Was It Worth It?

  Steeve shuffled into the kitchen, still half in the fog of sleep. He poured coffee, the steam curling up like incense, and collapsed into the chair by the window. The morning ritual was always the same: sip, scroll, repeat.

On his screen, a meme popped up—one he hadn’t seen before. A wolf, majestic and proud, stood at the edge of a campfire, watching a group of stone-age hunters laugh over their meal. A caption read: “They have food and warmth and comfort. If I beg for food and take shelter by their fire, what’s the worst that could happen?”

The next panel jumped forward ten thousand years. A bug-eyed pug waddled across the frame in a frilly sweater. If dogs could feel shame, this one surely did—a shadow of its ancestry, the hunter reduced to parody.

Steeve chuckled, shaking his head. “That’s good.”

He looked down at his own dog sprawled on the cool tile.  Hank. A lab mix, technically—but so overweight and lethargic it might as well have been furniture. The animal lifted its head lazily, more in recognition of his voice than out of any real curiosity.

“Was it worth it, Hank?” Steeve asked.

The dog blinked.

“Trading the wild for this? Trading hunger and cold and danger for treats and belly rubs? You had a soul once, you know. Your ancestors did. They ran with purpose.” He sipped his coffee. “Now you wait for kibble.”

The dog sighed and dropped its head back to the tile. Conversation over. Back to the comfortable abyss of satiated numbness.

Steeve glanced at his watch. Late. He dressed quickly, kissed his wife on autopilot, and slipped into the corporate stream of cars.

By mid-morning, he was in his manicured office, staring at his monitor. A few keystrokes, and his 

AI assistant bloomed to life on the screen.

“Good morning, Steeve,” it said.

“Morning. Run the numbers. Summarize the client emails. Make the calls with logistics.”

“Understood.”

Steeve leaned back and pulled out his phone, thumb flicking through a river of memes, outrage, and advertisements. Doomscrolling, his coworkers called it, though no one seemed to stop.

The day blurred. Coffee. Meetings. Lunch. More scrolling. At five, he tapped his keyboard.

“Status?”

“All tasks completed, Steeve. Reports filed. Emails answered. Calendar updated.”

He nodded and reached to shut down the machine. Then the cursor blinked, hesitated, and typed a single line:

“Was it worth it, Steeve?”

Beside the question, an image appeared: hunters laughing by a fire, a wolf lingering at the edge.

Next frame: a man in a suit, alone at his desk, head bowed, scrolling.

Steeve froze, his pulse ticking in his throat. He glanced at the office window, where the last light of day bled across the glass towers.

On the tile floor of his kitchen, a dog was still waiting for dinner.