May 16, 4285
My name is Oliver Pierce.
I was born in the forty-third century, in a society convinced it has solved every problem worth caring about.
People call it a paradise.
They use that word—paradise—like it's proof we're better than every generation before us.
To me, it feels like a room with all the sharp edges filed off.
Here, kids barely tall enough to reach a workbench could build machines capable of performing surgical operations without breaking a sweat.
Teenagers take violence as casually as breathing—one wrong joke, one shove, and suddenly your spine can be in pieces. Mine was.
Just a few months back, a boy shattered my neck in anger and the teachers jokingly called it a "test of durability."
I walked again before the season changed.
Adults could even survive injuries that would have killed entire armies centuries ago.
That's how everything goes here. Nothing leaves a mark.
This place is efficient, comfortable, polished to the point of sterility.
Advancement has stalled because no one feels pressure to create anything new.
We've flattened risk, erased fear, removed consequences.
It's the end of history, and people walk around acting like that's something to be proud of.
There's no ambition here. No urgency. No real conflict.
Everything is available, everything is reversible, everything is safe.
Even death—a concept that once forced humans to confront meaning—stopped being a boundary a long time ago.
Without danger, people lose the ability to care.
Without consequences, they lose the ability to choose.
I thought I understood the limits of monotony.
I thought there was nothing left that could surprise me, nothing capable of breaking through the insulated calm that smothers this place.
But today proved me wrong.
Because... I met him.