Why write a song when ten million songs are born every hour? Why fix a bridge when a drone will do it for you, silently, while you sleep? Why fall in love when intimacy is available on-demand, with no risk, no cost, no commitment?

Not in the world. In me.

I remember standing in the — a building the size of a mountain, where every book, film, painting, and recipe ever made was stored for free access. I watched a young woman scroll through ten thousand love letters written over three thousand years. She read none of them. She just scrolled. Her thumb moved like a metronome. Then she stood up, yawned, and left.

The had solved poverty, but it had accidentally dissolved desire . And without desire, there is no direction. Without direction, there is no story. Without story, we become ghosts haunting a machine that no longer needs us. By the time I turned twenty, the world had grown quiet. Not silent—quiet in the way a library is quiet at midnight. People still walked the streets. They still smiled. But the smiles had the quality of mannequins. We had everything. So we wanted nothing.