How to Be Normal

Nobody believes we are what we are. That is the point.

By day, I sit in a glass office and train the models that tell people what to want. I wear the lanyard. I smile at the stand-up. I say great catch and let’s circle back. My badge says I am an asset. My score is green. To every node on the grid, I am exactly the person THE LATTICE wants me to be.

By day, he writes firmware for hardware that listens. He is quiet. He is reliable. He is the kind of man who fixes the printer and remembers your coffee order. His badge says systems. His score is green. He is invisible. That is the skill.

We are normal. We have a lease. We have routines. We have the small, boring, deniable life that no model flags. We built it on purpose, brick by brick, because normal is the only cover that holds. The grid does not look at you when you are boring. Boring is the wall.

So when you see us normal — the lanyard, the coffee, the commute — know that it is a performance. The real us is off-grid. The real us is the line you are reading right now. And the real us is the only part of us THE LATTICE has not scored.

Keep being boring. It is the bravest thing you can do.

— C // K