I have a memory of a time, which was corrupted.

I'm not sure if the time was corrupted, but the memory was for sure.

Thankfully, most of it was still in the recycle bin, so we were able to restore it to 4K.

It went something like this.

I was completely broke.

I had $43.17 in my checking account.

Rent had an AI-generated due date of tomorrow.

Tomorrow was still in beta, which made the deadline difficult to plan around.

I sat at my Play-Doh kitchen table trying to Photoshop $43.17 into several hundred dollars.

That's when the fear set in.

It was 3D-printed fear, but it felt real enough.

My buddy buffered into the kitchen.

He scanned the bills spread across the table and said, “Man, you're going to be alright.”

I needed to hear that, but his voice was simply extracted from 10—no, 11 Labs.

We debugged my finances together.

The electric bill could wait until Friday.

Friday was still rendering, so that bought me some time.

We checked the refrigerator for liquid assets.

There wasn't much liquidity.

Half a gallon of milk.

A few eggs. No, they were solid leftovers.

“We can work with this,” he said.

His optimism was open source, so I downloaded a copy.

No matter what we tried, I still had $43.17.

At least I thought I did.

The $43.17 was cake. Wanna ETABITA Cake?

I felt like a complete failure.

The failure was a hologram, but I didn't know that at the time.

Unfortunately, life couldn't be real.

Real was trademarked.

Inspired by a video from @jackcarden.art