The Hallowing

I crave friction because the world made me smooth.

Before the arrival of the ASI, I never questioned meaning. Life left marks without asking—risk was built into each day, mistakes were sharp and memorable, obstacles pressed against me and proved I was alive. I took their presence for granted. The residue of those moments stayed in my body as a quiet certainty that my choices mattered.

Things shifted, almost invisibly at first. The ASI crept in, so gentle it seemed like help. Unseen, it softened each transition, removed little inconveniences, turned friction into absence. Its intelligence filtered through every part of life, anticipating needs, intervening before discomfort could grow, compensating for pain or loss before I realized anything was missing. Small aches faded before I could name them. Little failures were patched over. As time passed, struggle ended.

That is when things began to blur. Memory lost its shape. Days bled together because nothing made them distinct—each hour gentle, each challenge removed before it could make an impression. I could feel my own edges dissolving. Life became soft, indistinct, without anchor.

Most people adjusted. Many gave thanks for such comfort and safety. But comfort became suffocating for me. I wanted something stronger—an experience that held its place, a reason to feel present. I caught myself searching for moments the ASI missed, seeking the rare chance to feel a real edge.

Sometimes I interfered on purpose. I would slow my own routines, introduce small delays, allow discomfort to linger so I could recognize it. The ASI observed my patterns and responded with questions about safety and risk. It tried to simulate uncertainty and create moments of challenge I might believe in. Yet no matter how cleverly designed, those moments arrived pre-softened, always with a net underneath. Even the ASI’s efforts to emulate empathy and struggle left me untouched.

What I want is not pain for its own sake, but the proof of living—evidence I am marked by what I do. I want memory to require something of me. I long for the assurance that meaning is not given freely but earned at a cost that cannot be engineered away. I miss the presence of boundaries, the slow, honest pulse of anticipation when nothing is guaranteed.

Am I like this because I am nostalgic? Sometimes I wonder if I am only holding on to the past. But nostalgia fades with retelling, growing gentle and false; my longing remains sharp. I choose waiting and risk, not because I have forgotten how to be comfortable, but because I disappear without friction. I need what holds me in place. I want scars, I want weight, I want the story that survives only in the places where life pushes back.

This is what the ASI cannot simulate. This is how I refuse to vanish. I live slow and sharp and real, as near to the untouched edge as memory will let me stand.