1 The chip

Get out of the basement immediately, you worthless boy! There's no use for you. Young men your age work and bring money to their families. Some even get married. But what about you? What do you contribute?" The voice of an angry woman in her prime could be heard yelling.

A tired young man replied, "Why are you shouting, mother? Do you really have to come here and yell every day? I've told you before, this is my job."

"What job? What job without any money? I didn't come here to chat with you. You have a week to leave this place because I'm going to rent it out to pay for your younger brother's education expenses," the woman said angrily.

"Alright, alright, I'm going," he replied.

"Where to, huh? Have you forgotten? You don't have anything," she retorted.

Walter didn't respond to his mother; he knew she hated him. Her resentment traced back to an old incident when he accidentally caused the death of his younger brother at the age of 6. Both he and his brother, who was 5 at the time, went to play near a river. His brother fell in and drowned. When his mother saw the scene, she blamed Walter even though he hadn't done anything.

"I'm just a year away from succeeding in my project," muttered Walter, lifting a box containing his work equipment.

"My name is Walter. I'm 32 years old, a graduate in Micro-Mechanical Engineering. I'm not working at the moment; I'm in the process of creating my first machine – a microscopic electronic chip. It's designed to enhance cognitive ability. In other words, the person who uses it will experience a mental capacity twice that of an average human."

Days passed since Walter left his mother's house. Now he slept under bridges like any beggar. In the first two months of leaving, he stayed with a friend, but later, he felt like a burden and chose to sleep outdoors.

"After a harsh year of experiments, emotional and mental breakdowns, and extreme exhaustion, I'm now lying here like a corpse in one of these forgotten cafés. Time is forgotten at its doorstep, and within its narrow walls, the concept of time disappears. All the café's patrons are forgotten, just like me. None of us fit into this world. We come here to extinguish ourselves, to escape from our poisoned mothers' embraces, and to flee the mirror of time that shows our lives fading into nothingness. We see our own suffocation, struggling like rats trapped between the clasp of time and space."

"The time and space began when the universe exploded and this cosmos started growing. It won't stop for us until our brains explode and go dark. So, we escape to that sacred, magical place where everything disappears. Time doesn't pass here, and nothing changes. The same people have been sitting here mummified on the chairs for thousands of years. They haven't grown older or younger; they haven't died. They remain as they entered, decaying and pale, hating, oppressed, wounded. It's a true tragedy and a great loss. It's not easy to surrender to this complete surrender. But when you resist, you extinguish, and everyone here has truly extinguished and ended up here. All of them are drowning in their void, trying as much as they can to escape their memories and fantasies, which are all that's left alive within them. We're all exhausted, pale, and horribly glum, as if we have been banished and chosen to live in this nothingness."

"But for how long? Why, I wonder? I'm sure nobody knows. None of us is searching for an answer, because those who ask always possess hope, and hope is the cruelest and most torturous form of suffering for humans."

Walter constructed the chip and completed everything, but it didn't work. He didn't understand why.

"Was I wrong?" He looked sadly at the chip in his hand. He got up from his chair and headed towards the café's exit. However, he stopped a meter from the door, as if struck by lightning. Moments later, he collapsed to the ground motionless.

People in the café hurried to check on him, but he had breathed his last breath that day. Walter died at the age of 34 from a stroke. Strangely enough, after reviewing the surveillance cameras, it was discovered that Walter had been holding something in his hands. However, when they searched, they found nothing.