The Last Inventor
In a not so distant future, nestled between polished skyscrapers and endless digital billboards, lived an inventor named Joo-lee. He wasn’t special by society’s standards. No flashy suits. No shareholder meetings. No bloated salary. But Joo-lee had something else, an imagination so vast that even the stars might’ve felt outshone.
He built things. Wild things. Useless things. Beautiful things.
One morning, Joo-lee unveiled his newest creation in the city square, a floating garden that moved with the wind, playing music composed by the movement of bees and leaves. Children danced under it. Strangers smiled. It served no purpose. It sold nothing. It was art.
By noon, city regulators arrived. No permit. No profit. No point.
“It’s not monetizable,” said a woman in a tailored suit, tapping on her tablet. “Who’s the buyer?”
“There is none,” Joo-lee replied. “It’s for joy.”
That word joy hung in the air like pollution in a boardroom. A representative from Weyland-Yutani Corp frowned. “Then it’s a liability.”
The garden was dismantled.
Joo-lee watched, hollow-eyed, as his creation was reduced to recyclable components. He went home to his small workshop, shelves stacked with forgotten prototypes: a pen that only writes in poetry, shoes that dance when they hear jazz, a lightbulb that glows brighter when someone tells the truth.
No one wanted them. They didn’t “scale.”
Meanwhile, the world outside became sharper. Louder. More efficient. Ideas were patented before they were born. Art was algorithmically optimized for engagement. Inventions had to prove ROI before they were even dreamed.
Eventually, Joo-lee stopped building. Not because he ran out of ideas, but because he realized he wasn’t allowed to.
Years later, in a museum sponsored by twelve brands, a child looked at one of Joo-lee’s old shoes that still twitched at the sound of distant music.
“Why doesn’t anyone make stuff like this anymore?” she asked.
Her mother replied, without looking up from her corporate-branded augmented glasses,
“Because it doesn’t sell.”
And somewhere in the silent void between dollars and dreams, a spark went out.
