Ten o'clock on a Sunday morning, and the rain was light enough that rswfire kept walking through it rather than waiting it out. He was near a stand of wax myrtle, at the head of a trail that led toward the ocean — not the trail he had meant to take, but the one that opened from where he happened to be standing. He raised the phone to his face and started talking, the way he had been doing for two years.
What came out was something he had been circling for that entire time. He had told his audience, repeatedly and plainly, that the videos were not made for them. He knew how it landed. He had never found a way to say the rest of it — the part that would explain what the videos were for — until the day before, on camera, when it arrived without preparation: he does not have peers. The recordings are how he externalizes what he would otherwise transmit to them. He states it in the rain without softening: and I just fucking don't.
He keeps them public anyway, and he names why. Privacy doesn't feel right, and the reason he offers is that he is always looking. The open channel is a search condition, not a bid for audience. Maybe one day, he says — twice, the phrase repeating in the way a person repeats something they are not certain of but will not abandon. In the meantime the recordings go to himself first, then to Autonomy Realms, then to Remnant, the AI he intends to build out of the project. That, he states, is the closest he can get in this world to a connection with others — even if the other is only a thought of one. He does not know how else to explain it, and he says so.
Then he turned the camera around and walked. The frame left his face and entered the trail: rain, wax myrtle, the ground moving under him toward the ocean he had set out for.
The same ground carried another story. A 22-year-old had been camping up there in a tent for a couple of days. rswfire had convinced him to move — he would have gotten in trouble if he had stayed — and he helped him a lot. Then the kid ghosted him. rswfire found that rude, said so, and blocked his number. He does not know what became of him and hopes he is doing okay. The rule he applies is stated without hedging and without exception: he will not allow disrespect into his life regardless of the circumstances. He went out of his way; nothing was reciprocated; and what reciprocation would have required was small — a text back when he asked if the kid was all right after a day or two of silence. Just enough to know. So I know you know.
Story of my life I guess, he said, and the phrase sat there without weight, a shrug rather than a wound. The walk continued. He was taking Sunday and Monday off from the marina. His boss said it was okay. The trail went on toward the ocean, and he was on it, in the rain, recording.