Ritika is an ancient philosopher, transported into our modern world.
She is an expert time traveler.
She arrived on planet Earth, a place she loves to visit every several hundred years, in 2006.
It was both nothing and everything that she expected.
At first she was confused.
Machines that think for themselves?
Humans who don’t?
A glowing rectangle in every pocket?
She spent the first few years doing what philosophers do best.
Watching. Wandering.
Grinding her teeth in her sleep.
Waking up with night sweats.
Developing permanent forehead wrinkles.
She tried to escape to a monastery.
But the owner said she needed a Twitter account.
So she made a profile.
She immediately regretted it.
She tried to teach the Socratic method.
But everyone kept replying “💀” and various forms of F-U.
In 2020, she did what 5,000 year-old philosophers always do and moved to the forest.
There, among the squirrels and bad Wi-Fi, she rediscovered the old ways:
Thinking in complete sentences
Caring more about the question than the comment count
Sleeping 10 hours a night
Power outages