The Scout Named Adam

He began with a lie, a small one, a harmless one. "My name is

Adam," he said again and again and again. Because humans liked repetition,

Adam sat at a desk, drank coffee, nodded in meetings that repeated themselves,

meetings about meetings, meetings that went nowhere. Interacting with people was tiring,

endlessly tiring. Working was worse. Boring in an unnatural way, a performance that

never ended. He chose to be a programmer because it let him hide screens

instead of faces, silence instead of emotion. He hated it anyway.

He hated the symbols, the fragile logic, the way yesterday's code broke for