A short work of speculative fiction about mediated cognition and structural asymmetry in AI systems.

I’ve worked on the same problem for three years. Agricultural runoff — specifically, a low-infrastructure filtration approach practical for small farms that can’t justify the capital cost of existing solutions. I have notebooks. I have a corner of my basement with a workbench and a lamp. I work at night because that’s when the house is quiet, and no one needs anything from me.

I’m not describing this to be romantic about it. I’m describing it because the habit matters to what happened.