By the time the new decade began everything had changed again or maybe it only looked that way the offices were quiet now not from fear but from automation the shouts replaced by the hum of servers blinking in cold glass rooms where traders used to stand the market no longer needed us not really we just watched the algorithms trade faster than thought turning time itself into profit the human part of finance shrinking like a dying organ inside a mechanical beast

I still came in early out of habit old reflexes die hard the young analysts didn’t look at the screens they looked at dashboards black boxes predicting moves in microseconds they called it efficiency I called it surrender Leon would have hated it Julia would have said it was inevitable maybe both were right

The new manager a man barely thirty with hair too perfect and confidence too smooth called me a legacy asset said it as if it were a compliment he wanted me to mentor the AI team tell them how markets feel I laughed said markets don’t feel anymore he said exactly and walked away proud of his own cleverness

Most days I sat by the window now the skyline sharper the city richer but emptier too I missed the noise the chaos the humanity of greed back then at least when you lost money you felt it like pain now losses were lines of code erased and replaced no sweat no guilt just clean digital indifference

Julia visited that spring she said she was giving a talk at Columbia about behavioral economics said people still made the same mistakes even when they understood them better I told her that sounded like my life she smiled said maybe that’s why we never get bored we walked through the park after her lecture the trees pale green the air soft she asked if I’d thought about quitting I said I’d think about it when the market stops she said then you never will

Back at the office the algorithms kept learning self-correcting adapting no emotion no hesitation I watched one day as it made a perfect trade in less than a second something that used to take us hours to plan I felt both awe and grief as if watching my own extinction play out in real time

At lunch I sat with a few old colleagues men who’d survived the same wars our conversations like memorials remember eighty seven remember oh eight remember when phones had cords we laughed but it wasn’t joy it was nostalgia disguised as pride one of them said maybe we should write a book I said no one wants to read about ghosts

At night I started walking longer routes home through streets I barely recognized new towers new names old bars turned into gyms the city evolving faster than memory the people younger sharper connected to everything except each other sometimes I’d stop by the river same spot I’d stood decades ago the lights reflected on the water unchanged at least that illusion held steady

One evening I opened Julia’s book again for the first time in years she’d written in the margin beside one line risk is not the opposite of safety it’s the opposite of stillness I read it three times and realized I’d spent my life afraid of stillness pretending movement was meaning I closed the book and sat there in the dim light listening to the hum of the refrigerator the only machine left in my apartment that didn’t trade

The next morning the system glitched for twelve seconds markets halted billions paused in midair silence pure and complete for the first time in my memory the trading floor utterly still I felt my chest tighten not from fear but from something close to wonder then it restarted and the noise rushed back like floodwater the moment gone

That night I dreamed of the old floor the phones ringing men shouting paper flying through the air and somewhere in the chaos the younger me laughing full of hunger I woke before dawn sweating heart racing reached for my phone before realizing there was nothing urgent no call no trade just silence

I stood by the window watching the city stretch awake and for the first time I didn’t open my laptop didn’t check the futures I just watched the light change the sky slow and gray and thought maybe Julia was right maybe the only trade left worth making was to stop

But when the phone buzzed ten minutes later a message from the office market spike futures up two percent I felt the old reflex rise like breath and without thinking I picked up my jacket

Because the machines might never sleep but neither did the part of me that had become one of them