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