Here we are, spinning on a blue marble, in a universe too vast to fathom, yet we’re shackled to a system as old as time, dressed in new clothes. The same play, different actors. Economic slavery, my dear friends, isn’t a relic of history books; it’s the unspoken chapter of our modern saga, a silent symphony playing in the background of our bustling lives.

Consider the rat race, that endless marathon we run, gasping for a breath of financial freedom, only to find the finish line ever-receding. It’s a masterful illusion, a trick of the light in a world where profit is king, and growth is its scepter. Infinite growth, they say, in a world finite in resources, time, and patience. But who cares about logic when the coffers need filling?

The neon sign flickered in sporadic bursts of electric color, casting its cynical promise across the cracked asphalt of the near-deserted street. “Privacy Sold Here,” it said, —as if privacy could be commodified, packaged, and distributed like so many cans of processed meat. But this was San Angeles, 2051. An urban sprawl that had metastasized across the scorched earth, swallowing town after town in a meshwork of cables, silicone, and carbon fiber.

Don’t be shy now. You can come closer. Unsettling I know, your pet beta fish chatting you up. But time’s money.

You will cooperate.

Many walls were built and pulled down. Walls that divide people. Everyone believed that those walls were dividing the world. That East and West were separating people into ‘us’ or ’them.’

An ‘.onion’ website link was posted on Reddit back in June 2020 with a suspected riddle. It got me curious. - Here’s how I solved it…

That’s funny. I always thought it was about friendship.

I thought that the reason people made small talk, you know, like standing in line at the grocery store, and, “oh, nice day today”. I thought that the reason people did stuff like that was because they had nothing interesting to think about inside their heads.