Again, I find myself at Starbucks, glimmering at the kaleidoscope of endless words. I haven’t published a novel yet, but hope, like the overpriced espresso in my hand, never seems to run out. I ask for a café latte, and the barista hands me a bill.

“I didn’t want a bill…” I say, already peeved.

“You’ve won a free trip,” he replies, smiling.

I blink. “A free drink, you mean?”

He shakes his head, still smiling. “No, a free trip.”

My eyes narrow, as wary as a cat faced with an over-enthusiastic rat. “Where to?”

His smile widens. “When, is the correct question. When to?”

I raise my eyebrows, getting his gist but not appreciating the creative license that has hitchhiked on his time-travel sales pitch. “When to?” I ask, my nerves jittery. “You’re telling me Starbucks is offering safe time travel? Minus all the stamp-the-butterfly-kill-my-grandfather glitches?”

He leans in, tapping something into his tablet. “You won’t meet yourself if that’s what you’re worried about. Plus or minus 20 years, your choice. Oh, and the scenario: you get to meet your autobiography.”

I frown. “I write an autobiography?” For a moment, the thought of future-me strokes my ego. What could possibly make me write a whole book about myself? “Do I get to meet anyone else?”

“Depends on who…” he says.

“My therapist, maybe? I’d like to tell her I wrote an autobiography.”

He nods curtly, like he’s done his job convincing me, and was planning little more. Part of me doubts this is anything more than a prank, but if I could go 20 years into the future, I would want to tell my therapist about my success. Hers is a thankless job, and we’ve been circling this topic for months now. Every time she asks me to summarize my life, I always blurt out the same word: unsuccessful. And every time, she calmly pushes me to consider all the little successes I’m overlooking. But it’s a tedious exercise. At 3,500 rupees an hour, it feels like shitting during constipation.

The barista slides a slip of paper across the counter. “Take this, go to the restroom, and you’ll see.”

I pocket the slip, mostly to humour him, and head toward the restroom. This Starbucks is familiar in a claustrophobic kinda way: much like the scenes of my perpetually unfinished novel. I wash my hands, wipe, wash, and wipe, like I’m stuck in an editing loop that can’t be broken. The mirror reflects the same exhausted face I see every morning—hectic work, antsy cats, creative ambition constantly thwarted by the grind of corporate survival, Then it happens. The sensation creeps over me—a prickling of uncertainty, a slow-burning awareness that something’s shifted.

When I step out, I’m no longer in Starbucks. The restroom’s bland tile has given way to an endless white void, broken only by a small table with a steaming cup of latte, a tissue, and—oh, joy—a sachet of jaggery. But what catches my eye is the thick book beside it, titled “The Autobiography of Amel Rahman.”

My hands tremble as I pick it up. The cover feels heavier than it should, like it’s holding more than just words. I flip it open, and notice that it is something of a photo journal, and I am struck by moments I can barely recollect, like childhood photographs captured by my father’s analogue camera, carefully washed later, and inserted into a photo album. I flip further and see the rare photographs of my college years. The labour that has gone in is impressive: barely anyone had a camera in those days and barely was I on speaking terms with much of my college alumni. The moments are laid out here, catalogued and neat like someone’s been chronicling my life in meticulous detail. The further I flip, the more I sense something missing—me.

There’s a passage about my 15-year college relationship. At the very least, it should have mentioned the number of times we forgave each other, our absolute juvenility(didn’t we scream at a saffron really?) or cruelty (didn’t I pick a giant stone and fling it at him?) or the trauma of ending something so magical and beautiful.  Of course, I could never have penned it all down, far easier to hide in someone else’s story.

It’s sterile, factual, devoid of the mess that made it real. I slam the book shut, and for the first time in a long while, I feel something dangerously close to rage bubbling up inside.

“Who the fuck wrote this?” I mutter.

A soft, disembodied voice replies. “This is the autobiography of Amel Rahman.”

“Well, I didn’t write it!” I shout into the void. “Who are you?”

“I am the autobiography of Amel Rahman,” the voice repeats, as irritatingly calm as ever.

“Great. You’re an AI,” I say to the voice that I am tempted to call Alexa but decide it’s a bad idea to offend a futuristic AI by presuming its name. I flip through more pages, scanning for anything that feels real—the convoluted sentences, the messy drafts, the countless rejections—but instead, it’s all clean, organized. And then, I see it. 2024. I freeze. I don’t need to know when my relationships fall apart, or worse, when my cats die.

I bite my lip, already dreading the next question, but I ask it anyway. “Do I have any published books?”

“Yes”

“How many?”

“Five.”

Five? That’s… unbelievable.  I’ve barely edited one, let alone five. I steel myself for the next question. “Are they self-published?”

“No.”

A small spark of hope flickers in my chest. Traditional publishing, huh? Maybe I finally get somewhere. “How many people have read them?”

“Two hundred.”

I blink, stunned. Two hundred? After five books?

My voice wavers as I ask, “Do I think I’m successful?”

The voice seems to pause for a fraction of a second before answering: “No.”

That single word weighs on me like a boulder. Even in the future, even with five novels, I’m still chasing success. My knees buckle, and I sit down on what appears to be a cold, white floor, the book heavy in my lap. What does it even mean anymore? This endless pursuit, this constant need for validation—it’s like I’ve been running in circles, convinced that the next accomplishment will be ‘the one’ that makes me feel worthy. And now I know the truth. It never will.

“Do I… ever stop feeling unsuccessful?” I murmur.

The sterile voice seems almost gentle: “No.”

I close the book, letting the silence of the void swallow me. My mind drifts to my therapist. She’d probably say something about redefining success, about the importance of the journey rather than the outcome. I can almost hear her voice: Success isn’t measured by how many people read your work. It’s measured by what writing brings to you. She’d tell me to focus on the joy of creation, not the applause.

But it feels like a hollow comfort. I’ve been chasing something more, something I can’t even name, and now I know that no matter how many words I write, how many books I publish, it won’t fill that void. Writing was supposed to be my sanctuary, my way out of the corporate grind, but here I am, still stuck, still unsatisfied, forever unfinished.

I laugh bitterly, the sound echoing in the emptiness around me. “Tell me this, AI,” I say, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “Do you have access to public knowledge?”

“I have access to publicly available information up to 2042.”

I realize the absurdity of the moment. I could ask this AI anything—anything at all about the future, the world, or my wisdom after several un-showered years upon a mountain. But what I want to know, more than anything is petty, ridiculous. Still, I ask.

“How many books has my ex-boyfriend of 2021 published?”

The AI falls silent. I can almost feel it nod as curtly as my Starbucks Barista.

I begin to laugh, a slow, rumbling one that echoes through.