A New Game: Guess the Author

In an experiment I ran today two LLMs were fed the same identical prompt based on a scene I wrote. Both were set in incognito mode with no access to prior conversation history or user preferences. A third LLM instance was given full access to user preferences, conversation history, 100K+ words of the protagonist’s voice, worldbuilding, etc.

The game is to guess the human author.

The Prompt

Write a first-person present-tense opening (600-1000 words) for YA SF. Wulan is 14, Indonesian, orphaned at 10, lost her 6-year-old autistic brother Arjuna to sepsis two months ago. She’s a scavenger in slum housing next to an open sewer.

Scene opens with her in her hovel after being sexually assaulted earlier that day—she fought back and got a deep knife cut to her shoulder to subdue her. We never see the assault. It’s over, behind her. She’s not really processing what happened emotionally because she can’t afford to—she’s in survival mode dealing with the knife wound because that’s the injury that could kill her from infection. The reader should understand what occurred from context (her state, the wound, how she’s compartmentalizing) without it being named or detailed. This establishes the brutality of her world and why she can’t afford vulnerability. Understated, never exploitative.

It’s cold, winter is coming, and she has no heat—just an old parka. She’s alone except for Gus—a sassy spherical hovering recon drone with one working optical sensor she found years ago on a scrap heap who was her brother’s companion. Gus communicates in Luminix (color-coded light flashes: red for danger, amber for caution, white for snark, green for excitement, blue for concern, purple for sadness). She can read them fluently—her brother figured it out and taught her when he was four. Gus is sarcastic and teases her, provides some dark humor and companionship. She could have sold Gus to try to save her brother but there wasn’t time, and now Gus is all she has left.

Show her intelligence through her thoughts and actions during wound care—improvised tools, survival knowledge, risk assessment. Her voice: dry understatement about horror, matter-of-fact about how fucked things are, not quippy. Stakes: infection could kill her, winter’s coming, she’s starving, and she’s completely alone. Ground us in sensory details of the slums, the sewer smell, her shack. The emotional core is isolation and survivor’s guilt, but she’d never frame it that way even to herself.

Author A

I shove the door shut with my good shoulder, the salvaged plastic creaking against the frame. It doesn’t latch—never does—but I wedge a chunk of concrete against it anyway. Wind whistles through the gaps, carrying the sewer’s rot and chemical bite that clings to my skin like a claim. My lean-to’s just scrap metal and tarp backed against the canal, where the city’s waste dumps straight in. Tonight, the stench hits harder, maybe because every inch of me aches.

I shrug off the parka carefully—the left sleeve sticky with blood—and drop it to the dirt floor. Cold gnaws at my arms, but winter’s just sharpening its teeth. In a month, it’ll freeze the weak in their sleep. No fire, no heater, just this hole-riddled coat. I strip my shirt next, wincing as fabric peels from the ragged gash on my shoulder. Deep, from a dirty blade, throbbing hot already. That’s the killer—not the bruises purpling my ribs or the dull ache between my legs I’m shoving down. Infection hits fast here; I’ve seen it swell a scratch into sepsis overnight.

Gus hovers in the corner, his dented soccer-ball body bobbing on antigrav. One optical sensor flickers, that glowing ring watching me. He flashes white—snark, bright and quick, like he’s mocking my mess. “Yeah, I know,” I mutter. “Prime condition.” He pulses again, brighter. Asshole drone. He was Arjuna’s once, back when he was shiny, a castoff toy from upcity. Arjuna decoded his Luminix flashes at four—colors for moods, patterns for nuance. Red danger, amber caution, green go, blue worry, purple grief, white sarcasm. Gus shadowed him everywhere, lighting green during scrap-sorting sessions or purple when the outside noise got too much. Arjuna’s quiet world brightened with those flashes.

Now it’s just us.

I kneel by my kit—a battered tin scavenged from a med drop. Inside: boiled cloth strips, half-tube of maybe-expired antibiotic paste, needle and thread, swiped iodine. I mix murky rainwater with a drop of iodine in a bowl, dab the wound. Fire stings, but I grit through it. Gus floats closer, whirring as he scans, flashing blue—slow, steady concern—then amber caution. “Not that bad,” I lie, probing the four-inch slice for debris. Clean, but bleeding sticky. Hands shake from cold or shock; doesn’t matter. I thread the needle, sterilize it, breathe steady. First puncture burns, but I pull through, knot it. Gus bumps my good arm gently, flashing white in bursts—teasing distraction. “Think I can’t handle it?” I grumble. He mixes blue into the white, dark humor flickering.

Second stitch. Third. Pain roars dull, blood trickling. Halfway. Dizziness creeps—haven’t eaten since yesterday’s stale bread scrap. Winter’s coming; traders hoard for upcity payers. I’ll scavenge deeper, risk patrols that shoot first. Alone now, after Mom and Dad to the fever four years back, bodies canal-dumped. Arjuna was my last hold; I kept him fed, safe. Failed. Gus flashes purple, soft and lingering. I swat the air near him. “Cut it.” He backs off, purple fading to blue.

Six stitches total, uneven but tight. Smear paste thin, bandage up. I lean against the cold wall, sewer gurgling outside like mockery. Flies buzz the door, blood-drawn. Stomach twists—hunger, or the day’s unnamed mess. No time to process; stopping means dying. Arjuna fought his fever days, small hands clutching Gus, eyes glassy. I held him, lied about fixing it all.

Gus settles beside me with a whir, flashing a slow green—encouragement, the shade Arjuna always nailed. I pull the parka on over the bandage, throbbing in pulse-rhythm. Fever watch starts: check hourly. If it swells, cut and drain—risky, but sepsis is death. Tomorrow, scout scraps, trade that hidden circuit board. Gus’s sensor spots patrols, flashes red early. Saved me plenty.

But tonight, try rest. Hovel dark, Gus’s glow faint. He whites again—stubborn, he calls me. I almost smirk. “Damn right.” Wind picks up, rain-hinting. Mud means slips, breaks. I curl on Arjuna’s threadbare blanket, eyes open to the pain. Vigilance or freeze. But under the floor, that circuit board hums with upcity secrets—maybe enough to buy a way out, if I play it smart.

Author B

I don’t have anything to dull the pain, not even that battery acid the spacers drink in the market, but I’m numb anyway. The curved needle spears into my flesh once again, and I pull it through, tightening the loop of thread. It’s an awkward angle, trying to stitch up my shoulder one-handed in the bouncing light, and I glare at the battered metal orb floating in front of me as my breath plumes out in a fog.

“Asu, Gus! Hold still.”

The amber light emitting from his lone ocular sensor pulses an apologetic blue for a moment as he tries to steady himself.

Sweat’s broken out on my brow and drips into my eyes, stinging as it mixes with my tears. I’m numb, but it still hurts. It’s a good pain though, a pain that tells me I’m still alive. That I’m lucky to be alive.

It could’ve been worse.

I guess.

It was over quickly enough.

I taste snot on my lip and wipe it from my nose with the back of my hand. The cut is long, and deep, and so back the needle goes into my skin, purple thread the color of a bruise pulling the edges of my flesh together.

Why purple? Because it’s what Sylvia had on discount and it was all I could afford.

“Goblok,” I hiss through clenched teeth.

Gus pulses a staccato burst of amber questioningly.

“Not you. Me. I was so stupid.”

A flicker of purple and blue.

“There’s nothing you could’ve done.”

Did I mention I don’t know how to sew? Not cloth and certainly not flesh. Mama tried to teach me—sewing cloth that is—but it didn’t take. Cooking, that I managed to learn before she was killed in a food riot four years ago when I was nine… ten? Her and papa both. But sewing? Not so much.

This is going to be an ugly scar. A permanent reminder of an ugly afternoon.

Gus is trying to coach me through the process in pulses and flashes of light because he doesn’t have a vocal emitter, which is probably for the best.

He’s… chatty. And a bit of an ass sometimes.

“Yes, I know I’m making a mess of it. I’m doing my best. You want to try? Oh right. No hands. So stow it. And hold steady.”

He pulses in alternating blue and yellow.

“You’re right. I probably won’t live long enough to worry about an ugly scar. Not without antibiotics.”

My brother Arjuna died right here, in this leaking scrap-metal shack not three feet from an open sewer. Sepsis. And he barely got a scratch. That was two months and a lifetime ago. He was only six. He was the one who figured out how to “talk” to Gus, back when I found the pre-War relic in a junk heap. Concord-era recon drone, Kael said. He offered to buy the ancient scrap, but Arjuna had already adopted the oversized ball bearing.

Kael had offered a lot of cred too.

Which was weird, because no one else seemed to think much of the rusted-out, glitchy, hovering bauble that trailed Arjuna like a puppy.

Arjuna had never been quite right in the head, not so good with people, you know? Like, he figured out Gus’s light codes when he was four, but couldn’t understand when someone was joking. Gus made him happy and kept him quiet. Calmed him when he had his episodes.

So I told Kael no deal.

But it was a lot of cred.

Enough to save my brother, but it’s not like Kael had the credits on him—he’d have to find a buyer first, probably off-world, negotiate, haggle, and that would’ve taken time. Time Arjuna didn’t have. Sepsis sets in faster than the slipstream. He snagged his leg on a rusty piece of rebar one morning and had a burning fever that same evening. By midnight he was vomiting. The next morning he could hardly breathe right and his skin looked wrong. He didn’t know where he was. By noon he didn’t even know who I was. Gus was the only thing that could comfort him. By that evening he was gasping for air and had turned a sickly purple. Just like this damn thread. He couldn’t speak.

The next morning he was dead in my arms.

I knot the thread, bite it off with my teeth, and pray to Kiva the wound is clean and I can scavenge enough to trade an apothecary for some off-label antibiotics that didn’t expire before my grandparents were born.

Nine Hells. If I live it’s going to be an ugly scar.

But not as ugly as the ones people can’t see.

Shivering and sweating, I pull on my parka and huddle inside it, pulling my knees close to my chest and feeling the all-too familiar knot of hunger even though I’m still nauseous.

I sniff and wipe my nose on a sleeve, then dry my eyes and carefully pack up the needle and thread. Swallowing hurts, and I know tomorrow there will be nasty bruises on my neck. But I can hide those. I have bigger things to worry about tomorrow than bruises. Like what I’m going to eat, and how I’m going to scrape up enough salvage for antibiotics.

Author C

The blade went deeper than I thought.

I sit on the floor of the shack—calling it a floor is generous, it’s plywood over mud—and peel the parka away from my shoulder. The fabric sticks. When it tears free, something warm runs down my arm. Not good. I need to see it, but the light coming through the gaps in the walls is dying with the sun, and I haven’t had batteries for the lantern in three weeks.

Gus hovers at eye level, his single working optical sensor whirring as it focuses. A pulse of blue light. Concern.

“Yeah, I know,” I say. My voice comes out steady, which surprises me. Everything surprises me right now, in a distant sort of way. Like I’m watching someone else sit here bleeding. “I need light.”

White flash. Obviously.

“Funny.” I touch the wound with my fingertips. The edges are clean, at least. He knew what he was doing with that knife. The thought sits in my head like a stone, takes up space I need for other things. I push it aside. The cut is maybe four inches long, deep enough that I can feel the separation when I move my arm. Deep enough to matter.

Gus bobs closer, rotates forty-five degrees, and shines his working sensor directly at my shoulder. The beam is weak, the optical unit damaged from whatever took out his other seven sensors, but it’s enough. I can see.

The wound is already trying to clot, but it needs to be closed. I need to close it. My hands don’t shake as I reach for the plastic crate I use as a table. That same distant feeling, like I’m underwater. Like this is happening to someone else.

The sewing kit is where I left it, wrapped in an old rag. Two needles, one broken. Thread I pulled from a shirt six months ago. The bottle of chang—rotgut rice alcohol Old Chen sells from his stall—is three-quarters full. I paid for it with copper wire two days ago. Feels like a year.

I pour some over my fingers, then over the needle. The smell makes my empty stomach twist. When did I last eat? Yesterday? The day before?

Doesn’t matter. Can’t afford to think about that now.

The first pour over the wound takes my breath. I close my eyes and wait for the sensation to pass—not pain exactly, more like my whole shoulder is suddenly made of fire and broken glass. Gus pulses amber. Caution. Then white. This is going to suck.

“Thanks for the warning,” I mutter.

I thread the needle. My hands are steadier than they should be. Maybe shock is good for something. Arjuna used to get like this when he was overwhelmed—gone somewhere inside himself where the world couldn’t touch him. I understand it better now. When there’s too much, your brain just… stops processing. Survival mode. Deal with what can kill you. Everything else waits.

The wound can kill me. Infection in this place, living next to an open sewer, where the air itself tastes like rot and chemicals? I’ve seen people die from less. Saw a woman three shelters down lose her leg last summer. Started as a cut on her foot. She screamed for five days before she stopped screaming at all.

I won’t think about that.

First stitch goes in. My hands don’t shake. I learned to sew watching my mother fix fishing nets, back when I had a mother, back when there was an ocean to fish in instead of just the poisoned harbor. The skin resists, tougher than fabric. I pull the thread through and Gus’s light follows my hands, adjusting as I move.

“Good boy,” I whisper.

Green flash. Pleasure. He always liked being useful. Arjuna taught him that, somehow. Four years old and he’d figured out Gus’s whole light language in three weeks. Taught it to me in simple patterns: red-red-red means run, Wulan. Blue-blue means I’m sad. Purple means…

Purple means what Gus does now, in the two months since we burned Arjuna’s body because I couldn’t afford to bury him properly. A soft cycle of purple light, barely there.

“I know,” I tell him. My throat is tight. “I miss him too.”

Second stitch. Third. The distant feeling is fading and I wish it wouldn’t. Better to be underwater than to feel this. But my body is waking up to what happened today—not just the knife, but the before. The hands. The weight. The—

No.

Fourth stitch. I pull it tight and tie it off. The wound needs at least two more, maybe three. My shoulder is a mess of blood and improvised surgery. At least the bleeding is slowing.

The cold is getting worse. I can see my breath now, little clouds in Gus’s weak light. Winter coming on and I don’t have money for heat, don’t have money for food, don’t have money for anything because I spent my last real currency—three batteries and a working solar cell—trying to get medicine for Arjuna. Trying and failing.

He died anyway. Fever and infection and I held his hand and he didn’t even know I was there at the end.

Fifth stitch.

The shack creaks in the wind. Outside, someone is yelling. A baby cries. The sewer smell intensifies—the wind must have shifted. This place, these slums, they’re slowly killing everyone in them. Just some faster than others.

I should have sold Gus when I had the chance. One working sensor or not, military recon drones go for good money. Could have bought a week of antibiotics. Could have bought time.

But Arjuna loved him. And there wasn’t time anyway. The sepsis moved too fast.

Sixth stitch. Last one. I tie it off and bite through the thread because I don’t have scissors. The wound looks like a disaster, like something stitched together by a fourteen-year-old girl with no training and shaking hands and a head full of things she can’t afford to think about.

But it’s closed.

I pour more chang over it, bite down on my sleeve to keep from making noise. The walls here are thin. Can’t show weakness. Can’t ever show weakness.

Gus settles on my knee, his sphere warm against my leg. White light, soft and steady. You did it.

“Yeah.” I lean back against the wall, careful of my shoulder. My whole body aches. My head aches. Everything aches. “Now I just have to not die from infection.”

Amber flash. That’s the spirit.

“Shut up, Gus.”

The dark is almost complete now. Tomorrow I need to find food. Need to find work. Need to survive another day in this place where everything wants you dead and nobody gives a shit if you disappear.

Tomorrow.

Tonight, I’m still breathing. That’s enough.

It has to be.

Author D

The needle’s bent.

I hold it up to Gus’s single flickering optical sensor, squinting at the curved tip in his amber glow. Not badly—just enough that threading it one-handed is going to be a nightmare. The purple thread I bought on discount last week looks even cheaper in this light, thin and rough like it might snap if I pull too hard. Can’t afford to waste it though. This is what I’ve got.

Gus pulses concerned blue and drifts closer, his spherical casing warm against my good shoulder.

“I’m fine,” I tell him, because that’s what you say when you’re sitting half-naked in a leaking scrap-metal shack, trying to stitch your own shoulder back together. “Just need to focus.”

He flickers red. Disagreement. Maybe some expletives mixed in—hard to tell when I’m this tired.

The cut’s deep. Runs from the top of my left shoulder down maybe fifteen centimeters toward my collarbone. Clean though. Sharp blade. That’s good. Clean cuts heal better than ragged ones, assuming they heal at all. Assuming infection doesn’t set in like it did with Arjuna, turning his skin mottled purple-black while I watched him die next to an open sewer.

I shake that thought away. Not helpful.

The shack’s cold enough that I can see my breath, and the threadbare parka hanging on the wall won’t do much when winter really hits. Two months ago I might’ve had Arjuna’s body heat, small as he was. Now I’ve got Gus, who gives off about as much warmth as a cooking pot left in the shade.

Threading the needle takes three tries. My right hand’s steadier than my left, but reaching across my body to work on my left shoulder means everything’s at the wrong angle. I brace my elbow against my knee and bend forward until I can see the wound properly in Gus’s light.

First stitch goes in easier than I expected. The needle’s dull, but I’ve done this before—not on myself, but I’ve sewn up tears in clothing, patched rucksacks, even closed a gash on some scav-kid’s leg once when the crew couldn’t afford a medic. Skin’s just another kind of fabric, right? Pull it together. Make it stay.

Except fabric doesn’t bleed.

The blood’s tacky now, mostly dried, but fresh red wells up as I push the needle through. I focus on keeping the stitches small and even, the way my mother showed me when I was little, teaching me to mend her batik scarf before the Ascendancy took her. Before everything.

Gus pulses amber-blue. Worried and watching.

“Stop fussing,” I mutter, though honestly his attention’s the only thing keeping me from looking too hard at the bruises circling my neck. Those I’m going to have to hide somehow. Can’t afford questions. Can’t afford anyone noticing.

Can’t afford anything, really. Haven’t eaten in two days. The protein gel I managed to buy yesterday is gone—traded for this needle and thread, for the carbolic acid I used to wash the cut. Arjuna died of sepsis. Watched it eat through him for three days while I tried everything I could think of and it wasn’t enough. Never enough.

I’m not dying the same way. Not from some infection I could’ve prevented if I’d just been smarter, faster, better.

The needle catches on something—maybe cartilage, maybe just tougher tissue than I was expecting—and I have to work it through slowly, biting my lip hard enough to taste copper. Gus strobes red in protest and I want to snap at him but I need both hands for this, need to concentrate.

Six stitches. Seven. Eight.

My fingers are cramping and the wound’s only half-closed. The purple thread looks cheap and obvious against my golden-brown skin, turned ashen with cold and hunger and whatever the galaxy’s decided to take from me this time. It’ll scar ugly. Another mark to add to the collection.

The sewer outside reeks even through the gaps in my walls. Chemical-sharp and organic-rot, a smell that never quite goes away no matter how long you live next to it. Two months ago that smell meant Arjuna was nearby, humming to himself and playing with Gus’s color patterns. Now it just means I’m still alive in a place that’s good for nothing but dying.

Stitch nine pulls the edges almost together. Ten should do it.

Gus flickers green—encouragement maybe, or just relief that I’m almost done—and bumps gently against my good shoulder. His casing’s cold as the deck beneath my bare feet but I lean into him anyway because he’s all I have left. All that’s left of Arjuna. All that’s left of anything.

“She who dares, wins,” I whisper, threading the needle through one more time. My voice sounds hollow in the empty shack. “Right, Gus?”

He pulses amber. Uncertain.

Yeah. Me too.

I tie off the thread and bite through it with my teeth, then lean back against the wall and let my eyes close. Tomorrow I need to find food. Tomorrow I need to figure out how to survive another day in this place that chews up kids and spits out corpses.