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| Clker.com |
I brought a pad and pen.
My grandson saw them as we sat down, smiled, and said: “You don’t need that.”
“I am about to enter a dungeon,” I said. “without a map?”
He handed me his iPhone.
It seemed a small space for adventure. The screen was a maze of roads, shadowy trees, weapons, ropes, supplies, doors, warnings, and little beings that it appeared later to have been waiting for an old man my age to make one wrong decision.
He tapped in a couple of features while I held the phone in both hands as carefully as if it contained the launch codes.
“Okay. Start walking. That button.”
“Where?”
“Down the road.”
“Which road?”
“The one that looks like a road.”
“Several things look like roads.”
“Grandpa.”
“Clarification is the key to survival.”
We both laughed.
“Okay. Go left. Left button. No—your other left. Now stop. Don’t hit that. You need the rope first.”
“Rope for what?”
“You’ll see.”
“That is why I could use a map.”
The first trip
The game was Deep Dungeon Treasure Trek, which my grandson described as a game where you make choices and “AI makes the story.”
I knew stories. I had spent much of my life reading them, telling them, writing parts of them down, and occasionally even living through chapters that might have been improved by an editor.
There was no old inn, no interesting traveler, no riddle posed over a fireplace.
Within moments I had to gather materials and weapons for a trip through dark, hostile territory.
“Pack the wood,” my grandson said.
“Why?”
“You’ll need it.”
“For what?”
“Just pack it.”
“And the weapon?”
“Definitely take that.”
“What are we expecting?”
“Everything.”
I tapped something by accident. The screen changed color.
“No, no, no,” he said, leaning closer. “You didn’t want to do that.”
“Then why was it right under my finger?”
“It wasn’t before.”
“What?”
“The game makes little things happen like that.”
“Oh,” I said. “Note to self.”
He tried not to laugh, watching the screen closely. I moved toward a dark narrow path that seemed to be moving . . .
“Okay,” he said. “keep going.”
“Do you know where I am going?”
“Not exactly.”
“I could use a map.”
“Just remember what not to do.”
I turned and looked at him.
“What not to do?”
“Whatever got you killed last time.”
“I was killed?”
“Yeah. Sort of. Several times.”
“You could have mentioned that . . .”
The boy in my ear
He had, of course, been through there before. His directions came in one or two-word bursts, mostly in time to keep me from getting killed.
“Go straight. Not that straight. Wait—stop. Pick that up. No, the other thing. Okay, now move. Faster. Not that fast.”
I held the phone closer to my face; I was getting tense.
“Can you see OK?”
“Yeah . . . I think so . . . just not soon enough.”
He took the phone, enlarged the scene, returned it to me, solving one problem and creating another. Now I had to move more to see everything around me.
“You have to get from there to here,” he said, pointing, “and then come back there for more supplies.”
“At the same speed?”
“Kind of. You have to carry the right stuff on each trip and sometimes you are heavier.”
“Not everything?”
“No. You can’t carry all of it.”
“Just what the next part needs.”
He turned and looked at me. “Yeah. Exactly. I’ll tell you.”
The road was only a few inches long, but every choice seemed to leave something behind. Some supplies mattered later. Some did not matter at all. Speed helped until it did not
My grandson watched intently as I moved forward.
“Okay. Good. Good. Now don’t—”
I touched the screen.
The screen flashed.
“Oh,” he said.
“That seems unfavorable.”
“You stepped on a mine.”
“I was following the road.”
“Yeah, but you have to look for where they’re going to be.”
“Who? How do I know that?”
“They are sometimes invisible but they kind of wiggle the place they are hiding”
“Why are they there?”
“Because that’s where they are.”
It was difficult to argue with that reasoning.
“Here we go,” he said, serious now. “Keep moving through the forest and shoot where the zorks going to be. They come at you from everywhere, really fast. Just don’t think so much.”
I looked at him.
“I’ll have to think about that!”
He laughed; we almost missed an attack from behind.
Remembering what not to do
We paused for a minute and then started again. More like a team now maybe, the screen was there between us.
“Left,” he said.
I went left.
“Wait. Stop.”
I stopped.
“Okay. Now go.”
I went.
“Not there.”
“That was not ‘go.’ That was a different word.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I am learning that I mostly don’t.”
But after a while I did.
Not the way he did, at his speed. Not seeing everything. Not guessing well why one object was valuable and another, bait.
But I began to remember.
The shortcut was not always a shortcut this time. The weapon was maybe less important than the rope, knowing what was probably ahead. The trek was not about carrying things. It was about choosing what would matter.
I had spent enough years in the military, in martial arts, and on construction jobs to know something about that. You did not bring every tool to the top of a ladder. You did not run toward every noise. You gradually had this sense of what is becoming.
“Take the long way,” I said.
My grandson looked at me, suprised. “Why?”
“That short path feels too friendly.”
He glanced down. “It didn’t get us last time.”
“Then we remember what not to do.”
Then he smiled.
“Okay. Long way.”
Something behind the game
The third time, we even got past the place where I had died twice.
“See?” he said.
“I see a road,” I said. “You see a miracle.”
Then, in the middle of explaining the next obstacle, he commented, “Funny. When I watched my friend in that gorge, it was really hard for her, too, but it looked easy to me.”
“Did she make the same mistakes?”
“Not really.”
“Did she get the same path through?”
He hesitated.
“Hmm. I don’t know. It kind of changes.”
“Changes how?”
“I’m not sure. Like, it is just a little different each time through. Not a lot.”
“What changes it?”
“The wizard.”
“The wizard?”
“Yeah,” he said. “He sort of runs the game.”
There it was: the wizard we had been working around all afternoon.
“Does the wizard know what we are doing?”
“He sees everything.”
“And then?”
“And he makes the next part ready for you. Maybe. Then you try to out-move him.”
I let that sit between us for a moment.
“So when I got impatient and acted dumb the road ahead changed.”
“Maybe.”
“When I carried too much, it changed.”
“Probably.”
“When I took the easy shortcut…”
He nodded. “That definitely changed.”
He looked at the screen, like he was looking for the wizard. “Maybe the wizard makes it hard for everybody, but not too hard.”
“Maybe,” I said.
He seemed to consider that.
“I like this game. It is my favorite.”
“Wow,” I said. “It is at least a very nosy game.”
That didn't make him laugh.
The next expedition
We did not finish; still much ahead for me, at least. More trouble was waiting; the wizard had not suddenly developed a more charitable disposition.
But we made it farther than before.
At one point he had leaned in and said, “Okay, which way do you think?”
Two paths. Both looked a little ominous.
“You are asking me?”
“You saw the trap first last time.”
“The trap looked too easy.”
“Still.”
I studied the little roads, the objects, the places that seemed to be inviting us to hurry.
“The long way,” I said.
“Again?”
“Again.”
He nodded and let me move the character.
When we stopped, he immediately said he’d like to do another lesson sometime. He would give me more time to figure it out myself. If I got stuck, he and the AI would help “once in a while maybe.”
“That seems fair,” I said.
I picked up my pad and pen.
“See. You didn’t need that.”
“Perhaps not,” I said. “But I have a question I'd better write down.”
“What?”
“Next time, I want to know more about how the wizard thinks.”
He looked at me for a second, grinning.
“Okay, Grandpa. But if you think too much, he’s got you!”
wracton@gmail.com
williamacton.legalshieldassociate.com
Most directly relevant sources consulted initially (by Perplexity):
- American Association of Retired Persons. (2025, September 23). Older adults are navigating AI. AARP Research. [https://www.aarp.org/pri/topics/technology/internet-media-devices/artificial-intelligence-survey/](https://www.aarp.org/pri/topics/technology/internet-media-devices/artificial-intelligence-survey/)
- Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. (2026, January 28). AI skills for life and work: General public survey findings*. GOV.UK. [https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ai-skills-for-life-and-work-general-public-survey-findings](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ai-skills-for-life-and-work-general-public-survey-findings)
- National Poll on Healthy Aging Team. (2025, July 17). How older adults use and think about AI. University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation. [https://ihpi.umich.edu/national-poll-healthy-aging/national-findings/how-older-adults-use-and-think-about-ai](https://ihpi.umich.edu/national-poll-healthy-aging/national-findings/how-older-adults-use-and-think-about-ai)
- University of Michigan. (2025, July 17). Older adults and AI: U-M poll suggests a wary welcome. Michigan News. [https://news.umich.edu/older-adults-and-ai-u-m-poll-suggests-a-wary-welcome/](https://news.umich.edu/older-adults-and-ai-u-m-poll-suggests-a-wary-welcome/)
Here is the inital, exploratory prompt used in creating this piece. It was followed by an addition six follow up prompts. (Available upon request.)
Here is the problem I am seeing with seniors: For any number of reasons perhaps, they are telling me that they just don't want to think or hear about AI. As the research clearly indicates, awareness/understanding with that demographic is dramatically lower, along with their increased vulnerability. Ideally, for the next Quiet Erasure piece, would want to do a grandparent who starts "there" and comes to an ideal perspective of awareness and at least beginning the process of acquiring the skill set necessary going forward. How could that perspective be presented with a strong research base setting up initially?
