Seeing Red

STOP-

I don't want a printing subscription, or a typing subscription. Hell, I'll go find an old typewriter before I buy into that sell. I'll even learn to make ink and paper.

I don't want to "subscribe and save" to something. I don't want everything to automatically renew. I most certainly do not want to give an AI assistant access to ANYTHING of mine (including my thoughts, questions, or ideas), but especially not to my bank account.

I don't want glasses that tell me what things are, I'd rather ask someone who knows. I don't want a robot to summarize the key points of my group chat, I want to talk to my friends and family for myself.

I want picnics in the park, phones put away in bags and not thought about unless they're actually needed. I want water fights in summer, not water shortages to feed the machine. I want a colorful house, not a smart one. I want care, not convenience.

If one day Microsoft locks me out of my laptop because I refuse to pay for a subscription, I'll go to the library and check out a few books to figure out how to reprogram it. I'll learn fucking Linux, if I have to. Hell, I'm considering learning it now, with the way the world's going.

I want to add that I don’t make a habit of this now that I am a law abiding adult, but recently I accidentally did this again. Having been used to having my run of hospitals and walking basically anywhere as a child, I was visiting a friend in the hospital just before covid and I was legitimately exhausted and carrying a coffee cup cuz it was like 5:30am or something dumb, and I went to leave and get to the bottom floor and i’m like “this is not the lobby” and I walked around for a bit and people kept holding doors for me so I traveled through many corridors, and nothing looked familiar, and then I realized every single door was a key card swipe and everyone had mag-stripe badges with varying security levels and I realized I had gotton onto a staff elevator with the staff, who had swiped their card to go down into a high-security area of the building, and people had just been letting me through all these security doors.

So then I had to out myself and be like “Um I accidentally broke into you high-security wing, please show me the door, I’m literally just trying to leave this hospital” and I had to get like searched and stuff. 

And what was funny was that while I was blissfully walking around assuming I belonged, No one questioned ANYTHING and in fact, were violating protocols left and right to let me through, but the VERY SECOND I realized I was not where I was supposed to be and let that show on my face, like three people in the hall confronted me. 

So the take away is, be confident that you belong, look exhausted and like you don’t want to be there, and carry a cup of coffee. It will open pretty much all doors.

I finally attracted the notice of someone who was meant to be part of this restoration project when I came back up from the hole. He quickly came over to ask me, in Italian, what I’m sure were the very normal questions of “Who are you?”, “What are you doing here??”, etc.

Problem: I do not speak Italian.

My brain’s solution: Quick, what language do we speak that’s close?! 

And that is how I wandered up out of a hole in a Roman ruin without warning and began speaking ancient Latin to an archaeologist.

This man’s face went through 15 different absolutely floored expressions in ten seconds, like you could physically see him going through the thought process of “Have I encountered a ghost from ancient Rome? No, ghosts aren’t real. But if ghosts not real, how Latin??? Fellow researcher??? Supposed to be here???”