There is a view beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows that captures the attention of the father. He sits in a leather chair and wonders if everything around him is there only by the light of the rising sun. Everything, including time, which appears most distinctly on the aged face of the doctor that sits across from him—his wrinkles and his neatly combed white hair. There are living shadows that suggest so, but the father isn’t convinced. He imagines the sun being deleted and doubts the shadows would disappear and take with them everything else. He taps on the arm of his chair.

“How difficult is it?” He asks.

“It’s not an easy process,” the doctor says. “There are certain things that can often cause problems for people.”

“Like what?”

“Many patients have a hard time seeing their reflection for the first time.”

“Their reflection?” The father asks. “Why is that?”

The doctor thinks for a moment before responding. “You have to remember that it’s been almost five years. Sometimes, when people look in the mirror for the first time, they’re confronted with a lot of difficult emotions and they don’t know how to handle them. Their first instinct is to change how they look or how they’re feeling, but then they realize that they no longer have that option.”

Across the room, a decorative fountain fills the office with the sound of trickling water. The doctor waits for the father to say something. He clears his throat. “You’ve never asked about this before. What made you bring it up?”

“It might be good for him if we went back,” the father says. “We could find a good group of people and help rebuild everything. I think it would give him a strong sense of purpose, one that’s real.”

“It’s still not safe,” the doctor says.

The father gives the doctor the slightest indication of a nod. “I know. I’ve been thinking a lot about the people that stayed. I admire them. Sometimes, it feels like we left them to deal with the mess.”

“We didn’t have many options. We were fleeing from danger,” the doctor says. “You shouldn’t feel guilty for keeping your son safe.”

“That was true in the beginning. This place used to be a shelter. Now it’s become something else. I don’t know what to call it.”

“How’s your son doing?” The doctor asks.

“He’s been off lately,” the father says. “He turned seventeen last week, which means he’ll be on his own in less than a year. I think he’s unsure of what kind of future he’s supposed to prepare for.”

“Did something happen?”

“The other day, I could tell there was something bothering him. Every week, I bring dust into our home just for us to sweep it back out. He stopped sweeping and asked me why we continue to do this. I told him that these things were important and that we had to do them for the sake of meaning. As I’m explaining this, I realize that he’s heard me say this to him repeatedly for the last five years. I can see in his face that it’s no longer moving him. There doesn’t have to be dust. I choose to let it into our lives for something so difficult to define. After everything he’s been through, what could a concept like meaning possibly mean to him? It’s probably become a stream of incoherent noise.”

There was a slight inconsistency detected in the pattern of the running water that disrupted the father’s train of thought. For a second, the sound he heard fell out of alignment with the cascade his eyes were watching—a single drop that wasn’t really there or, perhaps, wasn’t the exact size or shape that it claimed. He waits to see if it’ll happen again before returning to the view beyond the windows.

“My wife wanted him to feel that he was needed in this world, that he was important. I changed my attitude about this place and decided to use it as an opportunity. We joined a community that shared the same values as us. I designed everything in his life for the sake of meaning. I became very neurotic about it. I thought the more he worked for something, the more valuable it would be to him. He’s been through a lot of struggle because of it. He knows it doesn’t have to be like this. There’s something that can make everything better. It feels like I’m keeping his best life just out of his reach. I could give it to him, and as happy as it would make him, it would make me ten times happier, but I know I can’t. It hurts so much having to choose how much pain and struggle he should be put through. In a year, it’ll be up to him to decide those things. How is he supposed to know how to do that?”

The doctor peers up at the ceiling and draws in a breath. “Maybe it’s time to introduce the algorithm into his life.”

The father shifts in his seat and brushes a piece of lint off his grey slacks. He notices the shadow of his chair sneaking closer to him and returns his attention back to the windows. “I’m afraid to let him do that,” he says.

“It doesn’t have to be used for everything.”

“I know,” the father says. “But where does it end? I’m worried he’ll no longer find a reason to keep doing things on his own. If the algorithm makes you a better person, why stop at letting it guide just ten percent of your life? I’ve forgotten what I truly want for him. I thought it was meaning, but if he has a fulfilling, happy life, does it matter if it’s guided by something else?”

“What about everyone else that uses it?” The doctor asks. “Do their lives not mean anything?”

“I don’t know,” the father says. “I don’t know if they do or not. It feels like I’ve forgotten the difference. He needs to know. I don’t want to, but if I can’t get him to understand, I have to bring him back while I still have the chance. What can I possibly say to him?”

For a while, all that was heard was the steady trickle of the water. It could have been what guided the doctor towards an answer, or it could have been Galen of Pergamon, who purged the humors and whose alabaster bust watched from above.

“There’s not a single thing about meaning that’s supposed to make any sense,” the doctor says. “We were given an ability, a keen awareness of our mortality and our condition, then left on our own to wonder why.” The doctor gestures towards the windows. “Those fig trees don’t have that sort of awareness. Everything is perfectly arranged so that they continually produce fruit. They don’t have to think about it. If they did, they would probably spend their time doing whatever makes them feel like more than just a fig tree.”

The father leans on the arm of his chair, propping his head up, while the doctor continues. “I don’t think we were tempted by that snake. I think we were struck by its raw display of reality. We couldn’t accept it. We wanted there to be more and, because there was nothing more, we willed it into existence. We created grasping hands branching outwards and, with those hands, tools of complex capability. The more we deviated from nature’s perfect plan, the more imperfect we became and the more it pained us, but it gave us freedom and it gave us meaning, and we celebrated it. The snake chased after us. All the things we believed made us special were being done by something other than ourselves. We felt its chilly presence on the nape of our neck and we ran faster, trying to create more freedom and more meaning. There’s a growing awareness that our hands are reaching out for something that we know is not there. How much of this awareness your son wants to bear is something only he can decide.” He turns to look at the father. “Don’t forget that all that destruction we witnessed was also for the sake of meaning.”

The father crosses one leg over the other. His fingers drum a quiet roll on his knee. “He and I used to take walks through that valley. We would try to look for any differences that made it unreal, any irregularities. We would crush tree bark in our hands, feel the grittiness and search for some trace of forgery, a detail that wasn’t quite right. Sometimes we would find it in the way the light reflected off a running stream. It was very comforting. I used to find them frequently, these irregularities, but then they became rare. Or maybe are ability to recognize them just got worse. Even the wind—a simple movement of air from one point to another, but the trees never repeat the same dances. Eventually, we stopped finding these irregularities, and I thought we would never see one again. At that point, it occurred to me I had to accept either everything in this world as real or nothing. All I want is for him to be happy, but it has to be real.”

“We didn’t lose our ability to recognize the difference,” the doctor says. “I know by the behavior of my patients. When they turn to look out at that valley, they don’t get the same response. It doesn’t clear their minds or make our discussions more relaxed. What they experience is a distraction, an escape from whatever is making them feel nervous or insecure. There’s something inside of us that knows it’s not real. What remains to be real are these words we share with each other, and how they make us feel. They’re all that we have.”

The father looks away from the window at the doctor.

The doctor looks back at him. “This thing we created surpassed us. It’s given us more freedom than we know what to do with. We were chased into the dead end of an alley. We spun around, expecting to come face to face with that creature we saw in the beginning, but it wasn’t there. It was always buried in the core of our bodies. It’s the alimentary canal that speaks to you right now. We thought it would drag us back down to its level but, instead, it gave us a choice. We can choose to return to the embrace of that perfect plan, the guiding force that knows more than we ever could, or we can choose to suffer through the enormity of the freedom we now have.”

“How do I get him to choose meaning?” The father asks.

“It’s not something you can force on anyone. The algorithm is much smarter than you are. It knows your son better than you do and it can give him everything he wants. Meaning survives by everything from the reassuring touch of a hand to the creation of a masterpiece. What you do is you show him something beautiful and you say, ‘this is the reason,’ and when he brings you the product of what he has suffered for, you see it for what it is—a magnificent portrayal of our struggle, a bold display of defiance, a stunning thing to behold.”

The sun is risen above the frame of the windows and it cannot be known for sure if it is still in existence. What’s left are the shadows that spread across the floor of the doctor’s office. They suggest the father stood up from his chair, extended his hand towards the doctor, and thanked him for his help.