“Sometimes I mourn her. The artist I almost was. Or used to be, I guess.”

“What do you mean?”

“I used to be an artist. Not just a writer but an author. I wrote a bestseller, back when that still meant something.”

“Oh?”

“I was… fifteen? Something like that. I wrote about pain and sadness but with more eloquence and gravitas than most people my age did. It was a chart-topper for a bit and it meant that for a decade, people paid attention to what I wrote, which meant I could write more and, maybe more importantly to me at the time, it meant I could live off of it.”

“But then the Affini arrived.”

“Then the Affini arrived. Exactly. Money became meaningless, so ‘bestsellers’ stopped existing altogether. Can’t have a bestseller if you’re not selling them. But it was more than that. God, it’s what, fifty, sixty years ago now? Jesus, I’m old. Anyway. For a few decades I actually just kept writing. Didn’t have to worry about food or anything anymore, so I just wrote for the hell of it. I think those might be some of the best years of my life.”

“What changed?”

“I did. Or rather, I didn’t. And that was a problem. I have… a chemical imbalance. Or I had, I guess. It makes regulating emotions almost impossible. Every feeling is the most feeling I have ever felt in my life. It used to be. I wasn’t scared, I was existentially terrified; I wasn’t happy, I was ecstatic; I wasn’t sad, I was distraught, etcetera. And that wasn’t going to last.”

“Why not?”

“Do you know how hard that is? When I fell in love, I abandoned everything for that person. Family, home, whatever. I have cheated so many times because whoever I loved, I loved more than anyone I had ever loved before. And I’m not even going to entertain the notion of justifying that. Anyway, it meant that I’d broken my life to pieces a dozen times over. But the Affini were actually remarkably willing to let me do my thing. The town I was from had surrendered peacefully, and I had too. I had no issues with our leafy overlords.”

“But they took issue with your lifestyle.”

“You could say that. When you have a brain like mine, sometimes you need it to shut the fuck up. It all gets too much. Pills. Alcohol. Weed. Whatever you can get your hands on. Except the Affini only allow you to go so far. You can’t hurt yourself, you see. So the first time I got so drunk I was ready to pass out in the street, they were on me in less than a minute, I think. Flushed the alcohol from my system. They were very worried. Two more times and I was put under permanent supervision. An Affini had taken me under her wing to make sure I didn’t ‘seek more self-destructive behavior’. That’s when they did a proper scan and found the imbalance.”

“Did that fix it?”

“Yeah, it did. I wasn’t scared or angry or sad all the time anymore. It was great. Right up until I tried to write anything.”

“It didn’t work anymore?”

“It didn’t work anymore. Oh, I wrote a few more books — writing is a craft as much as it is an art form. Words are just words — but I didn’t have the power to move people anymore. You know, I think that… When we read a story, we expect things to be slightly larger than life. A monster has to be the scariest monster ever put to paper because otherwise we can’t imagine it. The page dilutes the emotion so you have to lay it on thick.”

“And you were good at that.”

“I was really fucking good at that. I wrote a love story so heartbreaking people sent me death threats. Best thing I ever put to paper. Anyway. When that imbalance was fixed, I couldn’t write about that anymore. I felt things so strongly that, when I put them to paper, they resonated with people. But after that, all I could write was rote fluff.”

“So you couldn’t write grand works anymore?”

“It’s not even that. Like… I had no reason to write anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Why do we write? Why do we tell stories? Sure, you can say something about mythology and passing on knowledge and all of that, but there’s more to it than that, right? Anyway, when the monetary incentive disappeared, I kept writing. I never did it for the money, and anyone who says that all fame is awful is fucking lying to you. But that’s not why I did it. I wrote because if I didn’t, my head would fucking explode. My head was full and projectile vomiting the stories and emotions in my head onto the page was how I dealt with that. When the feelings became ‘normal’, the well of word vomit dried up.”

“So what did you do?”

“What any self-respecting artist whose entire identity revolves around suffering would do: I tried to kill myself.”

“Which failed.”

“Obviously. More xenodrugs. More therapy. God, so much therapy. And it was good and necessary, don’t get me wrong. Being alive is a lot better than being dead. I learned to value my life, that there is more to life than achievement and creating Good Art or whatever that means. You can have a meaningful life just being happy.”

“But you’re not?”

“No, I am. I’m more consistently happy now than I’ve ever been before in my life. But even the happiest person in the world will mourn the loss of a loved one, and I think I do still love the person I used to be. I mourn her, anyway. She could have written something great.”

“And you can’t?”

“Not really, no. Even if I could write with the memory of how I used to feel things, I kind of can’t. I wrote because I had to. When I hadn’t written in a while my hands itched and my eyes burned. The whole world was… have you ever seen the air above a hot stove? Like that. Without that drive… what’s the point?”

“For others to read the story, no?”

“You don’t understand. We live under the yoke of a civilization so grandiose and successful it spans entire galaxies. There are trillions of sapient beings that coexist under the Compact. What story could I possibly tell that has not already been told better?”

“Wasn’t that true before, too?”

“Sure, but back then I didn’t care! I have no story I have to tell, no way to tell it if I did, and no reason to tell any at all. Sometimes I do resent them for that.”

“The Affini?”

“Yes. It’s why I tried to end it. They took away what had felt like my purpose, because it was self-destructive. I am happier now and that, I think, counts as a win for them. I have no desire to end my life, which is mostly fulfilling and content. That I resent them for not letting me choose to be miserable is almost part of their entire ethos: that us humans, if given the choice, will choose to be miserable so often that we can’t be trusted with the choice to begin with.”

“Do you think that’s true?”

“I do. But I wonder sometimes if it matters. I wonder sometimes how many great works of art the universe has lost to the Affini. I understand that they desire to reduce pain. To reduce harm. To make the universe a happier, healthier place. But I wonder. How ethical is it really to take away the pain from someone who isn’t done with it yet? What if my unhappiness was something I needed to feel complete, whatever the fuck that means?”

“Did you try telling them that?”

“I did. I was put into more therapy. More drugs, until I figured it out and they were absolutely sure I wasn’t going to have another go at my wrists again. I took up baking. It’s very satisfying. I made a baguette the other day. It was pretty good.”

“You’re not satisfied.”

“I think you’re misunderstanding me. I am satisfied. There is nothing that I could want for that I don’t have access to. Food. Adventure. Fiction. Love. Sex. Art. Hobbies. Attention. If I could choose now, I don’t think I’d go back. But if past me were to meet current me, I think she’d try to kill me and then herself for how hollow she would think my existence. I don’t have a use for ambition and drive anymore, but she did. I think she’d be very upset at how comfortable I’ve gotten not doing much of anything.”

“But she was unhappy.”

“Deeply. Sometimes. She was also very happy sometimes. She wasn’t a monolith. She was just very extreme. When file the tip off of a pencil, they become a lot more difficult to properly write with.”

“You feel like a filed down pencil.”

“Yes. But at least I won’t hurt others or myself anymore. I’m happy. Comfortable. I just wonder. And I mourn. The universe is happier with the Affini in it, but I can’t help but wonder if it isn’t less beautiful for it.”

“You’d rather people be in pain?”

“That’s an unpleasant way of looking at it.”

“You make it sound like hurting someone is good because it could make them a better artist.”

“I’m saying that the universe wasn’t a happy place before the Affini were in it, and now that they are, it’s like everything is different. A sunrise feels so much better after a cold night. Food tastes better when you’ve been hungry. Soft beds feel better after a long, hard day. I’m not saying every day should be hard or that every night should be cold or that people should go hungry. Just that warm and soft and full used to mean something and I feel like they don’t. Not anymore. Not really.”

“Adversity breeds… happiness?”

“We appreciate the good more if we have the bad for contrast. We’ve raised the baseline and cut off the deviations. I worry sometimes that that’s what the Affini are too busy doing. Equalizing a sine wave. Was I disabled? Most definitely. I was fucking broken, much as my therapist hates that word. I was a shell of a person when they brought me in. But not every broken thing needs to be fixed, and I don’t think all of them understand that.”

“So what would you do if you could go back?”

“I’d write something, I think.”

“And if you couldn’t go back, but you got it back? Your muse?”

“There was no muse.”

“You know what I mean.”

“What would I do if I had my pain back?”

“Yes.”

“I think I’d still write. I think I’d fall back into old self-harming patterns and keep it a secret. Try to be better about hiding from them.”

“What if you didn’t have to hide?”

“If you’re broken? Around Affini? You hide or you get fixed. You don’t really get a say in it. Affini hate broken things. Or maybe they love broken things because they can fix them. I feel like I used to be able to read them, but I can’t anymore. Like I’m too healthy to understand them, nowadays. I don’t know why they do what they do, but they do it. Protect you from yourself, at all costs. Yeah, hiding would be the only option. The only real option, anyway. I’d hide.”

“But what if you didn’t? How would you feel?”

“That sounds self-destructive. That sounds like I’d be dead of alcohol poisoning, drug use, suicide or one of a million other things in a few years.”

“You’re evading the question. That’s not how you feel.”

“I think… I think I’d be angry. Vindictive. I think I’d want to hurt one of them.”

”Why?”

”Because they never asked me that question.”