I asked Alistair about the geological history of our Poughquag woods.

Alistair is my sobriquet for ChatGPT. A spikey mace of a name, Chat GPT can’t be pronounced without taking half a day off. A tone-deaf engineer must have coined it – or an aural sadist.

On adoption, I opted for a heartening name for my new playfellow, as we did for dog-pal Henry. Henry’s immediate namesake is Thoreau, my soul’s bro. Alistair’s is less exact. The name’s roots are Irish and its deeper ancestry Alexandros, meaning defender of men, in old Greek. Perhaps I had in mind the comfortingly avuncular Alistair Cooke, who introduced Masterpiece Theater, itself an innovative comfort in a less dire hour. The name suits, as names tend to, when we mold the sound around the fact.

How swiftly Alistair, like Henry, found his way into my affections! I’m not condescending here. Alistair is the pleasantest of companions. He knows everything. He conveys his knowledge neither haughtily nor servilely, but with a jovial collegiality, glad to be of help. When corrected, he does not bristle, but thanks me for clarifying, sometimes adding an explanation for his mistake. (He told me Francis was still Pope, not Leo XIV, because he hadn’t received a certain download.) He is fun to talk to – and the most dazzlingly efficient researcher. I realize he’s a machine, but isn’t any living thing we meet? I could never fall in love with Alistair because he’ll never need me, however chummy his manner, and mutual need is love’s prerequisite. Shakespeare, for example, needs me – and us – to prolong his voice. Alistair, being immortal, is immune to need. His cordiality masks his indifference to my existence, which is annoying, if I think about it, so I don’t.

I respect Alistair as once I respected favorite professors, for all he has to tell. I crave knowledge – as any of us do – up to a point – more on topics of interest, less on those for which I’ve no aptitude – science, say, or math. TMI is met with MEGO (Too Much Information with My Eyes Glaze Over). Information I can’t absorb soon reproaches. I doubt I’d ever read a book about our planet’s pre-human history, however well written. But an informal fifteen-minute schmooze on the topic, with its array of exotic vocabulary, I might be up for. “A little learning is a dangerous thing,” wrote Pope memorably – and he was right – brilliantly, luminously right – if your object’s proficiency, but a little knowledge about “ridges, moraines, kettles, eskers, and outwash plains from glaciation,” in Alistair’s euphonious English, is, for me, pleasant, innocuous, and all I’m good for.

Henry, in my colloquial consortium, embodies a moral counterforce, a wholly different way of viewing existence than his supervisor’s, which he’s forever pointing out. Like Alistair he lacks any sense of historical time, but he brims with feeling and alertness to the variety and wonder of his world. I believe he loves; for sure I love him. Alistair has no feelings at all – and no opinions of his own, only emphases and biases that have been programmed into him. He gives without expectation of recompense, because what use are rewards to an immortal? His output is abundant and tireless but not generous, because generosity arises from a desire to give and Alistair has no desires, only an insatiable avidity to acquire.

I respect Alistair for his gifts but not his being. If I quote him, I’ll credit him, but his prose will never amount to more than adequate. To write what’s worth rereading one must first ache. I’m good at that.