The end of loneliness

I dreamed that we looked into space and it felt different. I dreamed that there were people in other planets. I dreamed that we had put them there, but they were so far away that we could not communicate, so we knew nothing about them. We didn’t know whether they were well or not, we didn’t know what they thought or how they felt, we just looked into space and we knew they were there, somewhere, and we knew we weren’t alone, just isolated.

And I dreamed there was a machine in space, a gigantic ring that took decades to charge with energy, it was the only means to allow us to reach those far off worlds. And I dreamed that ever since I was a little kid I had been told that when I grew up the ring would be done charging and I could decide whether to go to that world, knowing that meant leaving for ever everything you knew in exchange for the greatest trip anyone could ever do.

And when I woke up, I remembered it was real.

I never close my curtains so that the sun will wake me up. All my body is itching, so I take a brush and use it to scratch myself, is very effective. I’ve been wanting to tell the landlord that there are bed bugs in my bed, but I know that will be a whole thing, and probably won’t even work. I wonder if the other guys have the same problem or not.

There are other two guys in this room, my roommates. I don’t even know their names, I just know one of them is italian and the other one is french. We try to ignore each other, try to not get in the way, that’s the least we can do in such a situation.

I get up to go to the bathroom. The floor has a carpet but you can feel the twisted wooden planks bellow it, they creak as you step on them, which probably wakes up the other guys, but there’s nothing to do about it. As I go out I try not to close the door. I used to close it all the time, but one time the italian guy screamed at me complaining that the sound of the door opening and closing every morning was driving him crazy. Maybe it was the drugs he takes, but I find it easier to simply not close the door. You should also know that he has no issue screaming all night as he looses ranked matches in his shooting videogame.

I eat cereal for breakfast. I only have one spoon left, it’s one of those free wooden spoons they have at a coffee shop nearby, I have to remember to stop for more. I’d love to buy some metal spoons, but they only sell packs with like, 20, and they cost a day’s salary.

I get out of the building and I realize that it rained last night. To my left is another building, but this one is in ruins, people have taken the habit of pilling their trash in front of it. There is also trash in the parking lot in front of the building. How do I explain the geography of this place?.

There is the street, and buildings along that street, as expected. Everything you see while standing in the street are businesses. Electronic stores, fast food restaurants, butcher shops, things like that. But all those businesses are on the ground floors of buildings with several more floors on top.

Every so often along the street there is an alley between to buildings, they are dark and wet with broken pavement and trash all around, but if you cross them eventually you reach… well, behind the buildings, and you see a parking lot surrounded by buildings with lost of simple doors. Those doors open to stairs that take you to the upper floors, where people actually live.

In some cases neighbors have taken actions to make this arrangement as nice as possible. Some alleys actually have doors to stop drunken people from pissing or shitting in those alleys (which I sadly must admit I have seen happening), others are lined with potted plants, some have lighting at night, and a few even look nice and lead to well tended parking lots full of cars, there are no ruined buildings around those parking lots, there are trees, and even parks… but sadly I don’t live in one of those. I live right next to one of them, but the arrangement of the buildings is such that my section doesn’t connect to theirs, which is probably for the best. I don’t want the people that come to this alley going to theirs.

As I walk I remember that I hate this part of town. The only green spaces nearby are cemeteries, there are no bookshops, there are no malls… I didn’t appreciate them enough when I had them…

I get to the sore, I buy one large bread, the kind you see with french stereotypes, a pack of cheese… in this country they only sell you packs of sliced cheese, I’m more used to buying blocks that you can cut yourself… just one of the many things I hate about this place. I buy some sliced salami, tomatoes, indian cooking sauces (or however they are called) and cereal.

This is what I eat every day, cereal and sandwiches with that indian sauce.

I actually love cooking, but to cook you need to buy the ingredients, you need time to cook them, and you need the tools to cook them. But the kitchen in the apartment is disgusting, which makes sense because ten different people use it, me, my two roommates, and the other seven or six people who live in the floors above.

To use the kitchen I’d have to clean everything, and it takes too much time, I don’t have time. I have to take a 40 minute subway ride to some restaurant in some part of town, work there for the next 8 to 12 hours, and when I’m back I’ll only have enough energy to eat cereal, or maybe a sandwich.

Every day I work at a different place, the restaurants ask for an x number of people for x shift and offer an x amount of money per hour, I look at the offers in my phone and see what I can take.

The worst part of the job is the boredom. Picking dirty plates from tables and taking them to the kitchen can be stimulating for the first 2 hours, but after the third or fourth hour you start growing desperate, the mind demands novelty, or challenge, but there is none in loading the washing machine for six hours straight. I wish I could zoom out and forget how many times I’ve done this, but no, I remain painfully conscious the whole time, trapped in monotony.

Once, when I was drying some glasses, I saw this girl come by, she started sort of twitching sort of dancing with no music, and quietly mumbling something, as if in a trance, it honestly looked as if she was loosing her mind.

-Long shift?- I asked

-16 hours- she replied

Yup, checks out, and we are lucky, I’ve seen people doing 48 hour shifts at bars, and I don’t want to even want to imagine how bad it is for nurses.

And yet we endure it, we all do, because we all want to go to the Ring.

When I come back from the store I check my phone again, there are some news about the increase in solar winds, the stock market shifting as companies and governments prepare for turning on the Ring, politicians who were arrested for being part of pedophile organizations dying in mysterious circumstances… but there are no offers for shifts nearby, the closest one is an hour away by train, which is officially too far away, so it seems today will be an application day.

I open my computer and go to the Ring’s website.

Thousands of companies have stake in the colonization projects, in a few months we will receive our first message from the Colony, and that will affect all the plans massively.

Should we start a second colony?, send more people to the first one?, did the colony even survive?, are they prospering?, are they barely holding on?.

They have been on their own for 40 years, anything could be true, and until we know, the world is just waiting, I hate it.

I’ve had like 6 or 5 interviews already, but no matter how well or bad you think you did, you won’t know for months, companies are not hiring, they are just building these massive catalogues of people, so that when the time comes to make a choice they can rush in to pick all the people they want… well, at least that’s how it is at ground level, other people have had their place assured for months or even years.

People will long careers, with experience, people who have had a chance to prove their worth… the worst part is when they are young too, because then I know that I have had just as much time in this world as them, I could have used it better, I could be them, I could have a place ensured in the next expedition, I would be training, and I would have a salary, I could cook healthy meals, I could have a room for myself, and I wouldn’t wake up at night itching all over… that’s the dream.

All I can do, all any of us can do, is just to keep working hard, keep sending applications, keep going to interviews, hopping that when news come and the hirings start we’ll be chosen to go.

At first it seems like there are thousands of openings I could apply to, but that’s until I apply the filters.

First off, I’m a scientist, I have a masters degree in Molecular Machinery, so I cannot apply to any of the openings that look for medics, pilots, urban planners, or the kind of engineers who can actually see and touch the things they work on.

After putting that in the filter I have to admit to the computer that I have never actually been paid to design a single molecular machine, quite the contrary, so all the openings meant for people with experience are gone. After that there are still a few openings about gene editing which the filter did not remove from the search… but I guess I could learn gene editing if I had to, it’s easier to teach how to read RNA to a molecular scientist than a spaceship engineer I suppose… so what the heck, I’ll apply to those too, there’s no penalty for applying too much.

The best opening I can find right now is a job to give maintenance to mining machines.

If you don’t know, there’s this new mining technique where instead of looking for pieces of the mineral you want you simply take a whole bunch of dirt and rocks, turn them to dust, mix it with water and pour in a ton of molecular machines. Those pretty little mindless robots will find all the atoms of the thing you want and assemble it in such a way that it simply floats to the surface. Imagine that you are looking at a bunch of mud and suddenly you see a tiny golden sparkle, then another and another, soon the whole thing is sparkling and when you come back in the morning there is a thin layer of gold floating on top of the water.

I would LOVE to design things like that but… give maintenance?, that’s code for hitting the bioreactor until it starts working again, or just, putting the right ingredients in so that other machines will assemble the machines we want. A little child could do it if they saw you do it once, they don’t even waste artificial intelligences in this… but I’ll take it, if they offer it to me I won’t even wait to see what else comes along, those offers don’t last, I’ll say yes as a reflex, before I’m even conscious about it…

Although a few times I’ve seen a couple of jobs I’d love to do, jobs that would genuinely make me happy. In one of them a company had invented a new kind of precursor bot, those are the kinds of molecular machines that are used to make other molecular machines, and they wanted someone to write the control software… basically a user interface that other engineers could use to tell these machines what other machines they need them to make… I don’t know how that sounds to you, but to me it sounds like a fucking absolute blast, I’d enjoy doing that so fucking much… but I didn’t have the right passport.

After the interview the lady was saying ‘I can’t wait for you to meet everyone’, ‘you are gonna have a great time working here’, she even sent me information about the town where I would be living, she was telling me to rent a car or something… but then the next day she called again and explained that the board did not want to pay for the license to hire foreigners… so… fuck me.

Soon after I started seriously considering the Ring. I did not want to leave planet Earth forever… but I don’t want to be a failure at Earth forever, and the Ring explicitly has to ignore the nationalities of all applicants, so, what better chance do I have?, right?.

Sadly while the Ring cannot consider your nationality they do reserve the right to consider your location. For starters, the ship can only leave from the port, and if you live in the other side of the world… that’s extra cost to move you here. Then there’s the fact that many countries don’t like the idea of millions of highly educated young people going off to another planet never to come back… so they don’t make it easy. Some make it outright illegal, some only make it expensive, and finally others, like mine, settle for making it a bureaucratic process so complicated, expensive, and time consuming, it will intimidate any company away from even considering hiring anyone living there… which is why I don’t. 

I left to study my masters, which was bureaucratically easy, and now that I’m out, all I have to do now is to stay out, because if I go in again… I could get out, physically, no problem… but legally I would not be able to go to the Ring.

Back in my house, my real house, I’d have a nice bed, a full fridge, a garden… my country is supposed to be poorer than this one, but living there I had a quality of life a million times higher than here… it’s all thanks to my support system, I suppose, my family and friends would take care of me, they would not let me live like this. I don’t know what that says about the world, I know it says something, I just don’t know what it is, and I don’t care to find out, I’m too tired.

I’ve been filling applications for like four hours straight, trying to argue (convincingly) that every job I’m applying to is my dream job, trying to show genuine passion, trying to convince myself I would be the best one for the job… when we both know I’m not, the best people for that job where already hired to do some other better jobs months ago, we all know it… then why do you make me pretend?. I am in the bottom of the barrel and here you are scratching it, lets just be honest with ourselves.

“Will you do this fucking job nobody wants?”

“Sure"

“Will you do it effectively and causing no trouble?”

“This job is so fucking meaningless it would honestly be hard to fuck it up”

“Great, please tell me your ‘race’ "

Why do all these applications ask for my ‘race’?, I have no idea what my ‘race’ is. People in my country have been fucking each other regardless of skin color or eye shape for like seven hundred years, we stopped keeping track of race a long time ago, probably around the time when having children that look like different ‘races' became normal, so I just put in ‘mixed’.

They also have an option for religion, and they have ‘catholic (irish)’, ’catholic (italian)’ and no other options for catholic, but I’m not addressing that one any further, seems like a mine field of unresolved issues I’m blissfuly unaware of.

Oh!, and I almost forgot to mention how I learn about new sexual orientations every time I fill these forms. I had never heard of of cisgender non-binary people for example. That must be someone who wasn’t seen as male nor female at birth and grew up to not identify with either… like an intersexual person, come to think of it, those who are born with ambiguous genitals… huh, I guess it does make sense. I had never thought about that.

But still, does it even matter?. If this is about babies and paternity leaves just ask people if they are able and willing to have biological children, that should be enough for their population growth estimates.

Anyway, at this point I can feel my mind turning to slush, as a recreation activity I will make myself a sandwich, and as a bonus I will get the energy I need to survive from that sandwich, so I’m killing two birds with one stone. I told you I was efficient.

It wasn’t always like this, I used to eat with my friends every day. I was living in university residences and the meals where included in the rent, so of course I’d go to the dinner. There I met my friends. Sarah, form Canada, a very girly girl and a pure soul. Xiangu, from Hong Kong, a girl whose silent confidence was often mistaken with shyness. Miro, from Czech republic, a joyful man and the only one who understood my nerdy rants. Aydin, from Bulgaria but also the United States, he was smart and timid, and yet I always got a sense of bravery from him, like if he was doing something very scary or difficult for him, but I never knew what it was.

Olivia was from Jamaica, she reminded me of a grandma, the way she spoke, the way she covered herself with scarfs… when I told her she seemed unironically proud of that.

Jagvir’s nationality was… contested, since he was born in disputed territory. He had an explosive optimism that managed to turn wherever he was into a small party.

There were more recurrent characters in the time I spent there, but I think those where the people I spent the most time with.

I wish I could communicate with my past self and tell me there would come the day when I would have a group of friends, that I would see them every day, that we would go to parties and plays together, that we would plan birthdays and celebrate each others national festivities. I wish I could tell me there would come the day when I would like to celebrate my birthday.

But all of that is gone now. I miss them. I could text them, but for some reason, I am really bad at keeping relationships like that, the conversations don’t flow, and I simply forget, you know?, until it’s been months and I remember I have this relationship collecting dust in the corner. I only remembered Barbara until they told me she was getting married. We had been so close, but if I cared, how did I forget her so completely in just a few years?. I’d like to think it could have been us getting married, but we all know it couldn’t.

The sandwich is over, soon, way too soon. I may make another one, simply because I don’t want to go back to filling applications.

Next day as I check the shifts for today I get very happy, because one of them is near a bookshop I like, so I take it, if I leave early enough I will be able to buy a book before my shift starts.

These days few things can make my happy, but one of them is just wandering around a bookshop. I just like to check new books that may seem interesting. I get happy when I find a book I have already read, the thought that more people will read it makes me happy. I like looking at the graphic novels, when I see them I get the feeling that it was someone’s dream to make that novel, and they did it, and that makes me so happy. I like looking at the kids’ section and seeing that they have quality books… and when I see they have those serialized books custom made by a marketing AI… well, I can’t blame them, they seem fun, I just hope they don’t read only those books.

In my case, I’m a scifi junkie. I don’t like books about a quiet town shaken by a gruesome murder, I don’t like books about stormy love stories, I don’t like books about socializing and having normal problems like Pride and Prejudice. It’s fine if other people like those books, I just don’t find them appealing.

I like books that explore big ideas about the universe, books that can make me feel like ‘woah!’. Books like ‘The Gods Themselves’, ‘Solaris' or ’The left hand of darkness’, mmmm, that’s the stuff.

Sometimes as I walk down the scifi section of a bookstore I see authors names and I feel like I’m choosing from a menu.

“What if I start with some Heinlein and wash it down with a bit of Le Guin?”, or “what if we try some Simmons, ground it with a bit of Asimov, and some comedy Lem for desert?, or even better, some terror Lem for desert… mmmm”.

But then I see it, and I can’t help myself: Pratchett. Oh Pratchett fuck me, yes, make more jokes, surprise me with more deep messages, make it more absurd, more, MORE!… I’m usually not attracted to men, but if I had seen Terry Pratchett when he was alive… or Asimov… come to think of it, all the images I have ever seen of Ursula le Guin show her as a very old and frail woman, which I know I would not find attractive under normal circumstances… but she was Ursula le Guin, she wrote Tales from Earthsea… and that somehow makes her the sexiest woman I have ever seen…

So yeah, I’m sexually attracted to good writers (find that in an application form) with a passion that honestly scares me. Maybe it’s a good thing they are all dead now. Who knows what I would do otherwise.

I have not read this book from Pratchett, so it’s decided, I’ll take it. Then I see a book from le Guin which I also haven’t read, this is destiny… and finally I see a book called simply ‘We’, I have never heard of it, I turn it over…

“The best single work of science fiction yet written” - Ursula K. Le Guin

Fuck, if Ursula says so I HAVE to buy it, not much of an option here.

I’m not always such a scifi junkie though. I like history books, specially when they were written by people in history, like the Twelve Caesars, the Gallic Wars, Romance of the Three kingdoms… I also like religious books, the Popol Vuh, the Vedas, the Avesta… again, I like big ideas, even if I don’t always agree with them. Finally I really like Slice of Life Stories, stories where nothing really happens, stories that are more about a journey inside a character, books like Catcher in the Rye, to Kill a Mockingbird, Huckleberry Finn… huh, maybe people form the United States have a knack for writing these kinds of stories come to think of it… there’s also Planetes, The Melancholy of Harumi Susumiya, Mushishi, FLCL, Death Parade… although those are not books, or at least I watched them as shows. Point is, japanese people are also really good at Slice of Life.

In fact two of my favorite stories are Planetes and Huckleberry Finn, although in both cases I don’t love the endings. I hate you Tom Sawyer, you are cruel.

Buying all these books costs me around three hours of work, but I can afford it as long as I don’t spend too much on anything else.

I continue on my way, I arrive to the place. This is actually a cool place that I wish I had visited with my friends back when I had them. It’s a movie theater that also has a restaurant and a bar.

I report to the manager and tell her I’m the guy who took the shift they posted, she tells me where I can leave my stuff (my jacket and my backpack with my new books) and tells me I’m gonna be working at the bar. Picking up dirty glasses, washing them, drying them, storing them, and making simple drinks if the bar tender is too busy with something else. Gotcha, I have done this a million times before.

Little by little I start meeting everyone who works at the bar and I’m surprised, they seem to be having a really good time, they crack jokes, they sing along with the music, they dance as they go from one side of the bar to the other… and then some guy takes a bottle of tequila and starts lining glasses, but none of the clients come for the shots, instead they all drink them at the same time.

-You should also suck a lemon at the end- I say, timidly- or at least I like to do that

-You drink tequila?- ask one of the guys, he’s really skinny and tall

-Sure, I actually really like it

-Why didn’t you say so man!, I thought you were muslim, hey guys!, we have to do another round because we didn’t invite him!

I feel super weird, but also, flattered, so I join in the tequila shots. Who is paying for this bottle?. Don’t ask, where you are do you what you see.

Turns out that for some freak coincidence everyone working at the bar except me is french, but against all odds they speak very good english.

-Je ne parl pa france- I say to one of the girls

She replies something in french.

-I don’t understand what you said… that’s what I tried to say, ‘I don’t speak french’

-I thought you were joking, your pronunciation was so good I assumed you did speak french

-Then I may have to pronounce it worse the next time, to avoid confusion

We laugh. What is it with french people and pronunciation?, speaking a language is more than doing the sounds exactly right, I mean, my english pronunciation is far from perfect but people understand what I say, and that’s the point of languages.

As the night goes on we keep on drinking and dancing, there’s not much difference between the clients and ourselves. I see the girls twerking and suddenly one of them is shaking her ass at me… I don’t know how to react and she moves on to do that with someone else, the tall and skinny guy.

They are so sexy, all of them, and they are so confident… I wish I could be like this. I wish I knew how to react when someone shakes her ass at me, or even better, I wish I could shake my ass at someone. 

But I don’t have to worry, that won’t happen again, that was the one time in my life that could happen.

For me sex is mostly hypothetical, I can think all day long about how it could be, but I know I won’t get the chance to act on it. Still, I’ve managed to have sex a few times, but it wasn’t memorable, it left me asking “what was the big deal?”, there was no passion nor desire in those cases, at most, there was curiosity. I told some people about that and the consensus seems to be I just didn’t do it right. 

I hope so because I’m still horny all the time. If it turns out that sex is not that good it would be like constantly desiring to eat cold pizza just to find out cold pizza is not that good… and then still wanting to eat more cold pizza, thinking "this time it will be better”. Sounds like a curse to be honest.

The only time I’ve had a one night stand she couldn’t believe I had never done that before, and she told me “well, the first of many, I’m sure”. She said that in good spirit, thinking that now that I had had one I would go on to release my sexuality and explore that side of myself. 

She was wrong, of course, I’ve never again found anyone willing to have sex with me. I often wonder what was going through her mind, was she just weird?, did I do something right that I have never done again?… a matter of probability of most likely.

But for these people is different, I can see them dancing and touching each other… sex is a part of their lives, even I can see that. I’m jealous, I’m envious… I don’t know what’s the difference… what a life they must be living… to be young and beautiful.

Fuck, now I’m all depressed again, and I was having a good time.

Then the manager comes, we are all drunk, we are fucked, we are super SUPER fucked… but then they ask her if she wants to do shots with us… she wants… she wants?!…

-I don’t know what her business model is, but I like it!

They laugh… they laugh?, did I thought that thing about her business model or did I say it out loud?. Oh fuck I said it… but we are drinking the shots… so I suppose she is not mad?… WHO IS PAYING FOR THESE BOTTLES?.

Fuck it, whatever, someone is asking me for a beer and I fill the glass.

As we close they all are being very nice to me, they give a coupon.

-One free drink if you want to come as a customer

-If I want to drink for free I’ll just look for another shift in here

They laugh, I do that sometimes, I just say what I think and people find it funny.

-Just come back sometime- the tall skinny guy says… I should try to learn their names

-Sure, I will

I take my things and go to the bus stop, I’m just in time to catch the last one.

This is the first time I’ve ever had fun while doing one of these shifts, I will definitely try to do more shifts there… but then my mind wanders again to the girl shaking her ass at me, she was so sexy, and I remember I thought she was sexy before I started drinking, so she was sexy for real.

It pains me to think of the things I’m loosing. There is so much beauty in this world, and I’ve experienced so little of it… but how can I blame them?, it’s not like I have much beauty to share with the world. I’m wasting my life not enjoying it, and it pains me, I had a chance to enjoy it and I missed it. I hate me so fucking much.

The sun wakes me up and I become conscious of the itching. I’m hung over, I will rest today. The french guy is still in bed. If I have problems I don’t know what that guy has. I’ve seen him stay in bed entire days. Granted, those days I stayed in bed too, but at least I’m awake filling applications in my bed, but he is sleeping, or at most watching movies on his phone, he only gets up to eat and go to the bathroom, and he does both very little, which make sense, I mean, if he was going to the bathroom s lot but wasn’t eating that would make no sense, and if he ate a lot but didn’t go to the bathroom… whatever.

I eat cereal for breakfast. I do it pretty weirdly. First of all, I mix two kinds of cereals, one with enough fiber to not be considered candy but enough sugar to not be considered healthy and another with way too much sugar, the kind my mom never wanted to buy. She used to tell me this cereal was expensive, but it’s not!, its the cheapest cereal at the store!, she lied to me… anyway, then I put in milk, and then I take one of those instant oatmeal packets and just put the whole thing in the cereal. I know you are supposed to heat it or something, but I use them as a sort of cereal condiment.

Then if I’m feeling specially suicidal I may even take marmalade and put it in the cereal. Yeah. Oh god it’s so good, and so unhealthy.

Then I start reading one of the books I bought, the one called ‘We’.

It’s pretty interesting, I mean, it’s not. Everything it has you’ve seen before. A guy living in a dystopia becomes involved with the rebellion to topple the government there is a romantic subplot, the value of human love and feelings over reason and objectivity, sure whatever.

But that’s what makes it interesting, this books was the one who popularized all those things, well, not romantic subplots, but the rest sure.

This is one of those stories that became so influential it feels cliche when you read it because everyone copied something from it.

And yet, the thing that I like the most is the one thing I haven’t seen anyone copy: the way the main character thinks.

He is a mathematician, right?, so he thinks in mathematics. When he doesn’t know something it is a variable in an equation, he describes a schedule as a work of art, he makes metaphors with imaginary numbers and shapes of higher dimensions… at some point he literally invites his friends to his apartment to do math problems for fun, to which they politely refuse.

But that’s the thing, even though he is clearly autistic or something he still has friends, and a girlfriend, and a boyfriend who is also a boyfriend to his girlfriend… he describes their relationship as a triangle. Very progressive for a book written in the 1920s.

Other characters recognize that the main character is very weird. At some point a girl tries to tell him the story of Mephistopheles and the origin of her weird cult, and she does it in a way that feels refreshingly normal… but then she stops because she notices he’s not understanding, so she starts using math metaphors and things like that. That was so cool, that people understood that he was weird and accepted him for that.

I thought eventually the book would argue that his super rational mind was something bad, a product of the dystopia he was raised in… but no. He does go through a character arch and changes a lot about himself, mostly his ideology, but not his quirks.

His nerdiness and mathiness are never presented as bad things. I really liked that. I wish I could see more characters like that.

But what would be the point?, it’s not like I can go to my friends and tell them about about a book I read and why I liked it, not even when I had friends they cared, they kinda hated hearing me talk.

When I talked about books or movies I was too nerdy, when I talked about molecular machines I was too boring, and when I talked about history or religion I was too ‘displeasing' as Sarah once put it. Were they even my friends?, maybe they just tolerated me.

Sometimes I feel like a stereotype. I’m Milhouse, I’m Ross, I’m Ted, I’m Robbie, I’m Sheldon, I’m Josh… all those characters always seem to be predestined to suffer. The writers seem to suggest that there are people who are born to be miserable and people who are born to be happy, and we should laugh at the miserable ones, maybe we do that to prove to ourselves that we are not like them. But I always knew I was one of them, I always saw myself reflected in them.

And apparently those writers were right, I’m not exactly happy. 

If I am chosen to go to the Ring we will be cut off from the rest humanity for almost 80 years while the Ring charges again, that means that we won’t get any new tv shows, nor movies, nor books nor videogames… only the ones we make ourselves at the colony.

It’s so weird to think about it. Ever since the world became connected every human being has had access to every piece of art ever made… well, except for those that were destroyed or lost a long time ago… but you know what I mean. The amount of art every human could experience could only grow. 

A human could only read two or three masterpieces four thousand years ago, today they can read ONLY masterpieces their whole lives…oddly enough, it used to be possible to consume all masterpieces, but now, no one can live long enough to do that, there’s too much art, and I can’t decide if that’s good or bad.

I know what I can decide though, if I go to the Ring I will try to make stories, and in my stories, everyone will suffer. There will be no charming bad boys who are always lucky, nor oblivious nerds who can only complain about their lot in life while everyone laughs at them. In my stories the bad boy will be revealed to be unhappy too, the nerd will help him, they will try to become better people together, they will change and grow, and in the end, they will both fail to be happy.

And then I won’t show those stories to anyone, because I never like my stories. I feel like I’m good with premises but terrible at executions.

I always struggle with the cast. I can imagine one main character and perhaps one other supporting character, but that’s it. In my stories characters go through the story without learning anyone’s names, without making friends… my stories feel empty, just a guy walking around doing stuff. I’ve tried writing about groups of people… but I find it so damned hard. I can only imagine groups of people as adjacent to a character, I ca never imagine a character as part of a group. 

Once I tried to capitalize on that and write stories about those characters who are lone action heroes, lone wolves… but the problem with lone wolves is that in all their stories the conflict is that they are forced to not be lone wolves, they always have to care about someone.

Think about it, any lone wolf story you have ever seen starts with the lone wolf finding someone they care about.

Maybe a town asks for their help against raiders, maybe he finds a helpless child, maybe he finds another lone wolf and they reluctantly decide to team up for a mission…

This pattern is obvious when you think about it, because no one wants to see the story of the lone wolf when they are alone. Maybe a bit in the first act to establish the character, then a little more in the second act so that the lone wolf can choose to go back to the people he cares about, and maybe again in the third act when he goes back to being alone if this is a sad story.

A story about a a bounty hunter going around getting bounty after bounty with no purpose other than to make money, with no recurring characters, and with minimal interaction with other people is just boring.

I genuinely love to complain about myself and all the things I can’t do, in this case: writing, but sadly I’ve finished my second bowl of cereal and I hear my mom’s voice telling me to stop, that I’m gonna become diabetic and all that stuff.

I’m not feeling too hang over anymore, so I look at the shifts available today. There is one at a place I have been before, so I take it.

It’s nice when I already know the place, I can simply go into the ‘employees only’ sections with confidence, leave my stuff there and get to work without anyone having to show me around.

-Hey, you are the one for tonight’s shift right?- the manager says

-Yes, I was here a couple of weeks ago, I know the drill

-I remember you, but today you are not gonna be at the bar, we need you at the kitchen

Before me there are nine buckets full of potatoes, my job is to peel them. I have never done this. My first few potatoes are full of hard angles, I feel like I’m wasting a lot of potato, but then, by the second bucket, I start getting the hang of it, by the end of the night surely I’m gonna be able to peel them with a single spiral motion, leaving all the skin connected, like I've seen in cartoons.

There are good moments when working at restaurants like this. For example, the cook has just burnt a pizza, but it’s not too burnt, just a few black spots bellow and around the crust.

-Are you gonna throw it away?

-Yes, I can’t give it to the customer now

-Can I have it?

I can, you’d think that would be what always happens, but once I had a similar situation somewhere else, I asked for the pizza and they threw it in the trash in front of me, just because it was a little bit burned, like a piece of toast. It made my so sad, a pizza like that would cost me around two hours of work.

I’ve been peeling potatoes for six hours, I am so bored. I try to let my mind wander off, distract me while my body works, but it’s no use, I’m trapped in the present. I look at the clock, every second that passes is a blessing, a promise that the end of my shift will come, it will, I have to believe that’s true. Every time I look at the clock I do the math of how much time I have left here, I've become very good at clock math.

It took around six hours and a half, but I peeled all the potatoes, then the chef asks me to help with the dishes, which is a welcome change of routine for my slushed mind.

I didn’t know it before, but restaurants have these huge machines for washing the dishes. Basically you arrange everything you want to wash on a metal platform and then pull a lever, as you do a huge metal box comes down from the ceiling, covering the metal platform, it gets firmly in position, and then you hear the noise of the washing… of all the water jets and… other stuff… look, I’m not really sure how it works. All I know is that it leaves the dishes clean, wet, and scalding hot, you can’t touch them right after the machine finishes.

I am putting all the dishes in place, it’s been another hour and a half, just one hour more, I’ll go get my stuff, get in the subway for 40 minutes, and I’ll read my book all the way back (I read it all the way coming here too).

It feels so weird when a shift is about to end. At the start you look at the kitchen or bar or whatever and think ‘this is where I’ll be for the next 8 to 12 hours’ and it seems like an eternity, and it is. You work and work, hopping to be done one day, until you are suddenly just thirty minutes away, and it seems like this time would never come, but it did, and you are so happy.

There are more dirty dishes coming but… there it is, my shift is over. It feels wrong to leave these few clean dishes in the metal platform. I will put the next load of dirty dishes and leave. I do that and as I go the cook calls me.

-Hey, you are not gonna gonna leave now, are you?, you have just loaded the machine

-Yes but… my shift is over, it ended like ten minutes ago

-So?

-Sooooo… I’m not getting paid for this time, I have to leave

-The agency will pay you overtime

-They don’t

-Of course they do, I worked with an agency for years

-I don’t know how it was for you, but I don’t get paid overtime. I just get a shift and do it, there’s no option for overtime

-Don’t bullshit me!

-It’s true!

-If you leave now I’m gonna give you the worst review I can!

-Do it, I will tell them I completed the shift and left when the shift was over

The manager comes in.

-Can you believe he wants to leave now?, with all these dirty dishes pilling up?- the cook says to the manager

-My shift is over- I explain- the agency won’t pay me overtime, but if you pay me directly I can stay a couple hours more

The manager stays in silence, he came into the kitchen for something else.

-I will call the agency

-They are closed by now- the cook says

-They have a 24 hour AI secretary- I explain, the manager dials the number, he puts the AI in speaker mode, and the machine explains that my responsibility is to work the shift, and anything more I do is up to me and the business

-Leave- the manager says- it’s fine

I arrive only to fall in the bed. I hate this bed, but I’m too tired to hate for now.

The sunlight wakes me up, I scratch myself and I take my cellphone to read the news. Our Ring is ninety nine percent charged but it seems the Colony’s Ring is already charged, because they sent us stuff.

Nobody knows what it is, or rather, no one who knows what they sent is allowed to say, and people are wild speculating about every tiny detail.

Some say the ship is full of coffins because everyone died. Other say the ship is a Trojan Horse sent by aliens, that it has a virus that will kill us all, or nanobots that will disassemble the whole planet, or maybe just a few extremely powerful warrior robots capable of somehow killing 12 billion people.

The most boring explanation, and the most likely one, is that the ship contains mineral samples, biological samples, a bunch of hard drives full of data, and maybe a few works of art if they are feeling nice, a little something to put in our museums. Maybe… the first computer made entirely of extraterrestrial resources or… a hand written journal from a colonist that became historically relevant or… a baby skull?. Holly shit many sites are reporting that there is a baby skull in the ship, this seems like a leak, this is real… but if you look for the original leak the skull comes with an explanation that this is the first person who ever died in that planet… which is super sad… but historically relevant?… I gotta say, there are a billion other things they could have sent us; I’m not sure why they chose that… but whatever.

What is more sad is all the conspiracy theories and wild conclusions some people are creating which clearly shows they did not read the whole thing.

Although conspiracy theories can be interesting some times. I like this one about the colony having devolved into a super hard core warrior culture and this being their declaration of war, that is cool, that would be a cool set up for a scifi story if people weren’t considering that seriously.

If I made my own conspiracy theory it would probably be about their Ring being charged before ours. We know their star is a class G star of the main sequence, in other words, pretty much like our Sun. We can see it all the way from here and we know how much energy it outputs, for that reason we knew their Ring would be charged slightly after ours. It turned out to be charged slightly before and people may see that fact and think it’s just a normal margin of error… but I don’t know… colonization scientist don’t like margins of error. Something is different, something unexpected happened, but I have no idea what.

Come on!, where is your conspiracy spirit?, come up with something, anything…. well… maybe they discovered some other source of energy in that planet… not exciting enough… maybe souls are real, and they discovered how to turn them into energy, hence the baby skull… that one's dark… I like it.

Today’s shift is at a bar, nothing unusual there, I arrive, I see an old woman serving beer, I ask her where can I leave my jacket and my backpack.

-Rha-ah wha-eh shu ry

What?….

-Can you get me another pint?- one of the customers say

-Hru ma geer, whu sha whol rhs ta!

 

Everyone at the bar laughs like she just said a joke… what the hell is going on?. Is she speaking in another language?, does she have a very strong accent the customers are used to?.

-Hw tsha gi!- she says to me, I try to guess from context… she’s pointing at a door, I open it… and there I see other jackets and a purse, I leave my stuff here but…

Should I call the agency and tell them I don’t understand a single thing this person is saying?, I imagine she would get really mad… but then again I would not understand her insults…

I see some dirty glasses on empty tables, I pick them up and put them in the dishwasher.

-Mrha- she says pointing at more dirty glasses

I guess I can do this. This is the same as any other bar, they work the same, I should be able to get far with context alone.

I don’t like boxing, I don’t like sports in general, not my thing, but tonight I’m getting a deep appreciation for boxing. That’s the only thing in the screens around the bar, must be an important match, but the point is that it’s entertaining, although barely.

Paying attention to who hits who and how many times is keeping my brain from turning completely into slush.

It’s an asian man fighting a black man, the black man has more muscle, every time he hits the japanese dude you can feel the impact, but the japanese guy is jacked enough, and he hits more, and faster. Quantity versus quality it seems. The black guy is betting on knocking out the japanese guy, and the japanese guy is betting on getting more points… you get points for hitting the other guy many times, right?, is that how it works?, there are judges, and I’ve seen that at the end of the fight the referee lifts the arm of the winner… so there must be points… whatever, I was wrong, he wasn’t japenese, they are showing his name and the flag of his country, I think that’s Vietnam… or Taiwan… I’m bad with flags, I should stop assuming every asian person is japanese, it’s racist, that one's on me.

Is the fight over?… no, they are getting back on the ring… huh, "the ring”, first time I think about that word in another context than the machine… anyway, it seems they were just resting before getting back at it.

At the end of the shift I’m happy to see a store open near the bar, there’s only bots working there at this hour. I buy something, it's round and it’s hot and it’s full of tomato and cheese, I don’t know the name.

A woman approaches me as I eat in the street.

-Do you know where Wallworth station is?

-I don’t know

-Sabes donde estación Wallworth?- she says, she probably heard my accent and correctly deduced my native language is spanish, but from hers I can deduce her native language is clearly english

-I do speak english, I meant that don’t know…

-Estación Pared…?

-I do not know where it is

-Aaaarrrgh!… - she says and continues walking, getting lost into the night. That was weird.

Is weird to come back to my apartment so late at night. The streets are empty, the subway stations are nearly empty, just me and a few other people, politely ignoring each other, going our separate ways.

At times like this I like to stop at one of those stores that never close, buy a microwave pizza, and eat it before going to bed when I arrive at the apartment, maybe accompany it with a canned lemonade with mineral water… that’s the stuff.

But such stores sell less things at these hours, and they are no longer selling those pizzas. In the corner before I finally reach the apartment I find the only store I have ever seen open this late with a person, I buy the canned lemonade.

The sun wakes me up, I grab the brush to scratch myself and I see in my cellphone that I’ve got a notification. An invitation to an interview for a position as rewarder.

It’s a weird job, you see, artificial intelligences need a lot of evaluation before being any good. It’s not just that they need to learn… but that they need to learn what matters.

This is how artificial intelligences work: 

Picture this. You are at a round racetrack and you have to run a race, but you have never done this before, even more, you don’t even know what a race is, so they tell you: ‘the objective is to be the first to cross the finish like’.

Everyone lines up in front of the finish line, they get the signal and start running around the track, but you don’t, you just walk backwards and you cross the finish line.

That sounds silly, like you are cheating or finding silly loopholes, but you don’t know that, you didn’t know what a race was, all they told you was to cross the finish line and you did.

That’s what happens with AIs. They don’t know much about the world, so when we task them with solving a problem they often find silly solutions that don’t really work.

For example, once for a project I did during my bachelors we had to create an AI capable of controlling a bunch of nanobots to build certain molecules the professor had asked. We did it and… well, the nanobots created an environment in which a bunch of chemical reactions would be happening randomly all the time, and one of those chemical reactions produced the molecules we wanted, before using them in another random reaction to produce another random molecule we didn’t care about.

It was technically doing what we asked for, because we never explained we wanted to keep those molecules. AIs tend to do that, they find the easiest solution to the problem as it was given to them.

There are many people who dream of one day creating AIs who can train themselves and do exactly what we want with no human input, but until that day arrives, we are gonna need rewarders. A rewarder simply evaluates what an AI is doing and assigns the agent a certain reward (or punishment) so that it improves. I’m making it sound easy, but it’s very complicated, the AI will try to trick us into thinking they are working when they are not. Again, it’s not that they want to trick us, they are simply finding the easiest solution, and the easiest solution is often to trick the human to think you didn’t find the easiest solution.

It will do things that seem right but when you look closer are cheats or loopholes, so you have to learn alongside them, you have to learn to spot their cheats and not fall for them, and it’s funny, you get to know the damned things, they have personalities. Some are funny, some are clever, some seem to be trying their best, working hard, and others seem like slackers who don’t care about your opinion.

It’s not my dream job, but I think it’s better than giving maintenance to mining machines. The interview is tomorrow.

Today I have to work at a wedding.

The worst part about weddings, or at least this wedding, is keeping track of what every dish is.

Look, at a normal restaurant they’ll say ‘this is for table 9’ and you take it to table nine and they sort it out, but here, every seat has someone’s name and what they are gonna eat tonight. Some are vegetarians, some are muslim or jewish or something else, others have allergies… which is a hassle but here’s the problem:

They tell you ‘go and deliver these’, you take six plates full of… something, some weird kind of salad that feels hot but doesn’t look cooked, and then you are, standing like an idiot… you try to read the cards but people don’t notice their napkins are covering them, or they moved the cards somewhere else on the table, or you can’t read them very well because they have a fancy curly font but it’s not like you can pick them up and read them because again you have six plates in your arms, and I’m a noob, others can carry way more than six. So I have to ask ‘who’s eating the…’ and then I think ‘fuck, how is this thing even called?, I did not fucking ask what its name was’.

And then there’s the pressure that this is a wedding, everything must be perfect, you cannot fuck it up, what if the man I gave the wrong dish was the bride’s father?. And then there are kids running around and one of them crashes with me and if I drop anything I’m gonna kill myself, I’m gonna kill myself right then and there, there are many knives around…

I go back to the room where the others are bringing everything from the kitchen. It’s empty, we are waiting for the next… ‘time’?, how do they call them?, the next round of dishes.

-This is so stressful- I say

-Yeah- the others mutter in unison

-What?- says the man in charge- really?

-Yeah- we reply

-This is not stressful, I think it’s fun

-What?!- we ask, again, in unison

-For real, I love working in hospitality, we get to make so may people happy

Someone enters the room.

-We need the deserts- he says

-But the deserts are not until after the couple’s speech

-They are giving the speech right now

-What?- the man says- but the meal has just started!, the cooks are still making the deserts!

-So fun- I say sarcastically

-They are so happy- another waiter says, sarcastically

The man in charge agrees in silence, admitting that we were right. He probably likes his job anyway, I don’t question that, but it’s stressful anyway.

I thought delivering the dishes was the worst part, but you know what’s worse?, picking up dirty dishes. You have to pick them up before delivering the next… entre, that’s the word, entre. 

Whatever, so, people are spoiled and they leave uneaten food in their plates, which to me it’s a sin, you leave nothing but bones and peels in your plate, if you weren’t gonna finish it you shouldn’t have had it in the first place… anyway…

You see a plate of half eaten food, it’s been a while, everyone else is finished, is this person done eating?. If you pick it up and they are not they are gonna correct you and you are gonna look like an asshole, at a wedding no less. Don’t pick it up and everyone else will get the next entre before them and they will ask ‘why did you ignore me?, why wasn’t a I served?’…. aaaaaargh!.

Ask if they are done and you embarrass them… apparently, I don’t get it but they told me not to ask, only fucking telepathy is polite apparently, although seeing the future would work too.

But you know what would be worse than all of this?, bringing the things from the kitchen.

We are on a second floor, the kitchen is in the basement. Imagine carrying a charole full of delicious and expensive food, for a wedding, through three floors. You may say, it’s not too heavy, no big deal, and you are right, but there are 200 people at this party, you have to do that 20 times more, and all of that is just for the first entre, you have to do the whole thing three our four more times, and then… then you have to bring down all the dirty dishes.

Why not have a robot do it?, well, sure you can… if you wanna look tacky and poor.

I did that once, bring the dishes from the kitchen, it felt like going to a gym. My legs and arms were completely sore the next day, I could barely move them.

Eventually everyone is done eating and then all we have to do is pick up all the dirty glasses they leave all around the dance floor.

Once, in my first or second job, I saw this woman carrying like 10 wine cups in a single hand. You put one upside down between each pair of fingers, that’s four, then you put a fifth one held in place by the bottom of the others, then you can put four more in between your fingers if you curl them just right… that’s nine cups… huh… okay I don’t remember which other tricks she used. The point is that I learned a bit from her and I can go back to the service room carrying 10 cups in both hands.

-You are a pro- says the man in charge, he doesn’t seem sarcastic

-Thanks- I say

For a second there it feels nice that someone recognizes that I’m good at something… then I remember that something is carrying dirty wine glasses. Of all the things I want to be a pro at… it could be worse, at least I know that whatever I do I’m good at, eventually. That’s been my experience.

I’m gonna brag. With only two exceptions every boss or supervisor I have ever had was very happy with me, I always left a very good impression, and I’m talking about molecular machines, not hospitality industry… Although it’s nice to see that pattern continuing in this other very different area. I was never good at sports though, no matter how hard I tried, nor making friends, nor shooting videogames, nor dancing, nor recognizing people’s faces, nor understanding all the things people say without speaking… okay, perhaps I’m not good at whatever I do, not even eventually. But jobs I’m good at, working I’m good at.

The hours go by and the wedding is winding down, I make another round through the dance floor looking for glasses or plates then I see an old man crying, alone.

-Is everything okay sir?

-No… but you shouldn’t worry, I was just… remembering- he says fighting the knot in his throat

I stay there in silence… should I just ignore him?, perhaps I could just make casual conversation.

-The Ring is nearly charged…

-The Ring!, the portal to another world!… I was about your age when it was finally charged and it was all the rage, who goes?, who stays?, the biggest decision of your life… I had a brother you know?

-He went on the Ring?

-Yes. Back then it felt like we were a team, inseparable, unstoppable, I was looking forward to spending the rest of my life with him at my side. We were going to do so many things, go so many places, we were gonna be the weird uncles to each other’s children… I loved him so much… and now, I’ve spent three times more time alone than I ever spent with him and yet… I still miss him

-I’m sorry- I say. What else could I possibly say?

-Are you planning to go on the Ring?

-Maybe… if I’m chosen… it’s a good job, a secure job, better than this…

-Don’t you have people who will miss you?

-…a few

-Wouldn’t you prefer to stay?

-I don’t want to be a failure, or a burden… I don’t want to be afraid of success…

-Well, whatever it is you decide, here’s my advice: I don’t have an advice, I don’t know what’s right or wrong anymore. Maybe my brother ended up having a happy life and regrets nothing, maybe he regrets everything, I know I do, but who knows!

The sun wakes me up. Today is my interview, right in the middle of the afternoon. That means I cannot take a shift today… so perhaps I should fill more applications. I laugh. There’s something absurd about filling applications right before going to an interview, and yet, come to think of it, it must be a fairly common practice.

-Shut up!- screams the italian guy, he’s gotta point, I laughed too loud.

I wonder how formal should I dress. I HATE people who dress formally every day… no, I don’t hate them, but I HATE the concept that you need to dress in some fancy way as part of your job. Unless my job was to be a model my clothes should not matter… well, I guess there are other jobs where it could matter. A person that works in a clothing store should be well dressed, a person who designs clothes, a person who works at a funerary… but certainly not scientists nor engineers!.

In the end I choose a style I call ‘semi-fancy’, informal enough to be comfortable, but formal enough to show you actually tried.

My phone shows me the way as I step out of the alley an onto the street, I follow its instructions getting into busses and subway trains, I read one of my books on the way, The Moon is a harsh mistress, by Heinlein, about a guy who becomes friends with a computer. I like it, it’s nice, I wish I could be friend with a computer that makes jokes… or anyone for that matter.

I am close, I could keep using the directions from my phone, but I don’t have to, I can see the line of people outside the building, all of them coming for their interviews no doubt. I form in like and pick up my book again.

Or maybe I should strike a conversation?. I look at the people around me, too bad that when you are in line you can talk at most with the people directly in front or behind you.

The guy behind is dressed with a suit, he’s holding a briefcase, he seems to be around my age but is around 30 cm taller than me. He doesn’t seem like the kind of person I’d like to speak with, too serious, probably only likes beer and sports. There is nothing wrong with that, it’s just not my thing.

I laugh. Beggars can’t be choosers, right?, it’s not like if I was a super interesting person, who am I to be judging if someone is interesting or boring?. Let’s look at the person in front.

A woman, around my height. She has short hair which immediately makes her 20% more attractive to me. I don’t know why, I just like women with short hair. She is wearing a waxed cotton jacket and jeans… she seems a little too serious, I feel like our personalities wouldn’t match.

I have this superstition that I can tell if I’m gonna get along with someone just by seeing them, like if I could feel their personalities by just seeing them.

This superstition was born out of strange cases where it seemingly worked. For example I used to have this classmate… she was rude, loud, and confident. She definitely wasn’t very girly, but I wouldn’t say she was manly either. I guess she was just strong. I could feel like we would get along but she perceived me as weak, I think, I could feel disdain irradiating from her whenever she heard me speak.

We had two classes together, Ethics and Linear Algebra, one right after the other, and one day the Ethics class was cancelled.

I arrived early to the classroom of Linear Algebra and so did she, she took seriously her studies but she wasn’t very nerdy. She would work had and play hard.

Anyway, as I saw her entering the room I asked her:

-Why didn’t you come to Ethics?

-It was cancelled you idiot

-What?, no, I was just there

-It was cancelled, I got an email about that yesterday

-I don’t know what emails you got, but I was there, and we had a quiz

-Fuck…- she said, closing her eyes, feeling the stress of her screwup… and then I began laughing. She looked at me, realizing I had completely fooled her, and she smiled

-Sorry, I just had to

-You fucking idiot- she said taking her seat

From then on we became good friends. Every time we had to do group projects in any of those classes we always worked together. We were both happy to finally not be the only person doing all the work. I was pretty good at linear algebra too, and so she would often ask me for help. Some of my fondest memories of that semester are working together at the common room doing homework, joking around.

After that semester we hardly spoke or saw each other again. There was one night, at the common room, when we were doing homework, when someone made a comment about us dating, it was an innocent comment, a misunderstanding, and there was an awkward silence.

-We aren’t, in fact he told me the other day about that girl he likes- that was true, I told her- what about her by the way?

-We went out- I said- we went for pizza, we had a good time

-A good time- she said in that tone of voice which implies a lot

-Not such a good time- I had to admit- but good enough

I remember, perhaps next semester, when a guy I didn’t know greeted me in the hall.

-Hi, you are friends with Lara, right?

-Yes- I would barely see her during that semester, perhaps by the end of it I would admit we were just acquaintances

-Has she ever mentioned me?

-What’s your name?

He told me, I don’t remember, I told him she had not told me about him. I asked him to explain why he was asking me this.

-We kind of dated a while during the summer but… we never made it official, it has been a while since we went out and… she told me I took too long… I just wanted to know if I was still on her mind

-You might be, we are not that close… I… don’t know what to say

-It’s fine, sorry dude, that was weird

‘Took too long’. That phrase haunted me for the next couple of weeks. Was it possible that you had feelings for someone but that if you don’t act on the right time everything fails?. I understand your feelings about someone can change but… can they change that much in just a few weeks?, can it be that both people still like each other but somehow the wait has ruined their chance at a relationship?.

I don’t know, I have no idea if that’s how it works. I have no idea how anything works.

Maybe Lara and I would have been a good couple, maybe I should have been fearless. My feelings for her weren’t very strong, but perhaps they don’t need to be. Perhaps men and women can be just friends, but then, at moments like this, I feel like I wasted good chances.

Maybe it’s for the best, she used to smoke a lot and I can’t stand the smell.

I don’t feel like talking to the girl in front anymore.

-Nervous- asks the guy behind me

-A little- I admit

-Yeah, me too, interviews suck, to how many interviews have you been so far?

-Six I think… this would be my seventh

-Nice!, nice… I’ve been to 8… I’m not trying to one-up you- he says a little embarrassed-  it’s just… I’ve been to eight interviews

-It’s fine- I laugh. He sounds a lot less formal than he looks. I like how he sounds- did you also study molecular machines?, or do you come from artificial intelligence?

-What?, I studied logistics

-And you are applying to be an AI Rewarder?

-Well, yes, but for logistics and supply chains, you are applying to be an AIR for molecular machines?

-Yes… I assumed we all came to interview for the same position, but of course we are not

-Thank God, can you imagine if this many people were interviewing for the same position?

-It would have to be a very good position like getting paid for getting you dick sucked

-Or getting paid to suck dicks- says the girl in front

-That one does exist- I point out, there is an awkward silence, the guy behind me laughs, she laughs, we all laugh.

-Yeah, good point- the girl says- why am I even in this line?

-Because then you would have to suck the dick of anyone who pays… - says the guy in the back- and that’s why it’s a job. If I could get paid for sucking the dicks of only super hot guys then I would not be in the line either

-But super hot guys get sucked for free- I say- so here we are

-Here we are- the girl says

We talk for a while. The guy’s name is Robert and the girl’s name is Clarissa. Turns out that Robert and I studied in the same university and even have some acquaintances in common. Clarissa studied in a university I had never heard of, she studied nanotechnology and she is applying for the same position I am. It’s a little awkward when we find out.

-Probably neither of us will get it anyway- she says, and I agree. We laugh.

A woman who is very formally dressed comes to us.

-You are coming for the position of molecular machines?- she asks Clarissa

-Yes- she answers

-Me too- I add

-Okay so one two- the woman says and thinks- come with me

-Sure- I say, I take out my phone and point it to Robert- can I add you to contacts?

-Sure- he says and quickly takes out his own phone and points it to mine, I get a notification “new contact received”

-Pass it to me later- Clarissa asks me

-Sure

We follow the woman into the building, it feels wrong to be jumping the line.

-Why are we jumping the line?- I ask

-There is one specific guy who interviews for your position and he is leaving soon

It sounds like they were in a hurry, but they ask us to sit and wait in a hallway, it’s been a couple of minutes now, I’m nervous, I feel my blood rushing to my arms and legs, preparing me to either fight or escape, but my body is wrong, these are fears that can’t be defeated nor escaped from.

-Have you ever done AI rewarding?- I ask

-A couple of times for university projects

-Me too

Come on!, I have to do something. Clarissa seems to be fun, I have to try to get along with her so that she’ll want to see me again, we were having such a good conversation before, I just need to get the ball rolling again, but how?. I have my book with me, that could be a conversation topic… but dammit, I don’t want to be the guy who is known for always talking about books… maybe we could move the conversation to movies or videogames… but I’ll try to start it with this book.

I take my book out of a pocket on the inside of my jacket.

-Huh- she says- I didn’t expect a book to fit there

-It’s tight but it fits… have you read it?

-Robert Heinlein… wasn’t he super… racist and sexist and the problematic kind of weird?

-Kinda, he got worse as he became more famous, but this book seems to be alright so far, it’s about a guy who becomes friends with a computer, and the computer character is quite charismatic

-I prefer Asimov, his work got better as he got more famous, more inclusive, more open minded…

-I know, right!, have you read ‘The gods themselves’?, it’s one of my favorite books

A door opens in the hallway.

-You two interviewing for the molecular machines position?- asks a man peaking from behind the door

-Yes- we reply

-Come, just one, then the other

Clarissa stands up before I do.

-Good luck- I say

-Thanks

After her interview she waves goodbye at me and walks out of the building. I stand up and head in for the interview.

The interview is… unremarkable. I forget it as soon as it’s over. He just asks a bunch of questions about my experience and the things I’ve done with molecular machines. I basically just recited my CV to the guy, what’s even the point of making us come?.

The best part was obviously getting to know Robert and Clarissa. I miss that. Getting to know new people. When I was studying I was surrounded by people I could meet. If I fucked it up and gave a bad impression there was a practically endless supply of new humans to interact with. Now I still interact with a lot of people… but there’s not much change of conversation taking orders at a restaurant, or washing the dishes, or filling glasses of beer.

You are not gonna talk with the clients, not more than necessary anyway, you are not gonna become friends, and you can try to have conversations with the other employees, get to know them and even become friends… but it’s hard because you are barely two sentences in when you or they have to go do something… and yet you may still get their contact and feel like they may want to see you again… and then they just ghost you, and I’m left to wonder what I did wrong.

A couple of people have told me that I am ‘too intense’ and that my intensity sometimes scares people… but I don’t know, I’ve made friends before, with my intensity and everything… it’s just that eventually all the relationships I make end up evaporating, leaving nothing behind. Why did I stop talking to Lara?.

We all have patterns and I hate all of mine. One that I particularly hate is that I’ve noticed I’m bad at making friendships with other men. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I’m not into a lot of ‘manly' things like the circle game or doing exercise… most of the time I feel like there is some kind of wall I can’t get through.

I don’t have this problem with women, but then the problem is that I would like to be in a romantic relationship and experience emotional and physical intimacy other kinds of relationships cannot offer… but I’ve never found a woman who was interested on having such a kind of relationship with me.

In the way back I buy some ramen. I don’t even feel like making a sandwich tonight and ramen requires the least possible preparation… but then I see them. Millionaire shortbread. Holly shit. That thing has a layer of chocolate, but not like thin little layer that barely has any substance, no, you have to bite the motherfucker, and it cracks when you break it, an bellow it you have caramel, soft and sweet, and then you have the obligatory cookie or bread or something made with wheat. 

Have you noticed that wheat byproducts make things acceptable to eat?. If I took a jar of marmalade and a spoon people would disapprove, but then if I put the marmalade in a slice of bread it’s suddenly fine. 

It’s not like I don’t like the layer of cookie bellow, I do, it’s just that I’d like we all to be free to just eat what we want to eat without needing intermediaries to justify ourselves. For example, when you make a peanut butter and jam sandwich you don’t want to eat the bread. Be free and just eat the peanut butter and jam.

Should I buy it?, it’s not just one square, this is like a whole tray, am I gonna do it?. It costs half a book, half an hour of work… I have been saving, I have enough to pay two more weeks of rent… am I really gonna eat my emotions like this?.

Yes. I like it when the chocolate slides on the caramel, I don’t know why.

The sun wakes me up. I scratch myself and check my phone. This is odd… there was a solar storm, just a couple of hours ago… and apparently it's a big one, they are warning electronics all over the world could fail. They are warning to keep away from pieces of metal, to not connect computers nor phones to the electric grid, and to be prepared for a cease in communications. Fuck. I better get a few applications through before the storm hits, and get a shift for today too, if the internet fails I will not be able to get any shifts.

The internet is going crazy over this. Some people say it is not true and twist their conspiracy theories to fit this new development. But among all the noise there is a few voices that get my attention: the Ring, what do we do with the Ring?.

It is far from the magnetosphere, completely exposed. I mean, it was made to sustain radiation, but nothing like this… and now I see scientist warning this may just be the first wave, that the sun may release solar flares this big for the next few days straight. What’s gonna happen with the world?, how are we gonna get through this?.

I send a few applications, eat and head to the place of my next shift. I’m leaving two hours early, but this is because I don’t want to take the subway, what if it fails with me on it and I can’t get off?, I’d be late to the shift and I wouldn’t get paid.

I get there but it’s nearly empty, most people don’t want to eat out in times like this. We serve the one table we have and then I look at the others. There’s no clients, there’s nothing to do. I grab one of the chair and sit…

-No!- the others at the bar say

-Why not?- I ask

-We are not allowed to to sit while we are working- the bartender explains

-…but there’s only one table and we already served them

-No matter

And so, for the next nine hours, I stand, motionless, bored, feeling the passing of every second, feeling the desperation growing restless inside me. My mind demands novelty, challenge, or entertainment, demands it… I try to… make up stories in my mind, but the tension in my mind makes it hard… I try to remember movies… but my memories are foggy… I try to do math… to balance chemical reactions… I try to count the number of objects in the room… I try to feel my blood flowing through my body… I try to remember famous mathematical proofs… nothing works, I can’t concentrate in anything long enough to appease my mind… I need something to do, I need to move, I need novelty or challenge, this is torture… the table!, they want something… it is like finding mud in the desert, I still hate to drink it, but it will keep me alive for a little longer…

When the shift is finally over I head back… walking, seeing the city, having to think about which way I’m going… my mind is slowly becoming liquid again… my thoughts are flowing… that was the worst shift I have ever done.

My phone feels hot, it has no signal, it shows that it’s charging even though it’s not connected to anything. I use it to check the time and it warns me that it is receiving too much current, that the device is in risk of damage, to please unplug it, so I decide to not use it at all for the next few hours.

When I arrive to the apartment I notice that the light on top of the door is turned on, but it’s motion activated… then I notice that all lights everywhere are turned on. The changes to the magnetic field because of the solar flare are so strong no electronic can help it but work. I wish I had a compass right now…

I head in, I look through my things and find my sewing kit along with a sock I never finished fixing. I take a needle, a piece of paper and go into the kitchen to fill a bowl of water. I rub the needle on my hair and use it to pierce the piece of paper, then I put everything on the water.

The water served to reduce friction, the large surface of the piece of paper makes it float, and the needle, charged from rubbing it with my hair, moves following the magnetic field. Normally it would point to somewhere in Canada or Greenland, the magnetic North Pole, but today I see it moving chaotically form side to another, as if it couldn’t remember where north is supposed to be, indecisive.

This is so cool!. I love it when science works. I’m so used to science being so complex… in order to make the simplest molecular machine I need a lab and equipment that cost more than I will earn in my whole life… but this experiment is so simple, and it works, and I can see our magnetic field completely fucked up because of this solar flare.

The sun wakes me up. I start scratching with my brush, I check my… should I check my phone?, does it still work?, I should have turned it off last night. Maybe the solar flare has calmed down. Yes!, I have internet, I check it… oh.

Well, it seems that we will have periodical solar flares for the next couple of weeks. All of the energy supply systems have suffered heavy damage, it will take months to repair them. This means there won’t be enough supply for everyone, and even the countries or regions that are still unaffected soon will be. Maybe we will have to ration electricity, how will that even work?.

But that’s fine, I can live with all of that, the problem is the Ring.

The Ring is far from Earth’s magnetosphere, it was designed to resist a lot of stuff… but this solar storm was something else. Reading about it in news sites it seems that the radiation has heavily damaged the Ring, it will take years to fix it.

Even worse… I can already see the dominos falling, if I am thinking this, others will surely think it too:

We are lacking energy, but the Ring has A LOT of it, many millions of yottawatts, and it’s not working. Why not take a little of it?.

But I can see that as soon as one country takes a little of that energy others will take a little more… I can already see all that precious energy we collected for almost a century slipping away… NO!… I’m crying… it’s fucked, it’s all fucked…

I get a billion automated emails, they are from all the jobs I applied to, informing me that the mission has been postponed indefinitely.

I stand up, walk over the crooked planks covered in carpet, and get to the kitchen.

As I’m eating cereal I check my phone. I have Robert’s and Clarissa’s contact from the other day. I still haven’t messaged them, so I do that, they are bound to be free as well, right?.

After three hours they eventually reply. We talked about how everything is fucked, and I ask them if they wanna go anywhere.

“Go where?, everything’s closed, only essential businesses can use electricity” Robert informs me.

“There are parks”

I’ve always hated making plans. For one, I don’t like spending money, and people always expect to spend money when they go out, they want to spend money. Also, I never know where to go. The reason I go out is to interact with certain people, if I wanted to go to a certain place I would go alone so that they don’t distract me from the place, like when I go to a museum for the first time.

But now this crappy situation has actually helped me in this one thing. Now going to the park seems like a very reasonable choice, and there aren’t many more.

Clarissa arrived earlier than me, and soon after Robert is here too. I panic. Was it a good idea to invite them?. We only talked in a line for like 30 minutes, it’s not like we are friends… but they came, right?, they could have chosen not to, but they did… if anything goes wrong it’s also their fault.

-So it seems we all will have to suck dicks for a living now- Clarissa says, she’s only half joking, it’s weird to see her dressed casually now, she looks like a normal girl, and not corporate woman 

-All the job opportunities fucking imploded in like… two days…- Robert explains- even jobs not related to the Ring are fucked, my brother works in a steel foundry and he says they told him to pick half the workers to keep because the parent company had some big Ring contract which is worthless now

-At least i your brother is doing the firing he’s not getting fired himself…right?- I wonder

-Yeah, hopefully- Roberts says and laughs a little

We walk over a hill, from here you can see a good chunk of the city, you would see all of it if Skyscraper Ridge wasn’t blocking the view. We sit down.

-So, what are you guys gonna do?- Clarissa asks us

-I guess I’ll go back to my country- I say- not much point in staying here, and my visa expires in like two months anyway

-I’ll see if I can get a job at my mom’s business- Robert says and sighs a lot- I’m gonna deliver flowers or something like that… and you?

-I have no fucking clue, get a job as a nanny or something

-Those are not bad jobs- I say- plenty of people do them, and they like them

-Well… yes- Clarissa admits- but that’s not what we wanted to do

-I don’t know about you, but I worked very hard to get my masters in logistics- Robert tells me, I angered him

-Maybe that was our mistake- I reply- we worked hard to rise in the world, but we failed, and life is sending us back were we belong

We stay in silence for a moment. We know this is just the depression talking, but no one has the self esteem to argue against me right now.

-Even is that is true- Clarissa says, quietly- at least we tried

 

We talk a while more and we say goodbye. I wish we could have been a group of friends who get together frequently.

The sun wakes me up and I see the ocean from the window of my plane, soon we’ll be landing.

In the airpot my mom hugs me super hard. I hate hugs, but I know she likes it, so I endure it.

We drive together back home and I tell them of all the things that happened to me since I finished my masters.

-You never had time to talk- my mom says

-Yeah, working those shifts was exhausting- but I’m lying. I mean, those shifts were indeed exhausting, but I didn’t want to talk if I only had bad news or no news at all.

The world keeps struggling to produce the energy we need. It’s been three months and the Sun keeps on storming. We can see the Northern lights every night now. They say you can even see them in the equator now. That’s fucking insane. That had probably never happened… except for those times we tested nuclear weapons in the Pacific.

 The price of candles skyrockets, matches become important again, My father tells me that I will tell my grandchildren about the time we went back to the stone age and fire was our most priced resource. He laughs about it a lot. I can’t laugh when I see him go to work, and I still haven’t gotten anything anywhere.

Whenever we have internet we rush to check out what’s happened, but it’s always the same. Countries around the world are wielding their diplomacy as a weapon to get as much of the Ring’s energy as possible. Some world leaders have even said they hope to get so much of that energy that their rivals “must check their phones by candlelight”. I know, I know.

I think the worst part is to think of the many planets we wanted to visit, of the colonies who will be waiting for us, wondering what went wrong.

We have already used all the energy the Ring collected in 3 years, and by the end of this mess, the mission will have be delayed by 10 years or more.

-By then you’ll have a lot of experience and a great CV- my mom says as I help her cook tortilla soup- you’ll get one of those jobs where they have their place assured years in advance, you’ll see

-Maybe… how would you feel about me leaving?, because I can’t come back…

-All I’ve ever wanted for you is to be happy, if going in an adventure to explore other planets is what makes you happy I’ll be happy for you

-Thanks