The year is 2025, and you're living in San Francisco. You're walking to the grocery store to buy some shrimp, some vegetables, maybe a couple pre-made sauces—you're planning to have a relaxing night, take care of yourself, cook yourself a nice dinner, maybe read a book, write a bit in your journal, and drift off peacefully to sleep.

As you make your way down Post Street, you encounter your first obstacle—your eyes can't help but dwell on a bus stand advertisement that proudly declares, "Stop Hiring Humans!" Of course, this is nothing new to you, and they've even added a disclaimer this time: "* for manual outbound."

A Waymo whizzes by; well, they don't really whiz, do they. You want to scream at it, flip it off, do something, anything, but the best you could do is jump in front of it and collect a handsome payout. A couple more pass—Post Street seems to be their thoroughfare of choice. It almost feels like they like to travel in packs, the soulless bastards.

You walk into Trader Joe's, greeted by the various tribespeople that make up San Francisco's population. There's the white tech bros, scrawny and effeminate, with their invariably Asian girlfriends; the racially and gender ambiguous neo-hippies with too many piercings to count; the sixty year old cat ladies who glare at you when you walk too brusquely; and of course, more species yet to be classified. But most visible to you is the tribe of winners, the Brahmins of San Francisco, the founders who've raised their Series XYZ rounds and the early Anthropic employees who could retire already at age 25 but won't because they think they're saving the world. You know exactly who they are by the subtle confidence in their gait, the way they stand up so, so straight and take firm, deliberate, short strides. The ones profiting from all of this while the rest of us are left to stare down the barrel, or so you think; maybe it's all just in your head.

You pick up your shrimp (it's the fastest thing to thaw), your baby carrots (nothing more satisfying to snap your teeth through when you get hangry at 2 AM), and your generic Asian sauce (they're still calling this shit Trader Ming's?). You make your way to the cashier, where the gender but not racially ambiguous employee is inexplicably happy to see you. Every day, every hour, every minute, they hold their fort down as all manner of winners pass them by. "How?" you think to yourself. "These guys are about to turn this society into a modern-day plantation, and you're just standing there packing up their groceries?"