eyecatchers

alexander weinstein

I.

When the man sets himself on fire, I don’t want to look. But how can you not with flames rising from his shoulders, his face a sweaty mess, and the unanswered mystery of what his self-immolation is for? So, I look up and hear the ca-ching of my bank account being accessed, burning up my money as the man burns himself alive. I don’t want to be one of those people who avert their eyes from everything, another New Yorker passing someone camped on the street without a quick eye-flick to give them a couple cents. I sometimes do avoid glancing at the needful, but a burning body? How can you look away and still consider yourself human? 
          The answer? You just do. Like everyone else on the subway platform—the woman standing close enough for the flames to singe the hem of her peacoat, the businessman who’s checking his watch while the guy burns alive, the mom who’s shielding her daughter’s eyes and turning her toward the oncoming N train—and I suppose they’re smarter than me since it turns out to be another eyecatcher. Here comes his friend with an extinguisher and a fire blanket. The burning man is sprayed down, and the flames go out. His skin is coated with some anti-flammable gel, and he’ll suffer a couple first degree burns, but this is no self-immolation, just a way to get a bunch of eyeballs on him and earn a couple bucks. Still, when I saw his friend appear with the fire blanket and registered this was another gimmick to separate me from my cash, I couldn’t look away, the flames so eerie against the subway tunnel, the smell of singed flesh so transfixing. 
          It’s rare that anything makes me want to gaze anymore. Mostly, I look down, try not to gaze at the low-cut top of the AR model leaning forward, cradling a bottle of Bulgari on the spray-painted walls of the platform, or at the ad above me on the N train of the college girl with lowered glasses, biting softly on the end of her pencil as she prepares for her GREs. 
          The rocking car makes me feel sleepy like when Dad would take me out to Santa Monica Pier for one of his performances. I’d lean against the car window, reading the signs along the freeway when they were free, and it must be nostalgia or the GRE girl’s seductive stare that makes me look up at her parted lips and feel the withdrawal from my account. I can justify the small charge, I tell myself. Ten cents, fifteen, twenty-five, all of it worth gazing time, until I realize I’ve racked up a couple bucks in the corner of my vision. Then I look down at the darkened gum spots on the train’s floor and at the concrete platform as the doors open, and I mash through the crowd, past a violinist in an ape costume, promising myself not to look up and give another street performer any eyespace as I climb the stairs into the world above.

I’ve read that healthy relationships still exist. They say the romance of staring into a lover’s eyes can, ultimately, be a safe transaction as long as it’s mutual. If you’re both maintaining eye contact there’s an infinite loop of money transferring back and forth, and you can feel secure knowing you’re not truly risking anything. There are older singles who go on real dates. The kind you read about where lovers gaze across the table into their partner’s eyes or take in the shape of their body. I’ve done it myself once or twice, spending a couple bucks for no other reason than to see my date, even if it’s usually a scam. The last match I went on was with a girl named Jori who I met on Blind-Date. She was beautiful, and when she messaged me back, suggesting a small Vietnamese bistro on the lower east side, I couldn’t believe my luck, but by the time appetizers arrived, I was the only one sneaking peeks—ca-ching, ca-ching, ca-ching. It was a date when not once, not during our meal, not after I’d paid the bill, not when I held the door for her, did she look at me. All she said was, thanks for dinner, tossed over her shoulder as I watched her walk away, realizing I’d spent fifty bucks plus dinner sneaking peeks while she hadn’t given me a single glance.
          There are a lot of women who make their money being eyecatchers. Guys, too. For a few years after retinals came in, I had a cache of good friends who were willing to look at me when I talked. If they averted their eyes to gaze at the meal they were eating or checked their watch, it wasn’t done to take advantage, it was just the way people acted, and if a friend became slightly richer at the end of the night, big deal. Next time they’d look at me more and I’d be the one with the extra bucks. All that was par for the course. But the real test, especially during a recession or when money gets tight, is seeing how much people are willing to pay attention. I noticed friends who stopped looking altogether. Even my closest pals would laugh and put a hand on my shoulder, but the moment I looked up I’d see their eyes were elsewhere. 
          The saddest thing is I’d promised myself never to be that person, a guy who stops looking. It took less than a month in New York before I was exactly that, averting my gaze until it seemed abnormal not to. I suppose that’s what life’s like now: a lot of solo time with eyecatchers and scammers jamming up my phone. My text messages are nothing more than a stream of chatbots trying to trick me with punctuation-less missives—hi look at this photo i found of you, or, hey i think i found your driver license, or someone impersonating my parents, Aaron it’s about your father call us immediately—which turned out to be legit, because my dad broke his leg while hiking Topanga Canyon, but how am I supposed to know the difference?
          Everything these days is robocalls for medical supplies or deals on timeshares in Florida. It’s enough to make me wish I was a teen again, growing up in the beach towns along California’s coastline. I skated with kids who had parents in tech, or cannabis, or worked as artists like my mom and dad. My parents were obsessed with devoting their lives to art. This was the late twenties when art was something humans did, and my parents were poster children for AI-terror. They collected vinyl records, talked about poetry, and waxed nostalgic for a time when musicians could survive with guitars strapped to their backs. We used to fight a lot about the future. They claimed going back to the past was still possible, which it wasn’t. Nothing’s left of our past, I told them, and honestly, we’re better for it. My parents’ generation spent their lives sucking up to bosses in hopes of getting the smallest promotion or selling themselves to corporations that never let them get ahead, wishing the invisible algorithm would boost their popularity and empowering them to be the masters of their destinies. 
          My parents didn’t see it that way. By the time I graduated high school, they joined a no-tech cult up in Topanga Canyon where an aging Gen X music producer had gathered a following of middle-aged millennials, all of them primed for an older, wiser, white-haired guru telling them, “it’s not about money, it’s not about fame, it’s not about audience. It’s about finding your inner voice and listening to it.” Easy to say when you have millions. And easy for my parents to run through their savings trying to stay retinal-free while Reza changed the world.
          Reza was our generation’s genius, as much as Jobs or Bezos or any of those geeky assholes were the heroes of my parents’ generation. The difference was Reza was an altruist. The way he put it, once you were able to get every human’s retinal scan, you could bypass the interference of world governments and beam credits to people directly, creating a gateway for Universal Basic Income. Didn’t matter if you were living in some plastic-tarp shantytown in India, Reza was going to divvy up three hundred billion dollars among everyone who got retinals. All it took was a simple eye-scan and a quick, painless implant, and suddenly you were getting your first deposit. That was a game changer. 
          Reza transformed the world in an instant. Suddenly, you didn’t need the ivory towers of universities or hundreds of thousands in debt to get a worthless degree. You had professors sitting on stoops in Bushwick lecturing about Dante for pennies. A sixteen-year-old girl who wanted to be a make-up artist no longer had to go to beauty school—she could post tutorials, and every single blink helped her reach her dreams. Everything that’d ever been owned by corporations was turned back to us. Gone were the sad dreams of my parents’ generation, scrambling to get enough views on a YouTube video to earn ad money. Now you were the ad, making money from every single person looking your way, and the world was full of potential gazes.
          My parents couldn’t see Reza’s brilliance. They’d rant about him whenever I came home, saying he was destroying the world. Meanwhile, all I wanted was implants for Christmas.
          “Absolutely not,” they said. “He’s blinding us.” 
          This was precisely the sort of hypocrisy my parents would say, especially since in their day you had people called influencers who were basically early eyecatchers but stupider and less efficient. I remember my parents’ feeds filled with fools making thirty-second videos about dumb recipes, lion’s mane coffee, travel hacks, and how to live more mindful lives. Click the button for my full course, subscribe, share, like, repost. Rats scurrying for whatever scraps of attention they could scam out of friends, family, and strangers. A few people became millionaires from doing yoga poses in sexy bras or unboxing some shit, but what Reza did was democratize attention. He streamlined a sloppy practice to let us all make money. Rather than give the robber barons of chaga tea a monopoly, Reza gave everyone instant influencer status. Why shouldn’t the Polish grandma making her way home along the streets be as worthy as some young influencer in a crop-top? 
          I told my parents they were jealous because art was dead. My mom made these huge sixteen-foot paintings with one bold color and a single iridescent strip of lime green running from the top to the bottom. She hung her canvases in galleries, and what did she hope people would do? She hoped they’d come look at them. Look and buy. Except when someone bought one of her pieces, guess what? No one else could ever look at it again, while whoever bought it could gaze forever and never pay another cent. As for Dad, he was more ridiculous. He went to festivals where he and his DJ buddies constructed huge sculptures and set them on fire. He’d upload his dumb little videos on YouTube and get excited if he got over a thousand views, all of which earned him nothing. Tell me: how were my dad’s performances any different than what I saw the guy on the subway platform doing? That guy wanted me to see his work as much as my dad wanted people to watch him. Except my dad was too shortsighted to take the next logical step in monetizing his art.
          When my parents criticized me or made fun of retinals, I was like, whatever, you all did the very same thing, only jankily. Because, fact is, we’re all attention seekers. The entire world wants to be eye candy. If you look good, you want to be seen. If you tell a joke, you want to be heard. Wanting attention is a natural part of life, and retinals helped my generation profit from what we once gave away free. As far as I was concerned, that was progress, and once they started offering free implants at the mall, I went and got mine. Then I graduated high school and got the hell away from my parents and LA, which had become a cesspool of dwindling tech companies and a bankrupt Hollywood scene. Dweebs like Zuckerberg were clinging to their drowning ships of social media while the wildfires made LA hell on earth. The smartest AI companies headed across the country to work with Reza, and I moved to Brooklyn where the retinal revolution was underway.
          New York was beautiful back then. The daytime light off the silver towers was gorgeous. Far below, steam rose from manhole covers and pigeons flocked in parks. Music was everywhere, it felt like you couldn’t pass a park without seeing someone giving a retinal concert, and everyone could attend. Ticketmaster wasn’t robbing us, music was for everyone, and if you didn’t want to pay you could stand and look down at your feet as the band played. There were impromptu lectures on brownstone steps on everything from organic farming to higher mathematics, and I was able to receive the equivalent of a college education by showing up in Prospect Park where adjunct professors ditched their low-paying salaries to deliver fully-retinal-enabled classes on philosophy, literature, and business. There were a few portrait artists lined up along the park’s entrances, which was sad to see, basically the last cry of art before homelessness, and I’d pass them as they painted portraits, glancing at their work and sending them a couple cents, until they, like the yellow cabs, disappeared.
          Should’ve been here two decades ago, some of the old, bearded hipsters would say. And probably that was true. When I arrived, you could still catch the flash of a vintage cab or buy a salted pretzel from a human vendor. At Christmastime, you’d find chestnuts roasting on a bed of salt, buy a warm bag of them, and carry them through the cold streets while a busker played Noël. Not everyone was using retinals yet, and you could stand there watching the music for free. Early evening arrived, casting its purplish hue across the avenues, the shadows of skyscrapers grew long, and commuters descended into subways to catch their trains home. The sweetness of caramelizing peanuts drifted into the air alongside the clopping hooves of carriage rides in Central Park, and the world felt beautiful. But you compare old New York to what it became—a place filled with the beauty of human expression and new ways to earn a living—and there’s no comparison. What I tell myself is at least I got to see the old city one last time for free. Then we all closed our eyes and opened them to new revenue streams. 

I’m on my way home from work when I hear the soft ca-ching of someone’s gaze. It doesn’t happen often. A person might look up and admire my jacket, or they stare a second too long and I’m a couple cents richer. Only pennies but it’s a good feeling, like you’re someone people might care about. But as I’m waiting for my train, my account keeps ringing with deposit after deposit. Not just a couple cents but a steady stream of payments: ten cents, twenty-five, half a dollar. This never happens to me. Finally, unable to hold my curiosity, I look up, and there she is, waiting for her own train across the platform. She’s wearing a long blue coat, her hair falling against her shoulders, in her late twenties like me, and it’s like a story out of a retro rom-com where the guy yells, hey, you forgot your gloves! or gets down on one knee to propose. Suddenly that’s me, looking at her from the other side of the tracks, both of us strangers but with the intimacy of a loop of credits flowing between us. I can hear the rush of the trains barreling through the tunnels, the squeal of brakes as they appear from the darkness ready to sever our connection, and with my face flushed and heartbeat racing, I do something I never do. I yell out.
          “Hey! Wait for me over there!” 
          A couple people look up like I’m an eyecatcher and I feel a few more pennies arrive, though most of the commuters ignore me completely. “Wait for me!” I yell before the subway comes hissing to a stop, cutting off the flow of credits. Then I’m running up the stairs, thinking please be there, please be there. Down I go on the other side, pushing past early evening commuters who are flooding the station, everyone keeping their eyes on the ground, until there she is, still standing there, waiting for me. We’re looking at one another, her in her blue coat, me in my parka, credits flowing between us while all around commuters pass, a sea of retinals turned to the floor.
          “Hey,” I say, out of breath. “You were giving me credits?”
          “Couldn’t help myself. You looked so lonely.”
          “Oof. Just so you know, that’s not my schtick—I’m not into loneliness eye-catching or anything.” Credits are streaming back and forth and neither of us are looking away. “Hey, this probably sounds nuts, but I'm about to get dinner. Do you want to join me?”
          She pauses then, still not breaking eye contact. “It does sound crazy, but I guess so is staring at you.” And that's when we take our first steps together.

When you’ve been on dating apps for as long as I have, meeting someone in real life feels as rare as seeing the aurora borealis. Most apps charge you to look at pics for more than a second. Swipe, swipe, swipe, trash, trash, trash, pause—ca-ching—another few cents wasted on an AI-generated girl designed to steal your money. It creates a jaded cynicism until I barely want to look at people. There are always half a dozen women waiting for the train in various stages of undress and as many bodybuilder dudes with six-packs changing their t-shirts on the platform to steal glances. After dealing with that day-in day-out or going on a rare date only to realize you’re being scammed, you figure, fuck it, I’ll never find anyone, and I’ll never have meaningful sex again. Most of the time I keep my eyes closed during hookups to avoid feeling like I’m paying for it. Some dudes put in blinder-contacts that make it seem like they’re staring at you; a lot of girls do the same. It gets depressing to hook up with someone and not feel any flow between you, and as we walk the streets, I wonder if this is a new scam. Cynicism, I tell myself, since she’s clearly not wearing blinders. She’s navigating her way around early evening pedestrians and eyecatchers—a man in glowing neon juggling fire, two teen girls making out, someone doing the backstroke along the pavement. And us? We’re stealing glances at one another as we walk.
          “You usually yell across subway platforms at women?” she asks.
          “Never. How about you? Stalk randos much?”
          “You’re my first,” she says. “Take it as a compliment. I’m very careful about my eyespace.”
          “Honestly, had I seen you first, I would’ve done the same.”
          “Oh boy, now I’m worried I’m being scammed,” she says and looks up, and our eyes meet with the soft chime of credits being exchanged. 
          There’s a French restaurant I know that strives to be retro. I reserve a table as we walk, and then we’re sitting across from one another in the darkened café, a candle between us, looking very much like vintage stereotypes from my parents’ generation. The server brings us menus and tells us about specials while we look at the tablecloth and give her our drink orders.
          “It’s wild this place uses menus,” Zoey says when the server leaves.
          “That’s why I like it. You pay with retinals but it’s trying to be authentic.” 
          She picks up her menu. “They don’t charge you for looking?”
          “No, that’s what’s cool about this place. Early 21st century vibes.”
          She looks at the menu like it’s an ancient artifact, and I feel myself growing anxious without her gaze, wondering if this is when the scam starts and I’ll spend the rest of the date sneaking glances. But then she looks up, meets my eyes, and I feel the flow between us.
          Our drinks arrive, and we look back at our menus, keeping our eyes to ourselves as we order so not to give the server a premature tip. The server leaves and we look back at one another, both of us awed by our reckless gazing. 
          “I can’t believe you were staring at me like that at the station,” I say.
          “Me neither. My last boyfriend and I knew it wasn’t serious; we had a no-look agreement.”
          “Ugh, I had one of those. How long were you in it?”
          “Six months.
          “Wow. Long time to not look at the person you’re with. I was in one for three weeks.”
          “Crazy, right?” she says. “I think we’re all crazy for living like this.”
          We clink glasses and keep our eyes locked as if daring one another to look away, but by the time our meal arrives and we’re on our second drinks, we loosen up. We’re not staring at each other nonstop; it’s more like a flirtatious thing. I hear the soft ca-ching while I look down at my meal, she hears hers as she’s sipping her drink. There’s something incredibly seductive about slowly exchanging credits like this.
          “What do you do?” I ask.
          “Finishing my JD at NYU.”
          “Wow! Real, old-world school?”
          “Law’s one of the few degrees still worth it. You?”
          “Oh you know, AI job. I proof copy. AI makes mistakes, hallucinates, has typos. I read through everything to make sure it’s right.”
          “Sounds . . . tedious,” she says and sips her wine.
          “It is, though AI writes some pretty great novels. But, yeah, not my dream job.”
          “What’s your dream?”
          “Creating a new algorithm. I feel like I have a good sense of trends. Or being part of a think-tank that’s working on the next big innovation.”
          “Oh no, are we enemies?” She takes a bite of her food. “My team’s working on retinal litigation and eyespace protection.”
          “We’re a hundred percent not enemies,” I say. “Trust me, I get it. I used to think retinals were going to free us and we’d have nonstop picnics while we received deposits, but . . . uh . . . yeah, that didn’t happen. It’s like we’re prisoners of our technology.”
          “Some people aren’t. There are autonomy zones in Costa Rica and Iceland. Doesn’t living in the city ever make you want to give up and start a farm somewhere that won’t charge you for looking at the veggies you grow? That’s mostly what I think about these days. Moving to Costa Rica or Polynesia and getting my eyes back.”
          I look down at my meal because Zoey’s activism reminds me too much of my parents, and worse, of who I was long ago, skateboarding on the pier at sixteen with a fuck-the-system attitude and a belief I could change the world. “You really don’t think there’s benefits to retinals?” I ask. “Like, aren’t lawyers using retinal footage to help people solve cases?”
          “Seriously?” She laughs. “That’s only in crime procedurals and tabloid drama. I mean, okay, yes, that happened, but more often than not it’s corporations prosecuting people in third world countries for eyespace rights. They’re literally trying to sue people for not wearing retinals and gazing at their products for free.”
          “That sucks. But I guess, for me, retinals helped a lot. When I moved to New York there weren’t steady jobs. I was doing a lot of skateboarding tricks, had gazers who paid to watch, it helped me get through a hard time. Now there’s a billion people like me, and I’m not good enough to compete for attention, but did you see that kid in New Orleans who tap dances with a robot? He’s got like a million eyes on him and is rich at twelve.”
          “Okay, that kid’s amazing,” she says and laughs. “But most people can’t do something incredible that constantly gets a million eyes. It’s like you were saying—it’s impossible to get a real job that pays actual money rather than retinal-credits. Wasn’t that Reza’s whole promise, freeing us from the tyranny of minimum-wage? All he’s done is help bosses pay less since they can subsidize wages with eye-gaze tipping while he migrates us to his private crypto.”
          “Well, at least he’s not making money on us right now,” I say, and we meet each other’s eyes, the infinite loop of credits flowing freely between us.
          When the bill comes, I gaze at the receipt’s QR code and blink my eyes, then I help Zoey with her coat. She takes my arm as we step onto streets filled with eyecatchers. New York’s alive as we lean into the lushness of one another, Zoey’s warmth close. She meets my eyes before closing them and we kiss for the first time, and later, when we’re holding one another in bed, we gaze. There are small flecks of green hidden in the deep brown of her eyes, and I gaze beyond to someone willing to risk looking at me, a person who longs for safety and connection, both of us hoping to be seen.

II.

Zoey and I go on a second date, then a third and fourth, until we lose track of how many times we’ve seen one another, how many times we’ve touched, how many times we’ve had sex, and soon enough, we’re doing the things everyone does when they’re in a new relationship. We take walks through the city, do our Christmas shopping together, even find an old-fashioned chestnut-roasting stand, and though it’s an e-cart run by AI, there are small paper sacks to put warm chestnuts in, and we carry them through Central Park as the snow falls. 
          When Zoey hears about my parents, she invites me to MOMA. Usually, you have to pay for the art you gaze at, but Wednesdays have public viewing hours from noon to five where you can look for free. It feels super niche, like attending a model train exhibit, but we go, and she shows me her favorite pieces. There’s Munch and Van Gogh and Dalí and a whole gallery with these big paintings by a guy named Rothko that remind me of my mom. I want to take a photo and send it to her with a message like, Look! I’m gazing at art! But I don’t because she and Dad are busy making paintings with their non-tech crew as they drain every dollar of what’ve might been an inheritance. 
          Zoey goes home for the holidays to see her parents in Vermont where some stores still use credit cards and Apple Pay. They have local maple syrup shops, and she shows me photos of wooden barns strung up with lights, some of which you can look at for free. I spend Christmas at work, reading copy and keeping my eyes to myself until Zoey’s back. We go to our favorite restaurant, where they’re still using menus, and make bets about how many months until they join the rest of the world while we dream about the future. 
          Zoey seems serious about leaving New York. She wants to move to Iceland or French Polynesia where people are trying to live retinal-free. I find myself holding my tongue, because it sounds like a fantasy. What are you supposed to do if you’re not using retinals? Stare at rocks all day? And how exactly am I supposed to make a living if I can’t clock my hours scanning text for typos? I’ve seen how my friends are scraping by: DoorDashing in rural towns that haven’t been fully automated or posting LookAtMe fundraisers where they ask friends and family to gaze at them for cash. Just thirty seconds of your eyespace can help me reach rent this month!
          The ponds in Central Park unfreeze, the city becomes slushy, the sun feels warm, and Zoey introduces me to some of her friends. They’re all in law school or law school adjacent. One is working pro-bono to free the protestors who got arrested outside Reza’s warehouses where a bunch of retinal-free activists boycotted his headquarters—with hopes of what? Making us all Amish? I don’t make that joke though because Zoey’s friends are defending the protestors.
          “Know what’ll be next?” Rick, our host, says. “Scannable ads in the pavement. You won’t be able to look down without paying.” 
          “Come on,” I say. “There’s rules and regulations. Reza’s agreed to leave the ground untouched.”
          One of Zoey’s friends laughs. “Sorry, mate, but we work with laws and regulations. Reza’s promises are Trojan horses.” 
          “Exactly,” Rick says. “They’ve got sidewalk prototypes.”
          “Another of the many costs of living in New York,” another friend says.
          “Iceland anyone?” Margaret asks.
          “Yes, thank you,” Zoey says, and I flinch.
          “You’re frowning,” Rick says to me.
          “Well . . . I just don’t think it’s going to be that bad. Not like what you’re predicting. What you’re talking about is a decade in the future.”
          “I give it five years tops,” Margaret says.
          “Okay, five years. But that’s not the end of the world.”
          “Maybe not,” Rick agrees and refills my glass. “But five years comes quickly.”
          I don’t keep arguing, because Zoey’s friends are nice and jovial—they look you in the eyes—and as we’re eating, they playfully tease me about how Zoey and I met.
          “Your eyes literally met across a crowded station?” Rick jokes, and Zoey’s friends raise a glass to us, all of them sincere if perhaps a bit too intense about conscious eye-contact. So much so that Rick stops me as I’m getting on my jacket at the end of the night.
          “Hey, man, realized I haven’t been looking at you equally tonight.” 
          He’s right. Not that I’m trying to be miserly, but I was a couple bucks short. “It’s fine, I didn’t even notice.”
          “That’s kind of you. But listen, I don’t want you getting the wrong idea. If you don’t mind, I’d like to make it up to you?” 
          I don’t know what he’s talking about until he asks me to stand there in my jacket awkwardly looking at the ground while he stares at me, consciously sending back my credits.
          “Sorry,” Zoey says when we leave. “Rick can get weird like that. He’s all about Zero-Sum Living.”
          “Are all your friends anti-retinal?”
          “Well, yeah. We’re in this battle together, right?”
          “I guess, but your friends are only seeing one side. Retinals have made things so much better.”
          “Like?”
          “Public transport, movies, air travel, picking anything up from the corner store, take-out, food delivery, e-cabs, basically everything we ever need. Plus, it’s income for many people.” 
          Zoey stops under the streetlight. “Aaron, don’t you ever miss looking at things?”
          “Not really,” I say, though I’m thinking about sunsets. How back in Cali, the sun would set off the coast of Manhattan Beach, and I’d sit on my skateboard watching that big red ball dip into the ocean as late afternoon surfers lifted their boards over their heads. You could watch all that for free. Then Reza bought gazing rights to the sun and moon and made a gazillion dollars from our eyes, and, yes, it sucks to not be able to look when the sun paints the sky pink and purple, the world so beautiful it seems like it should be free. 
          This is what I tell Zoey as we ride the subway to her place. That I agree, more things should be free, and that Reza, like most billionaires, got greedy, even if he agreed to let the sun and moon be complimentary for a day every year. But at least we have the first day of June, when people get excited like it’s a holiday, and on beaches, rooftops, and fields families bring picnic blankets to watch the sunset together. I’ve stayed up all night to watch the moonrise and see dawn crack open the sky with birdsong before the next day’s sun reappears and starts charging us again. This is my argument as we climb the stairs to Zoey’s apartment and get ready for bed. That, yes, AI may be taking our jobs, and yes, humans are increasingly becoming less suitable for work, but is that a bad thing? Aren’t our so-called sorrows just ancient fidelity to an industrial work ethic? Humans were designed for greater things than the mundane jobs we’ve been forced to do. AI and Reza are freeing us, I tell her.  
          “Right,” Zoey says from the bathroom as she brushes her teeth. “Because that’s what we’re seeing out there. People freed to be their best selves. There’s literally a guy outside right now covering himself in Cool Whip and singing Prince songs to make rent.”
          “That’s because it’s not all figured out yet. Reza created a system that gives us universal basic income. We’re getting monthly deposits.”
          “We don’t get the deposits he promised. For the first months after signing up it seemed to work, but now all I get is thirty bucks a month. That’s not universal basic income; that’s coffee and a croissant. My friend and I are trying to put up guardrails to stop Reza from doing more damage.”
          “It’s not damage.”
          “Oh, no? What is it then?”
          “Progress. Change. Innovation.”
          “You sound like you’re writing his ad copy.”
          “I’m being realistic,” I say and go into the bathroom. “Look, I’m not saying what you guys are doing is wrong, you’re trying to change the world and I admire that. But I’m not wrong for doing what I can to survive. My job isn’t wrong.”
          “No, it’s not wrong,” she says and rinses out her mouth. “That’s my point. The choices we’re left with are what’s wrong.” 
          I guess this is our first fight. How I won’t admit the world’s worse now, because I don’t think it is. What I think is technology moves forward, and yes, sometimes it breaks things, but that’s also part of its brilliance. It’s like when I was kid and my parents complained how Covid forced everyone online, but look at all the work-from-home jobs it created, look at the freedom to escape those tiny cubicles everyone hated. When AI appeared, we worried it would take our jobs, and yes, it did that, but it also created new ones like mine. Then retinals came on the scene, and it made life a bit more expensive, but it also gave us a lifeline to make money not from behind a screen but from walking to the store, from singing on a street corner, from being ourselves. I tell her that possibly one day I’ll be up for moving to a distant country with her, but for now we’re in New York and we should make the most of it—like more dinner parties, maybe with my friends so she can hear the other side of the argument; like going back to MOMA when it’s free; like enjoying our favorite restaurant and loving one another—all while trying to ignore the fact that both of us have stopped looking at each other as we crawl into bed.

In the months that follow, we let our first fight settle. We don’t return to Zoey’s dreams of Iceland, and I don’t show her the articles about how Reza’s retinal program is helping kids in the Sudan make money to keep from starving by dancing for wealthy donors. Come the morning of June first, Zoey packs a picnic basket and tells me we’re going to Storm King to watch the sunset. 
          We ride the Metro North upstate alongside a hundred other couples, and when we arrive, we make our way across the patchwork of blankets amid the sculptures, murmuring our apologies as we find our own stretch of green. Zoey brings out olives and cheese, fills two glasses of white wine, and we settle in as the sun falls. Then it’s all oohs and aahs, and nostalgia for the old days with a wish to turn to a stranger and say, it’s really something, isn’t it, regardless of the cost of friendliness. The sky darkens and the moon appears, and at least half of the audience lingers, laying on their backs with their hands tucked behind their heads, snuggling beneath the pale lunar glow. 
          “You know the Treaty of 1967?” Zoey asks as we lay gazing at the moon, the two of us wrapped in her plaid blanket. “A hundred countries agreed space belonged to us all. Then Reza paid every country half a billion to shrug their shoulders.”
          She wants me to be angry, but I’m happy to see the craters, the moon’s surface glowing like the finest white sand. It reminds me of the beaches along Highway 1, how I used to skate and smoke a joint with a couple friends beneath the moonlight when everything was free. What I want is not to talk about Reza, or retinals, or Zoey’s everlasting frustration with our world. I want the moon for now, and to turn my eyes back to Zoey, our credits floating through the ecosphere of our own private galaxy. 

An unresolved fight never truly disappears. It remains beneath conversations like a stone in a shoe, and I probably should’ve known we were in trouble. Zoey’s anti-retinal ethos made me feel like a hot-headed skateboarding teenager, and if I’m honest, a small part of me wanted to be like her, to admit that it is wrong not to be able to see sunsets without paying for them, to be brave enough—and I hate to say this—but brave enough to become like my parents, living off the grid and leaving retinals behind. 
          The problem was our disagreements came up again and again. Zoey daydreaming about Polynesian bungalows and living retinal free, while I argued for what seemed like basic concessions. That she and her friends were blinding themselves with hopes of the past. That retinals were here to stay.
          We’re at another of Rick’s parties where I find myself arguing for retinals yet again. I suppose you can blame Reza. He’d made a public announcement, streamed for free on every eyescreen, his photo on the front-page of the Times. Behind the banks of microphones and clicking cameras sat Reza dressed all in black.
          “What we’ve accomplished has had a major impact on global poverty and the ways ordinary individuals use technology to achieve the extraordinary. But consider what happens when you combine advances with full-capacity implants. We’re talking limitless opportunities by navigating the blood-brain barrier. A globally connected world from within our minds. No wires, no devices, just our eyes and our brains. The only barricades to our future will be the boundaries of our imaginations.” 
          “He’s fucking sick,” Margaret says as we eat Rick’s bao buns.
          “Come on,” I counter. “That’s a bit over the top—”
          “Don’t you dare defend him.” Margaret points her glass in my direction. “I’ve got zero patience for devil’s advocate. Not tonight. Too close, too soon. What he’s talking about, this implant-brain-computer—”
          “Thought waves,” I correct. 
          “What?”
          “That’s what he’s calling it. Thought waves. It’ll be our new Bluetooth.”
          “Unbelievable,” Rick says. “Does he expect we’re all going to get new implants?”
          “No, that’s the genius of it,” I say. “We’ve already got the implants. It’s about turning them on. It’s like how our parents’ generation had personal computers until they figured out how to connect them through the internet. A few modifications and our minds will be connected.”
          “When exactly is this horror supposed to happen?” Gary asks from the far end of the table, trying to look up the answer on his phone.
          “They’re beta-testing now.”
          The others have stopped eating. “I’m getting these fucking removed,” Margaret says and points to her eyes.  
          “I’m with you,” Gary says. “Getting this fucking thing out tomorrow.” 
          I feel like laughing, except no one’s kidding. “Do that and you’ll be operating yourself out of a job,” I say darkly.
          It’s Rick of all people who comes to my rescue. “Look everyone, I’m not defending Reza, but, in this rare case, I happen to agree with Aaron.” 
          “Thank you.”
          “Removing our eyes isn’t the point. This is everyone’s future now, and it means it’s up to us to stop him.”
          “Stop him?” Margaret puts down her glass. “Congress tried and our retinals ca-chinged while we watched him make a mockery of those old statesmen. Aaron, are you serious? You don’t see a problem here? What about the fact he’s about to turn us into his robots without our fucking consent?”
          “Change is unsettling,” I admit. “But no, I don’t see a problem; I see progress.”
          “Not being able to look your own parents in the eyes is progress?”
          “I don’t see my parents anymore,” I say, and it’s the only time during the entire meal that Zoey squeezes my hand under the table. 
          We’re on the train back to my place when Zoey turns to me and says, “You embarrassed me tonight.”
          “I embarrassed you? Your friends ganged up on me.”
          “I’m not going to support you while you fangirl over Reza.”
          “I wasn’t fangirling. I was saying your friends are being idiotically shortsighted.”
          “Oh yeah? Is that what you think about me?”
          “Zoey, nobody’s moving to Polynesia or Costa Rica.”
          “Yes, they are. Costa Rica banned retinals.”
          “And Iceland tried the same thing. Reza sued the fuck out of them. Look at Iceland now: mandating retinals for newborns and immigrants. They gave up because they lost the battle. You’re on the losing side of history.”
          I can feel the steady ca-ching of the way she’s looking at me, her hopes a currency she’s still willing to spend. “So, what then? Was all your talk about moving to Polynesia bullshit?” 
          I look at her, feel the flow of our connection before I glance down at the train’s floor. “What exactly is your vision?” I say quietly. “Move to a bungalow and become a hermit?”
          “No. I want to find somewhere safe to live.” It sounds so much like what my parents would say I can’t even look at her.
          “Well, I don’t want that,” I tell her, my eyes gazing at the floor. “I like New York. Why can’t we make our lives here?”
          “Because it’s falling apart. You don’t see it, but the whole fucking world’s falling apart, and the work you’re doing is like vultures picking the last meat from roadkill. Don’t you see that?”
          “No, I don’t see that. Look, I get it, you think my job’s stupid and tedious or whatever you called it on our first date, but that’s how I pay my rent. And yes, it’s great to be idealistic, but I’ve got fucking bills to pay, and so what if there are places in nowhere Polynesia where you can gaze at palm trees for free; it’s fucking Polynesia, there’s nothing worth looking at there.” 
          “Yes, there is, Aaron. Look around, we’re all eating each other alive for pennies. I can’t be part of that anymore.”
          “Then I can’t be part of this,” I say. And that’s the moment the soft chime goes silent in my ears. I look up, solely transferring credits toward her. “Hey, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,” I tell her, but she stays silent for our ride home and won’t meet my eyes. 
          Later, I avoid looking as she gathers things from my apartment, dodging her completely as she places what was once ours into a grocery bag. What I’m telling myself is, let her go—we’re incompatible, totally ideologically an awful match—but then I see her blue coat, the one she was wearing when we first met, and the hard knot of resentment within me loosens. If I let her go, I’ll be right back on that subway platform, my eyes turned to the gum spots, wishing I could go back in time to place my hand on hers, to say I’m sorry, to admit she’s right. Right about Reza and the future in more ways than she knows. That what’s wrong with this world isn’t that we’re all worthy of being our own influencers, but that we’re not that different from each other, each of us frightened by our need for friendship, belonging, and love. Zoey and her friends aren’t that different from who I once was, spray-painting Eat the Rich on the pier and skateboarding into the sunset. Reza capitalized on the devotion we longed for, and we all became identical in our attempts to be eyecatchers, each of us hoodwinked into thinking attention was the same as love. What I know is I don’t ever want to feel like I’m alone on a subway platform dousing myself in gasoline.
          I cross the room as she packs her things, raise my eyes to watch her, and she can sense my gaze, hear the ca-ching of my attention, feel my touch as I reach out and say, “Please, don’t leave. I’m so very sorry.” I tell her I’ll go to Polynesia with her, that I love her, that this fight is pointless. “You’re getting your degree, we’re going to be in New York for two more years, but after that I’ll leave America and retinals behind if that’s what it takes to have you in my life.” I stand there, waiting and terrified, offering my heart, my credits pinging in a single direction, until she lifts her eyes to meet mine.

III.

Here’s a truth I’ve learned about marriage: you have to know when to let things go. No one can argue forever, and neither Zoey or I want to be stuck in a no-look relationship like those lifeless couples you see everywhere, so we agreed to disagree. Which is one of the beautiful things about love. You listen to one another, you grow together, you change. I, for example, have begun to watch the clips she sends me, the ones her wild-haired professor assigns, all of them filled with the worst possible retinal cases. The woman who was charged thousands of dollars for looking at the doctor during an ER visit; high school classrooms falling apart because kids are burning desks and peeing on the floor for views; a recent law in Wisconsin that makes professors’ salaries commensurate with the amount of eye contact they get. All of it’s awful, but I hold my tongue while we watch, knowing full well her teacher gets a commission on every view. 
          As for Zoey, she listens to my side more. She’s met my friends from work and heard how hard life can be when you’re not in one of the few professions that still needs humans. But I think what changed was nothing more complex than getting used to the new tech. Zoey had two years of her degree left, which was a long time to resist. When Reza’s thought waves became reality and we started getting mental pings from work, or from Rick for the next dinner party, or when you start missing appointments because you didn’t move them to your frontal lobe, well, you begin to accept the tech no matter how old-school you’re trying to be. You watch a video on the backside of your eyes, you get used to checking messages via retinals, and before you know it, you’re fully hooked. 
          Polynesia gave up the fight against progress, so did Costa Rica, and soon retinals became as commonplace as napkins. Before we knew it, we’d been together for years, still having our small arguments about the future, still trying to have dinner parties and make equal eye contact with friends, and then, on a snowy December afternoon, Zoey came out of the bathroom with a pregnancy test in hand, and just like those rom-coms of my parents’ generation, I got down on one knee in our tiny apartment and promised the rest of my life to her.
          This past summer I was promoted to algorithm overseer, and Zoey graduated with honors and an offer from a New York firm specializing in human rights with a promise for three months maternity leave. It didn’t make sense to ditch the city when we both had good jobs, friends, and a baby on the way. Besides, where were we going to go? The idea of off-grid life is as much a fantasy as unicorns. So, we did what everyone does when they eventually grow up. Zoey tucked away her activism, and I prepared to become a father—one who’d be much better than my own dad had ever been. I wouldn’t make art or disappear into a tech-free commune, I would help my child navigate this complex world of retinals and thought waves. I’d take her to the park and show her all the things she could still look at for free—the birds, the flowers, the grass. I’ll tell her not to look at the sun. 
          And then the day comes, one September evening. We’re laying on the couch together when Zoey’s water breaks. I get our emergency bag, call an Uber, and it’s a blur of streetlights and hospital waiting rooms, and then we’re with the doctor, trying not to look at him as he tells Zoey to push.
          “I’m right here,” I tell Zoey, and we lock eyes as I hold her hand and she clenches. 
          “You’re doing great,” the doctor tells her. “She’s almost here.” 
          I hold Zoey’s hand in mine, and neither of us watch the birth, because we know how much it costs to see the doctor deliver our child. And yet, how can you not want to watch when a life you’ve created is coming into this world? We know our baby won’t gaze at us equally; we’ve certainly heard of parents going through the horrible teenage years with children who never look at them, just take and take and take. But what we’ve said is we’re fine if it’s only us looking at her. We’ll gaze at our child, sending credits to her like parents once saved for college. We’ll make her rich from our attention, even if the credits only flow one way. We’ll give our daughter everything we’ve always wanted.