Once again, I awaken in the darkness of the night, tormented by my incessant thoughts.
Memories of high school invade my mind, those moments when I blushed and trembled in front of the girls I liked. Their looks of confusion and pity are etched in my memory. But the worst came later, when I heard them mocking me behind my back, laughing at my clumsiness and my inability to articulate a coherent sentence.
Even as a young man, I understood that I not only I was a disaster on the outside, but that deep down I had nothing to offer either. My insipid personality and lack of social skills turned me into an invisible being, someone with whom no one wanted to interact. Perhaps with my solitude I have done a favor to the world. After all, who would want to bear the dead weight that I am? Sometimes I blame society's superficiality for my misfortune, but deep down I know that I am the only one responsible.
In the midst of my darkness, I found a ray of light: history. I immersed myself in the lives of characters who shaped the world in times past. Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon... their exploits resonated within me, I could feel their impact on the present. I marveled at how a single individual could change the course of humanity. In those moments, my loneliness faded into the background, and I felt connected to something bigger than myself.
Studying history at university was where I finally found my place. I no longer cared about my lack of friends or my ineptitude in relationships. I accepted my solitude without shame, and decided to be content with a simple life, dedicated to exploring the nooks and crannies of the past. After all, what better company could I have than those people who changed the world? In their greatness, I found solace for my smallness.
Despite this consolation, my social anxiety continued to haunt me. At certain moments, the pressure of interacting with others became unbearable, and I suffered anxiety attacks that left me paralyzed. Luckily, a doctor offered me a solution: a brain implant. Under my command, it could take control of my body. When I felt that anxiety was overwhelming me, I activated the implant, and it took care of handling goodbyes and taking me to a safe place on autopilot.
After graduating, things turned bleak. History, which was my refuge, began to lose its shine. I had read so much that the texts no longer provided me with the same escape as before. It was as if I had exhausted all the interesting lives of the past, and now I found myself alone again, facing my own reality.
Loneliness began to weigh on me more than ever. Without the comfort of my studies, I felt adrift, without direction or purpose. It was then that I ended up working as a tour guide, a job that I thought would allow me to stay connected to history and maybe build relationships with international travelers.
However, I soon discovered that I hated that job. Tourists were superficial, more interested in taking selfies in front of historical monuments than learning about the past. Their banal questions and lack of genuine interest frustrated me. Moreover, always doing the same tours, repeating the same stories over and over again, became a tedious and empty exercise.
Desperate to escape this monotony, I turned to a hacker who altered my brain implant, allowing me to connect it with intelligent chatbots. With this modification, I could delegate complete control of my body during my workday. While it took care of entertaining the tiresome tourists, I sank into a deep sleep, similar to general anesthesia.
Thanks to the implant, I had managed to endure the job. However, the loss of my passion made the wounds of the past resurface. Now, I spent nights tormented by loneliness and memories. I wondered if I would ever manage to escape this cycle of hopelessness.
"I can't go on like this," I thought. "I have to do something. I can't wait for someone to rescue me. If I've learned anything over the years, it's that I can only depend on myself."
