Tom hadn't said much during dinner. The steak was good, the beer cold, the company familiar. And yet something gnawed at the edge of his mind like a thread caught in a zipper — something from Havana.
He and his father had finished cleaning up the grill. Bill had turned in early, mumbling something about an early start for fishing. But Tom sat out back, nursing a second beer and a strange, almost guilty clarity.
He kept replaying that odd little conversation from the seafront bench. The guy — Rafael, he had said his name was — wasn't trying to sell him anything. Wasn't even arguing. Just... explaining. Calm, curious, and certain in a way that didn't feel smug, just settled.
Rafael had been sketching a map. Not for Google, not for tourists. Just for himself. A way of knowing a city by tracing its arteries, its memory. And when Tom — sweaty, skeptical, and halfway through a Big Gulp — asked if he had Wi-Fi, the man simply smiled and offered the map.
Tom had laughed. Of course he had. A paper map? In 2025?
But now, weeks later, back in Ohio, the joke didn't feel funny anymore.
Because that guy — weird, grounded, post-everything — had said things that wouldn't leave Tom's head. About a system where people earned not money, but meaning. Not yachts, but rest. Not more stuff, but more peace.
At the time, Tom had rolled his eyes and walked off, telling himself Rafael was just a sweet-talking dropout from some commune who didn't understand the "real world." But that real world — the one Tom had fought so hard to stay afloat in — was now strangling him slowly with every hustle, every price hike, every impossible benchmark.
He thought about how hard it had become to sell anything without running ten ads and offering free shipping and a discount and a loyalty code and some kind of gamified referral bonus — all just to move a product that used to sell itself. He thought about the layoffs, the closed stores, the rising prices, the debt he kept juggling like flaming pins. He thought about how every win felt smaller, shorter, and heavier than it used to.
And now, that damn sentence wouldn't leave him alone.
"It's not redistribution of money. It's redistribution of meaning."
Tom closed his eyes and let the beer go warm in his hand.
It wasn't that Rafael had convinced him. It was that he'd asked the question Tom didn't realize he'd been dodging for years.
Was this still working?
He looked out at the neighborhood. The lawns trimmed. The cars leased. The smiles polite and tired. Everybody keeping up. Nobody asking why.
Maybe the system wasn't broken. Maybe it just worked best when it had room to grow. Back when his dad started the shop, when every new family needed a car, a fridge, a future. But now? Tom had friends with no kids, no savings, no plans — just subscriptions.
Even the government was acting like demand needed protection — tariffs here, subsidies there, praying people kept buying enough to keep the engine from stalling.
And that's when it clicked.
It wasn't just about debt, or tech, or China. It was something more basic. A fact so big and obvious it had become invisible.
There just weren't enough buyers.
Because there weren't enough babies. Not anymore.
Tom froze. The thought hit like a cold wind through warm clothes.
Not enough buyers... because there weren't enough families. Not enough kids. And without new people to sell to, the whole thing — the dream, the grind, the system — had nowhere to go but sideways.
He stared at the quiet sky, suddenly uneasy.
That wasn't just a market problem. That was an existential one.
The kind you couldn't fix with a coupon code.