So let me get this straight. Microsoft can spend $176 BILLION on stock buybacks. $1 BILLION on its top 5 execs. $190 BILLION on AI infrastructure. But 4,800 workers are "disposable" because executives want greater returns? Get real.

I smell blood and an era of prominent madmen

Everything not forbidden is compulsory

One night I saw the moon, shining so big and round, and I tried to grab it out of the sky

You went the way of wishes, and that is never straight.

If you stop to think about it, you’ll have to admit that all the stories in the world consist essentially of twenty-six letters. The letters are always the same, only the arrangement varies. From letters words are formed, from words sentences, from sentences chapters, and from chapters stories.

But time is life itself, and life resides in the human heart. And the more people saved, the less they had

Your things arrive in a ragged box. A tear-stained note of regret is notable only by its absence.

This is the apple-tree which will never die. Should the forest fail and the river run to ash, still it will stand proudly. Take only one apple. Serpents are sleeping.

"What cage imprisons nothing?" the Fellow will say. "Where do petals begin? Where do stories end?" He beams at you. Actually, for an Iremi riddle, that's almost helpful.

Sunlight seeps like syrup though cracks in the stained-glass ceiling. The floor shudders in time with the churning machinery far beneath your feet. The air has a tang of chemicals, bonfires and rain. Pistons pump, cogs turn, and suit-swaddled figures tend to the enginery, bellowing over the shrieking metal.