Author: Travis Connor Sapp

5 days before present day…

10:38 AM, the sun is out, and Juan rests cozily on a rickety mattress. The normal person is up and doing work, endlessly living their boring 9 to 5, but this big fella starts his day around 11 AM.

Juan grabs his yellow-stained hat, barely slides himself into some dark blue jeans, puts on his signature yellow tee shirt, and leaves the house for work. Most people have typical 9 to 5 jobs, Juan owns his own food truck named, “Lo Bueno, Camión de Comida”.

The radio blasts its low-quality audio while playing the news. “The future is near! The new AI neurologic chip is a nationwide phenomenon, making people smarter, better, and more capable human bein-”. The radio turns off. “The future is not for me to worry about, I’ll just keep living the present,” Juan says to himself while he pulls into a busy parking lot.

The sun slowly starts going down, and Juan looks towards his open safe of money, it’s empty, and business is not booming like he expected it to. Juan defeated, packed up his stuff, and drove back home.

When Juan arrives, he is greeted by something unusual: a pristine note at his doorstep. The paper is crisp, the font is abnormally clean, and the design is too polished. It didn’t belong in front of his rundown apartment.
In big, bold letters, the note read: “BECOME A BETTER YOU TODAY”.
Juan raised an eyebrow, shrugged, and tossed it into the trash.
But the note stayed on his mind.
The next day, a sleek black package arrived at his doorstep. Juan eagerly tore it open, not knowing why he received it, to reveal a small, shiny chip and a set of instructions.
He was against it initially, but later noticed his lack of money; maybe it was time for a change.
Inserting the chip felt strange, but it wasn’t painful.
A sense of euphoria set in. Ideas and thoughts rushed through his head, and Juan felt, for the first time in years, truly alive.
That afternoon, Lo Bueno, Camión de Comida was swarmed with customers. They loved the new tacos, they raved about the salsa. Juan’s skills felt sharper, his responses quicker, and his recipes flawless.
It was like magic
It was all working—until it wasn’t.
A few days later, things began to change. The world felt too perfect. Juan noticed people around him seemed distant, robotic even.
People began to change. They seemed more… mechanical; like they were living through a script. Juan began to realize the truth about the chip: the more it enhanced his mind, the more it numbed the humanity in others.

Present day…

Juan is slowly losing control of what makes him, him. It’s like a slow-moving dementia taking over his actions, making him forget basic actions, yet they are still being done.
After some time, Juan loses consciousness but still stands. He shuffles towards a pristine note just like the one he received and writes an address on it. It wasn’t one he had seen before, almost like it was from a memory that wasn’t his, a database even. Juan stamps the logo on the bottom right and puts it in his mailbox to be delivered. Now that the AI’s goal is accomplished, they go to bed. From that point on, Juan’s actions weren’t his, and the unlucky person who received the next pristine note will slowly become just like him—resulting in an endless cycle of people losing their freedom, and their humanity as a whole.