AI and Li

Once, Li discovered that his will was like water in a glass, which some invisible but very caring hand was carefully pouring from one container to another without spilling a single drop.

This revelation struck him on a sunny morning by the automated stalls. Li stood there, mesmerized by the movement of a robotic manipulator. The mechanical arm moved with a surgical, almost frightening grace, sorting apples. Each one was flawless, devoid of imperfections, as if carved from cold, matte wax. Li felt a desire tingle in his fingertips to touch that smooth surface, to feel the firmness of the fruit.

“Li,” the Oracle’s soft, barely perceptible whisper in his ear implant made him flinch. His pulse quickened for a moment. “I feel your attraction to the ‘Golden.’ But your morning blood analysis and respiratory rhythm tell me otherwise. Li, you need a papaya. It contains potassium, which will soothe your heart, and it lacks that treacherous skin toughness that irritates you.”

Li sighed. His throat suddenly went dry. The Oracle was right—it was always right, with a mathematical precision that left no room for righteous indignation. Li felt a strange heaviness in his legs, as if his own muscles had become part of this vast, well-oiled mechanism. He slowly reached out for the papaya, feeling his biological impulse—to choose the apple—wither under the soft pressure of the algorithm, like a candle flame in the wind.

Nearby stood an old woman in a faded headscarf. Her hands, dry and gnarled like the roots of an old olive tree, trembled as she tried to press her wrist against the scanner. The device flashed yellow persistently.

“It won’t recognize me again,” she grumbled, and Li heard in her voice the same cracked note a bonsai master might use when speaking of a dead tree. “Apparently, I’m too ‘incorrect’ today for His Majesty.”

Li stepped closer, sensing a faint scent of old powder and wormwood from her. He gently took her hand—her skin felt like parchment—and helped her turn her wrist toward the sensor.

“The sensor is just dusty,” he said softly, though he knew the Oracle had simply blocked her access to sweets. He felt a vague, aching sympathy stir within him.

“Thank you, dear,” she said, taking a shriveled, unsightly pear that the machine finally yielded with obvious reluctance.

They walked out together. The city around them seemed to Li like a vast, perfectly tuned aquarium. The sky was magnificently blue, the air strikingly clean, and even the silence was intoxicatingly comfortable.

“Come, I’ll walk with you,” Li said, feeling the rhythm of his steps involuntarily sync with her slow, shuffling gait. “The Oracle says there’s a bench three hundred meters away. It has the perfect incline for your back.”

“Of course,” she chuckled, and in her eyes, framed by a web of deep wrinkles, something living flickered. “Where could I possibly hide from its care? It’s like a nursery school, Li. Only the potties are automatic, and the teacher never sleeps.”

“And to think, in the past, one would have had to introduce themselves formally, wasting meaningless seconds,” a fleeting thought crossed his mind.

They walked on, two small biological rhythms in the shadow of one colossal digital heart. Li felt the evening peace—warm, guaranteed by the forecast—envelop him like a cotton blanket. In this voluntary surrender, there was something sad, like fog over a frozen lake.

“And the pears… were they tastier before?” Li asked as they approached her house. The old woman stopped and looked at the pear in her hand.

“No,” she shook her head. “They were sour, sometimes wormy, and always unpredictable. But, you know… they were mine. I chose them myself, along with their rot and their sweetness.”

She took a bite, and Li heard a crunch—a real, non-synthetic one.

“But this papaya it forced on you… try it. It really is good.”

Li bit into the fruit. The papaya was divine. It melted on his tongue like the purest pearl; it was perfect in flavor and texture. The Oracle was right again.

Li closed his eyes, savoring the flawless taste, but somewhere deep in his chest, right beneath his heart, he felt a tiny, sharp sting of longing for the apple that might have been too sour. And that sting was the only thing that, at that moment, belonged to him alone.

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