He gets anxious when he forgets to bring his AirPods. He can’t pretend to be deep into Olivia Dean or Travis Scott or the old Weeknd or whatever he had on his music-streaming account, and now he has to pretend that without the music, he was deep in thought about something else. Surely, if you had no phone to look at or ear-thingies to listen to, what could you be doing looking at shit or thinking about shit? You were virtually exposed. Some loser could try to get your attention, to engage with you and then what? There were more and more people lately at the bus stop, phone-less, ear-thingyless, mouth slightly open, and eyes darting every which way like some animal that had been up all night. Were they hungry? Were they tired and needed to rest? He didn't really care. All he needed was to pretend to be deep into something while he watched them furtively.

He could do anything he wanted. The tools of knowledge and creation stretched from creating a totally new face for someone, teaching an AI assistant to comb through gigabytes of archival data in less than 2 minutes, to rendering a brochure in 3D just because he could. Was it necessary? Not really, and in the end, he did an actual mock-up for the 3-fold cover just to see what it was like in real life.

He wants to smell like he lived in a world on fire because it is.

One of these days out of sheer childhood nostalgia, he’s going to sit down to a bowl of his childhood Fruit Loops and watch YouTube clips of Superfriends. He will remember the days when innocence meant trusting anything that felt and tasted good; sugary cereal, the tang of orange juice, rice slathered with pork fat and seasoned with fish sauce.

Did you know? A McDonald's Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese (US) contains approximately 740–770 calories, 48–51g protein, 42–45g fat, and 40–43g carbs. This high-protein, high-fat burger also provides roughly 20g of saturated fat, 165mg cholesterol, and 1,360mg sodium.