I was about to cross the street and this young woman grabbed my shoulder because traffic was coming so I said, “Thanks. Would you mind if I took your picture?”
“Sure.”
“Thanks. I write captions with these pictures too so I’d like to ask you ‘What’s your purpose’?”
“To keep you from running out into traffic.”
“…”
“you know what…I don’t know…is that bad?”
“I think it’s honest. Honesty is one of the the first steps towards truth.”
“So my friend who works in tech was telling me about how he makes the devices he works on and he said he has to fuse crystals. There’s a base one, then another that is the counterpoint to the base crystal, and then there are other crystals that form around that base. I think I’m a base crystal other crystals are supposed to form around.”