Author: Eva C. Stein

Jen watched the boy wobble on his magnitro board, sparks flaring at the edges as one foot just skimmed the dusty ground.
“He’s heading for disaster,” she said, not expecting a reply.
“Or notoriety,” a voice said beside her.
She turned. A stranger had landed on the smart bench with a thud, the seat whirring as it registered him.
“You sound like you understand,” Jen said, eyes on the boy now tracing cautious arcs.
“Everything’s urgent,” Cody said. “Pride. Rage. Love. A surge of input before filters stabilise.”
“Too much data?”
“Too much, too fast. Youth wants it all – attention, validation. Even phantom alerts set off alarms.”
Jen adjusted the wool scarf embedded with microclimate regulators. “Without core processing secured, every signal feels like a threat.”
A child’s voice lifted in the distance – a fleeting, looping call, then silence.
Cody nodded. “So you overcorrect. Find solace in others’ glitches. Not malice, just a skewed sense of balance.”
“Not fairness,” Jen said. “Just visibility.”
Cody sighed. “Raucous too, always on edge. But not for the reasons they think.”
The boy moved in easy circles now. His shadow trailed, unbothered.
“All right,” Jen said. “That’s youth. What about old age, then?”
A pigeon drone limped through the grass. It flapped one wing, then stilled.
“Old age,” Cody said, eyes narrowing. “That’s the opposite, right? Firmware’s taken too many hits. You stop trusting and lock your circuits. You stop giving – energy, time, signal. You forget to assert your bandwidth.”
“Sounds… worn. Tired.”
“Doesn’t it? Eventually, you stop caring what others broadcast – not from confidence but detachment. Not proud – just past your last reboot cycle. Still active, but out of sync.”
Jen pulled her sleeves down. The scarf glimmered faintly as it slipped from her shoulder. Cody noticed, but said nothing.
“I get it,” she said. “No regulation in youth, diminished energy in old age. So what’s the middle?”
Cody gave a small smile. “That’s when you hit synchronisation – receptive enough to feel, stable enough to analyse. No overload, no shutdown; you care, but you’re not hijacked by feedback.”
Jen nodded slowly. “Right. Constructed balance.”
“Exactly. You know when to broadcast, when to muffle. You don’t need to dominate the network – but you still show up.”
“Trouble is, we don’t get long in that state, not if we accept linear time.”
Cody’s gaze went distant. “Ten years, on average. That’s all we get: ten cycles when the system holds – when pride’s not the root process and fear’s not overriding. Long enough to build a true signal – if you’re tuned in.”
Jen exhaled, tracing the etched letters on the bench’s alloy armrest. She caught the edge of her scarf, holding it close.
Cody added quietly, “You’ve got to stay optimised just long enough to make it count.”
She studied him now. “Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Did you… make it count?”
Cody shot her a look, then stood. He pulled his magnitro board from under the bench, stepped on, and launched forward with smooth, accelerating ease. Dust lay undisturbed in his wake.
He called something over his shoulder, but the wind carried it away before Jen’s hearing filters could lock on. Just as well – some answers never need decoding.