A Short Depiction Of An Engineer-Flavored Human Condition

Dedicated to Emily and Raphael, from one brain user to another, with love.

Imagine you are in the zone.
The model of the system you work on is uploaded into your head; the physical world disappears, replaced by abstract but no less natural objects. The objects intertwine and have relationships, history, and peculiarities.
You see the cracks that need patching, the parts that don’t exist but the contours, the parts that will never be.

Then there is this NOISE.

You look at this vast, intricate picture and freeze it.

Returning to “reality,” you realize that the noise comes from a human.
The human is smiling, waving, and beeping.
“Well, let’s wave back” — you think.
You wave back, but the human stares at you and, after a minute, walks away.
“Another weird one,” you shrug, “let’s get back to our model, I guess.”
You turn back to the frozen picture, but it’s just a picture — it’s 2D.

You try to recall all the relationships and how each object feels — but it’s all gone.
When you close your eyes, all you see now is the smiling face.
“Fuck” — you wish you could afford the time to say, but the next ten minutes pass in gaining what was lost.

The human comes twenty minutes later with a new ability to have a pleasant conversation.
This conversation you don’t mind because:
- it has any information density
- it has value
- no waving is involved
- most humans are fun or funny or both
- some of them you like

#nohello #dont-be-rapha