“My videos. You should see the comments. I’m bringing so many people peace and, you know, knowledge that has been kept from them for a long time.”

Ayanna nodded. She felt the self-righteous teen she had been bubbling inside. Maybe that version of herself would have found a way to get this woman to be explicit about how she found her cures for people’s ailments. What companies did she have agreements with? And why was her only community online? Why couldn’t she automatically think of those kids as being a part of her community? Ayanna also knew she could excuse herself to the bathroom, look up how much money this woman was worth, and probably get even more indignant. It wasn’t even the most egregious circumstances Ayanna had walked into on this job, and she understood deeply that the world ran on a vast cycle of fear and punishment. There was nothing novel and new about this. Humanity would always harm itself, would never really be at peace, until people learned to look past their own self-absorptions. She understood all this intellectually. But still, Ayanna had to unclench her jaw, force a smile on her face, look away from this woman, and stare at her inoffensive blob wall art with feigned interest.

It was not remarkable, because everywhere on Earth people suffered—even the worst people on Earth probably loved someone or something enough to make them weep and mourn—but in this particular city, the quality-of-life disparity was plainly written in a font size that could probably be seen from space. They were sitting in a multimillion-dollar home in a state that had an almost 20 percent poverty rate. Elementary schools in this very city were in the national news because of their outdated textbooks, their crumbling buildings, mold; there were cities dealing with lead pipes, water-treatment facilities struggling to cope with the rising salination of the life-giving river, and each new climate disaster was devastating more and more of that bottom 20 percent who could not afford to evacuate and who could not afford to rebuild or even bury their dead. But this was also the city where people went to regress. Just on the way to this appointment, Ayanna had watched as different packs of fiftysomethings carrying expensive handbags yelled at one another while holding mixed drinks and ignoring the people around them who were holding up signs asking for a dollar so they would be able to eat tonight. Everywhere was a party.

And these videos. That was it?