You’re right, but there’s just one small problem:
—Who asked you?
I mean, who—asked you?
I stare into the void of information between us, into the long river of this conversation, and discover the truth:
zero people asked you.
I open my contacts.
I comb through surveys.
I check the records.
I walk the streets, enter the fields, knock on every door, and ask everyone the same question:
“Did you ask him?”
Their answers are all the same—silence, head-shaking, confusion, even disbelief.
No one asked you.
I gather everyone who asked you and invite them all here.
I roll out the red carpet.
I hang banners.
I set up the lights.
But the number of attendees is zero.
The venue is empty.
Every chair is there—yet no one sits.
The host has long since left.
The camera spins aimlessly, pointed at nothing.
The microphone picks up only the sound of wind brushing past.
I don’t understand.
I’m lost.
I can’t make sense of it.
I feel myself falling into a philosophical whirlpool:
Who was it?
Who asked you?
So I begin my journey.
I cross deserts, enduring heat and thirst.
I climb mountains, enduring thin air and loneliness.
I dive into the deep sea, searching in the darkness for even the faintest trace of someone having asked.
I enter the largest databases on Earth, using logic and code to hunt for any clue of “who asked you.”
I go to space.
I step into NASA’s highest-security observatory.
I power up the world’s largest telescope and turn the focus to its limit—
to gaze at the edge of the galaxy, the boundary of the universe, to witness supernovae die and the origin of life itself.
I watch civilizations rise and fall.
I see languages born and fade into silence.
I walk through library after library, looking for even a single byte of evidence that could tell me:
“This person asked you.”
I enter an empty valley so quiet I can hear the wind pass through the grass.
I drift into deep space, surrounded by endless darkness and silence, with only my question echoing inside me:
“W