James was excellent at nothing, and the world no longer required him to be.
He woke at nine because there was no reason to wake earlier. His house was maintained by systems he’d stopped understanding. Breakfast appeared, or rather was assembled by a kitchen that knew his nutritional needs better than he did. He ate it. It was optimal.
He walked to the window. The lawn was perfect. He had once mowed it himself, on weekends, sweating in the sun, feeling the vibration of the mower in his hands. Now a small machine did it. It did it better. Of course it did.
He considered his options. He could paint—he’d taken it up three years ago, after the graphic design work dried up. His paintings were competent and utterly unnecessary. The AI could produce anything he could imagine, faster, in any style, at any scale. He painted anyway, but the knowledge that he was performing a hobby rather than creating something needed sat in his chest like a stone.
He could go to the community center. There were classes: pottery, philosophy, woodworking, gardening. The instructors were good. The participants were kind. Everyone was doing something they didn’t need to do, and they all knew it, and they all pretended not to know it, and the pretending was the most exhausting part.
Instead, he went to the garden. The real one, in the back, the one he’d insisted on keeping manual. He knelt in the dirt and pulled weeds. The soil was cold and his knees ached. The carrots he’d planted were coming up crooked and small and imperfect.
He felt something he couldn’t name. Not happiness exactly. Not purpose in the old sense. Something older and smaller: the animal satisfaction of hands in earth, of pulling a living thing from the ground that he had planted and tended and that needed him, even though the house could have grown better carrots in a hydroponic cabinet in thirty percent less time.
He brought the carrots inside and washed them in the sink and ate one raw, standing at the counter. It was gritty and sweet and irregular. It was the best thing he’d tasted in months.