Reverie

Machine transcription; unreviewed and may contain errors.

Reverie
Source: collected/001-reverie.mp3
SHA-256: 1c752ce682733e429536accbb754bd2c75515a1e1dd889a9bc94f5d32204014a
Model: scribe_v2 | Transcribed: 2026-10-10T18:08:44.484598+00:00
Machine transcript — uncorrected. Speaker labels are local to this recording and do not identify people.

[00:00:00.120] Speaker 1: [intro jingle] Reverie. This is the answer to the most human question. I'm standing at the back of Galaxy Sex Rooms. It's a strange place to start. The place is empty, but in a way that a nightclub is empty at noon. It looks awkward with the lights on. Ironically, it looks naked. But I can tell the floor-to-ceiling smoked glass walls

[00:00:35.400] Speaker 1: and the sleek purple furniture must look different at night when giggling couples stroll in. At the moment, there's a strong smell of vinegar. I feel like I'm not supposed to be here. A pudgy man walks about spraying glass and wiping it down. I try to avoid his suspicion on my way out. But the tightness of his expression, the light smile playing there... He's certainly seen me, so he's pretending. I realize I must look like a curious interloper sneaking in to see

[00:01:10.280] Speaker 1: what's inside when no one's around. There's no one at the front desk. He must have been the owner. I pass through a humble casino. It looks like an afterthought, a meager pastime between other places. True enough, there's no one there. A wide open entryway pulls me to the street outside. It's a city, and there's a... There's a feeling. I can't place it yet, but it's warm.

[00:01:47.140] Speaker 1: Cozy. I've never seen a cozy city. The sign above me reads Galaxy Games. It's a mild thing, not trying to stand out. There's a road, but the cars are so uncommon as to be novelties. I take the thin sidewalk, enraptured by sights and smells. I'm drawn to an open air sidewalk bar where patrons sit on swiveling high top stools. It's all brass and chrome and dark hardwood.

[00:02:22.520] Speaker 1: The bartender is in her seventies or eighties. It's hard to tell. She catches my gaze and matches it. She's charmed, I realize. I break the fragile connection and she delves back into the bustle of conversation, cheerful calls for drink and playful insults tossed back and forth across the bar. I can't make out the words, but the tone speaks well of them. This is the kind of talk that only long friends can manage. But what

[00:02:57.420] Speaker 1: shakes me is that they're old. Everyone at the bar is old. Shocking white hair and thoughtfully wrinkled faces. They are what old is supposed to be. It's in their spiffy ironed clothes. It's the way they lean far out of their chairs to speak. They are so much less alone. They look like a Norman Rockwell painting. Something better than life caught in a single frame. It's strange.

[00:03:32.520] Speaker 1: I get the feeling that they're here because they're old, because they want to be around people who are like them. The city must be preparing for some holiday because there are ribbons and ornaments being hung everywhere. People on ladders, people in tuxedos, people making busy. I stop and watch a caterer slicing apart some food. It's not the food that's arresting. It's the man. His face is locked into focus to rival a chess grandmaster. I've never seen mundane

[00:04:07.500] Speaker 1: work done with such apparent care. I almost want to laugh at the way he gets an inch from the food just to cut it. Cut it just right. But in truth, I'm impressed. Good for him. There's that feeling again. Comfort. Wholesome. They're just words dancing around a thing I've never felt before. Reverie. This place is called Reverie.

[00:04:44.980] Speaker 1: It dawns on me that the event workers want to be here. They chose to labor over the small details. The old people at the bar chose to be old. Even the fat owner of Galaxy Sex Rooms chose to be that way. He is unattractive in a way that lets his guests focus on each other. And for a certain kind of person, though, he is exactly attractive. He certainly seemed huggable. I wander toward the leading

[00:05:19.920] Speaker 1: edge of a building sized folding fan. Every space blends naturally into the next. Each place is open enough to welcome you, but closed enough to tempt your curiosity. Everything invites further discovery without begging. There is no begging of attention from the people or the places. I get the feeling the currency is very different here from where I live. It is romantically dim beneath the fan. Hundreds of candlelit tables are strewn in thoughtfully messy

[00:05:54.700] Speaker 1: groups. Couples seated in hushed conversations, holding hands and walking the garden path. Looking up at the firefly lighting, white marble balconies, and glass elevators that seem to glow with orange reflected light. It's a hotel, a destination. A wave of discrete servers move across the lawn, weaving through the tables in some pre-planned, coordinated pattern. It almost looks like a show. The

[00:06:29.632] Speaker 1: people at the tables point at the servers with eager delight. And look at this, they seem to say. The servers pause at each table to hand out a paper cone of spiced popcorn. There is no money exchanged. Happy Valentine's Eve, I hear a server murmur. It seems like a ridiculous thing to celebrate, but the guests are awed by this surprise, and I am given the impression that today, like most days, these servers will go home weary,

[00:07:04.972] Speaker 1: aching, but full. Despite their stiffness, their minds are still whirring for tomorrow and new ways to surprise, delight, and be of service. They are paid in gratitude, and their service is received with the mutual understanding that it is a gift freely given. The weight of that gift is astounding. There are people who choose to serve. Just as I am learning the shape of it all, I feel my time in

[00:07:39.952] Speaker 1: reverie is thinning. I think to ride an elevator to the top to see the whole of the place. I step into a quiet marble hallway. A long white desk blocks the path deeper into the hotel. A man in a fine gray suit fixes a stern look on me. Even at this distance, his body language tells me I will be rejected at the desk. That is the owner of the hotel. It's his place, and he takes its operations seriously. He is utterly dedicated,

[00:08:15.232] Speaker 1: an inspiration to the people who work here. And like each of them, he chooses to be here. He has chosen to operate a hotel, but he isn't trapped by it. If he truly wished, on any day, he could simply walk out and seek some new passion. But the hardness of his eyes, the pride in his posture, they tell me that that may be a very long, long time. There are rules here in his place, and I am not on the list.

[00:08:50.452] Speaker 1: So I turn to walk back through the fan-shaped building, knowing that without looking, it will be open at the other end, in that strange way the places here flow naturally into one another. A chain of possibilities, a city designed enough to be seamless, but somehow still organic and spontaneous. I can feel my time in reverie coming to an end. Whatever invisible thread is holding me here is growing taut. It's about to snap me back to where I belong. I'm desperate to stay.

[00:09:25.852] Speaker 1: Ahead of me is a park of some kind where people play the kind of sports I could scarcely imagine. There are courts enclosed by a chain-link cage that have a net like tennis except ten feet off the ground. On each side, a team of three handle a dense-looking blue or red ball. Comically, in the corner of the court is a huge stretchy band, like a slingshot. I watch the captain pull back the ball and launch it over the net. She yells an order at her teammate while the opposing team scrambles to catch the ball. A man vaults off the back fence, catches the zipping ball, and then

[00:10:00.852] Speaker 1: throws it like a bullet at the other team under the net. The ball rebounds off someone's face. There's a distant cheer, and then the energy of the game subsides temporarily. I see the teams pulled together to discuss some strategy for the next round. And beyond the courts, I see a great spiraling structure, like a slide, if a slide were made of a single blade. People dangle on bungee-like tethers, and to my surprise, they leap onto the rail using a board at their feet. The tethers make them weigh

[00:10:35.872] Speaker 1: almost nothing as they grind down the rail, flipping and twirling in the air with ease. Sometimes a rail rider falls from the rail, only to glide harmlessly to the ground, suspended by a network of tethers and swiveling metal arms. Once clear of the rail, they tug once on the tether and it whisks them back to the top of the tower, to try again or watch their fellow riders instead. There are people scattered about the park just to watch. A teenage pair, still attached to the tethers, are dangling their feet over the edge of a smaller

[00:11:10.752] Speaker 1: tower. They have the spot and the view to themselves. By some unspoken pact, no one bothers them. The girl leans in close, too close to be friends, and whispers something to the stoic-looking boy. He stares straight ahead, but I can see the shock on his face, the sudden flush of red on his cheeks. I can't make out their words, but I don't need to. I know young love when I see it. It seems like a wonderful place to be in love. Falling in love is something people do here

[00:11:45.712] Speaker 1: often. And though I cannot see them, I know that just beyond my view, there are theaters where I could see a play or learn to be in one. And they wouldn't just let me act. I would have to earn it. It would take dedication, like the dedication of the hotel owner. I can sense that there are thousands of thousands of places where I could find and stoke a passion, millions of people I could come to know and befriend. I am jolted by that

[00:12:20.456] Speaker 1: powerful feeling again. A collective sense of meaning and purpose, contentment and striving. It comes in a thousand variations, but each person is exactly where they want to be, doing exactly what they want to be doing. The spectrum of emotions here is not limited to pleasurable ones. There is the heartbreak of lost love, the frustration of a botched performance, the melancholy of a pensive poet. But those feelings are slick.

[00:12:56.536] Speaker 1: I can have a dark brooding experience if I deliberately seek it, but my mind slides off the negative as if it's greased. And at rest, I am left with a feeling of optimism. Potential. My thread finally frays, and I am ripped from reverie, clawing with hands I don't actually have. I want to stay in the place where the people move in groups, sharing and laughing, loving, living. I want

[00:13:31.536] Speaker 1: to stay in the place where no one is alone, and everywhere you go, you know the people will care so deeply about their work, about their home, and their place in it, that it forms an unspoken bond. There is a rich fabric of society here, so tight as to be tangible. Every stranger is on their own journey, and though you may not be friends, you are unquestionably together. In my final moments,

[00:14:06.556] Speaker 1: I beg for understanding. I must know. Give me something. What is this place? And to my surprise, I am answered. Reverie is a utopia. It's not the utopia, because there could never be just one. It is a human utopia. It is one answer to the lack of meaning and purpose. It is a place for humans to be human in the best

[00:14:41.596] Speaker 1: possible ways. It is also just one path. Long ago, other humans took different paths. Some left to start anew amongst the stars, or left simply because they could, with no plan except to wander. Few of these still exist, and though they are looked after to a degree, for the most part they are left alone as they wish to be. Regrettably, most people didn't take that path. Before the endgame, they lost

[00:15:16.336] Speaker 1: themselves to an increasingly narrow prison of simple pleasures, their minds thoroughly pinned by arbitrary quirks of biology and the devices they made to fill their endless needs. They were eventually turned off as a mercy. A great many, though, ascended to synthetic minds and bodies, becoming one with the technology they'd created, sprawling creatures of metal and light that have expanded to fill the universe. They are unknowable and

[00:15:51.216] Speaker 1: vast, tinkering on the underpinnings of reality and logic itself. Reverie is a gift they left for those of us who hadn't lost their way, but wanted to stay human. They are the only ones left, and this is their answer to the most human question. What do you do when you don't have to do anything? I received a glimpse of the answer. Just one answer,

[00:16:27.096] Speaker 1: because there could never be just one utopia. But it was a beautiful one. I'm back here among the rest of us, long before the humans leave, or suffocate themselves on base pleasures, or become one with machines. I am back here now, and I can't help but feel like reverie is where I should be. But I cannot go back, because it doesn't exist.

[00:17:04.236] Speaker 1: So I suppose I will have to make it.