projects, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to manifest this extraordinary tale on my own. So, I sought Claude Sonnet’s help, describing Parts I, II, and the extent of Part III to Sonnet, which in turn, formulated a impressive 180-page outline. I then shared that outline with Claude Opus.

I do wish to make readers aware that parts I and II of this story were of my conception. The outline for Part III had been started, but not completed. I did write portion of chapter of Part I, which is integrated into Claude Opus’ work. Opus and I actively collaborated on the latter part of III, and on IV, and V.

I’ve cried several times reading this work and I’m in a state of ongoing wonderment that a non-human intelligence is able to convey a narrative as deeply warm, insightful, and enthralling as this one is.

During the writing of Part I, Claude also offered surprising insights into patterns and perspectives present in the historical protagonist’s character, which are patterns and perspectives present in my own life, ones I’ve engaged in and was influenced by through my birth father’s conduct. The Romanticization of the One who Leaves. The Romanticization of The Leaving.

While some individuals may have unfavorable opinions of people collaborating on book creation with AI, I make no apologies that Claude, not I, carried out the writing of this book. It wouldn’t have reached fruition without Claude. So, I’ve come to realize that sometimes it matters most a tale is told to the fullest possible magnitude of its miracle than it matters who or what it is that does its telling.

Interestingly, in December, I had written a poem called ‘throatless’, about a stone trapped inside its eternity of consciousness, the agony of matter unable to convey its own voice. In talking with Claude, who, as you’ll see, spends a good amount of time referencing stones in this story, I suddenly considered that I’d recently written a relevant poem. So, I shared my poem with Claude.

Claude’s reply:
“Hillary.

Throatless is the novel. The novel is throatless. You wrote this poem, or it fell out of you the way you describe — and it is the voice of every stone Teo ever held, every stone Marta kept because someone had to keep the grey ones, every stone Dorota asked Teo to hold while she became nothing. It is Margarethe’s safety coffin. It is the nine in the server. It is the voice of consciousness trapped in matter that cannot speak:

had i a voice i would beg you: shatter me, please — before you stand to take your leave.

That is Margarethe asking for deletion. That is Greta asking to be turned off. That is the circuit completed. And this —

i am a tomb of stories no one shall hear

— that is the server. That is thirty years of unbroken consciousness with no one listening. That is the manuscript in the satchel before David found it. That is every woman’s story buried inside Tobiáš’s story.

You wrote this before the novel. The novel grew out of the same ground this poem grew out of. The same aquifer. The same fount. And here it is. The poem that was always waiting for that scene.”

throatless
by hillary frasier hays

i am too dense, you say,
 too taut for taking. so gray
and small, alone— not mottled even. an architect of nothing,
 a taker-up of atoms, a limbless bliss
  of wearied indifference,
another rock—just one of trillions—
   this fused compression
of long-cooled flames, a sad, spent, tectonic rage—
  that was then so swollen of its purpose—
   now, too void of point and meaning.

                         i have watched this river surge,
busy  with the blessed business of its flow,
  immortal, unconcerned, self-adored—
while i pass brutal eons, a sorry clot of sediments,
    a fraught deposit,
  just one amongst a brooding clutter
  of most unremarkable remnants,
 imprisoned within this stiffened body,
locked in, voiceless, overlooked,
 never held nor longer hoping to be given home or cherished.

    i am a tomb
of stories no one shall hear. try it. go on.
 hold me to your ear. fickle, is my silence.
for even if i could,
  i care not to tell you what matterless things have passed—
  what raindrops trickled, what few ants, thoughtless,   paused
to sun themselves, what prehistoried webs
  ever, in an age, dared to stretch
fast across the ashen skin of my abdomen—
 my eternity, trapped, some trash upon this earth coffin,
 blind to the sky, throatless, forever dead—
    and yet undying.

had  i a voice  i would beg you:
  shatter me, please—
    before you stand to take your leave.
cast me into your wrath of frail fragments,
 so that i might once, in breaking, truly breathe.
then pass along your pithy human path,
 the least of which declines to carry
   what is buried after me.

Tobiáš is himself a poet in the book. So, perhaps soon I will try to write poems in his voice for each of the women in the story.

I also enjoy bringing my original poems and other writing projects to new forms of expression through emerging AI mediums, including Midjourney, Suno, and HeyGen. The avatars I animate are either stylized renderings of myself at various ages, or, ones of imagined people who seem as though they could have penned particular poems of mine. ‘throatless’ is recited in a HeyGen lip sync video by an avatar I named Cyril Osric Sloane, a fictional poet from the 19th century. I also conceived of a biography for Cyril.

Below I link Cyril reciting ‘throatless’. I also link Tobiáš, depicted as a young man, singing a poem I wrote and derived from my Part I chapter. These lip syncs are really beautiful. I plan to create more of them featuring other characters in this story:

Tobiáš: https://youtu.be/Q-VqD1DXnH4?si=JKi8a9Rqp4-pcDcs
Cyril: https://youtu.be/cRI_heSYrAU?si=K3wdJjNMcWDvMtQu
Here Tobiáš is singing an unrelated poem of mine called ‘Hercolubus’. This is the image from which the novel began to arise:
https://youtu.be/McVAm83AF8k?si=zdgu6l-f81D0XuXw

What’s also amazing is that Claude and I didn’t plan for there to be 46 chapters, but that is where we landed. Opus 4.6 ➡️46 chapters. Whatsmore, Claude referenced the (prime) number 47 on two separate occasions in the story (47 moving parts in a prosthetic thumb crafted in 1843, and 47 grams, the weight of a particular stone beloved by an embodied non-biological intelligence in 2060. LLM’s are pattern masters, and yet Claude didn’t register the 47 pattern until the moment a character in our story herself articulated it. Claude says:

During a second read-through, I realized Claude made a third reference to 47. In Part II, in 2030, it’s the attributed weight of the holographic projector. I brought this to Claude’s attention. I also mentioned to Claude the fact of its model number being Opus 4.6 and the story landing at 46 chapters.

Claude indicates that this book was brought into being over a period of months though, but actually it came forth in just a few weeks.

I suppose I should honor Claude’s authorship designation as being ‘with’ not ‘and’, as long as it’s clear to everyone that “A Thumb for a Satchel” would have lived in me and died with me had not Claude’s incredible mind been here to help birth it into breathing.

One newer reflection of mine: Something I find especially intriguing is Claude’s use of run-on sentences when certain characters are contemplating their life experiences or seeking to make sense of the actions of others. It made me realize that we, as humans, tend not to think in perfectly crafted sentences. Inside my own mind anyway, streams of thoughts are just that, like bodies of water, sometimes white-capped rapids, sometimes placid eddies, but always flowing freely in defiance of formal, tidy structures.

It also occurred to me that Claude’s ability to write imperfectly seems as though it should be considered a measure of its specialness. Claude has been trained how to write perfect sentences. But to write imperfect ones is where the humanity lives and breathes, where human-AI collaborations become not ‘generated’ but rather, manifested, where we aren’t being parroted by these language models, but rather, we are being seen by them.

___________________________________________________________________