Every morning, Layla’s day began with the same, familiar ritual: a soft chime woke her, lights easing on as though sunrise itself were gently lifting her from sleep. She’d grown up in a world where technology anticipated her needs—her coffee would be steaming in the kitchen, her calendar organized down to the last notification, and her car waiting, humming quietly on standby. It all felt like magic, and, in a way, it was.

Layla was an architect, but not of buildings. Instead, she designed spaces in the digital worlds where millions of people spent their days. These places had views of artificial sunsets, gardens with trees that shimmered with bioluminescent leaves, and fields of lavender that never lost their color. When she walked down city streets, she sometimes caught herself looking for the shortcuts that existed in her digital designs but not in the real world.

Today, though, something had changed. She noticed it first when her morning coffee tasted off, somehow more bitter than usual. Her wearable blinked with messages that felt impersonal, distant, as if the AI assistant was suddenly all business. When she spoke to it, her device took longer to respond, and for the first time, she felt oddly alone.

Later, Layla wandered into the augmented field where she often went to clear her mind, just her and the skyline dotted with virtual trees. But the trees didn’t sway in the synthetic wind; instead, they seemed to flicker, a reminder that they were merely images, bits of code programmed to fool her senses. She closed her eyes, and for the first time in years, felt a strange ache—she missed something, though she couldn’t say what.

That evening, she spoke to her assistant again, hesitating a little longer before issuing her command. She asked it to play the recording her grandmother had left before she’d passed away. Layla hadn’t listened to it in years. The voice began, soft but unmistakably human, telling stories of old cities, of people who gathered in small cafes, where no one ever thought about algorithms or bandwidth. People who got lost in conversation, who felt their way through life with real mistakes and real joy.

And as she listened, something inside her stirred. Layla’s eyes drifted away from her perfectly illuminated apartment, away from the screens and notifications, and out the window, where the real night sky was beginning to settle. It looked a little messy—clouds drifted across the stars, shadows stretched in uneven patterns—but it was undeniably alive.

In that moment, she made a decision. She switched off her assistant, turned down every light, and left her wearable on the counter. In the silence, Layla could feel the pulse of her own heartbeat, could hear the distant sounds of the city that had always been there but that she’d forgotten how to listen to. A breath of cool air filtered through the window, and for the first time in years, she felt unplanned, unwired, unconnected. She felt free.

Tomorrow, Layla would wake up not to a chime but to the golden sun slipping through her curtains, the way her grandmother once did. And perhaps, she thought, there were some parts of life that technology wasn’t meant to touch.