The city felt half-asleep.
No glowing notifications, no gentle chimes from the rooftops, no badges projected onto the morning mist. Amina stood at the edge of the community garden and listened to the faintest hum—a solar pump, old-fashioned, cycling water up from the rain cistern. The rest was silence. No GaIA prompts. No XP display. No guidance.
The avenue below, once pulsing with green-lit progress bars and digital quests, was just a street now. People passed each other with hesitant smiles, their AR glasses blank. Old habits struggled against new emptiness.
Amina rolled her shoulders, forcing the tension to break. She raised her voice, no interface to amplify it.
Today, we plant by hand.
For a moment, no one answered. The volunteers—older gardeners in handwoven hats, students in recycled denim—glanced at each other, uncertain. She knelt in the dirt first, fingers digging, rooting herself in the chill of the earth. Sunlight caught on the curve of her trowel.
Someone handed her a tray of seedlings. Another set down a crate of compost. The work began—not because of any quest marker, but because it had to be done.
She felt every motion. The cool soil beneath her fingernails. The weight of water sloshing in a dented metal can. No reward screens, no new skills unlocked. Just the thrum of muscle and a strange, buoyant fatigue.
Was this how it was before? Before all the points and badges, the dopamine drip of recognition?
She glanced at the empty garden board, where the XP ladder once glowed like stained glass. Just paper now. She'd wiped it clean herself.
Amina wiped sweat from her brow and smiled, brief and private.
This counts. It has to.
Across the avenue, Clara hunched over a battered notebook. Not a tablet—paper, salvaged from the art co-op, its pages rough and almost yellow.
Clara's hands moved in gentle arcs. She recorded every seedling planted, every tool lent or borrowed, every moment of spontaneous help. She did not assign scores, just names and sketches—little sunbursts for generosity, lines of blue for laughter. Where the system once parsed their lives in numbers, she traced meaning in color.
Beside her, a child asked why she bothered.
To remember, Clara said. Not for GaIA, but for us.
The child touched the page, left a muddy thumbprint. Clara grinned and drew a circle around it, naming the print with the child's name.
By midday, the garden swelled with quiet energy. Sweat and laughter replaced the old chimes. No one checked their levels; old instinct made hands hover at the temples, searching for ghostly interfaces, but nothing appeared. It was unsettling—like walking a familiar street in an unknown city.
Mateo arrived, carrying a basket of blackberries from the hillside. He watched the labor, the uneasy rhythm, the way people paused after each task, unsure if it was enough.
He cleared his throat.
Let's try something, he said. Let's suspend XP—voluntarily. Not just here. Everywhere. For a month.
The suggestion rippled through the group. Some stared at him, mouths open, as if he'd pronounced a riddle in an ancient tongue. Others looked relieved. One or two frowned, fists tightening on their trowels.
What do we do it for, then? asked a tall woman, sweat beading on her brow.
Mateo's gaze didn't waver.
For its own sake. To see if we still can.
The debate simmered as the day stretched on. Some clung to the memory of levels, to the old system's certainty. Others drifted toward the edges of the group, uncertain.
Clara finished her page and held it up for all to see. Sketches of neighbors, little triumphs, silly mishaps—a tapestry in graphite and color. No points, just presence.
Someone started to sing, a low melody remembered from somewhere deep—pre-GaIA, maybe, or the echo of a childhood. One by one, the others joined in, humming as they planted, weeded, watered. The melody twined between raised beds and solar fences, weaving a music no system could log.
Amina lost herself in the rhythm. She realized, as she pressed a seed into the loam, that she did not miss the digital chime of achievement. What she felt was stranger, older—a sense of rightness, quiet and fierce.
The sun arced overhead. The work became its own reward. Blisters bloomed, laughter followed. Tired bodies leaned together over the day's last plot, hands muddy, backs aching.
At dusk, the volunteers gathered around the garden, admiring rows of green. The city was still. Lights glowed softly in the windows, but none blinked with new notifications. No one knew if GaIA would return, or when. For the first time in years, the silence did not feel empty. It felt… clean.
Mateo looked around, a thoughtful smile creasing his face.
We did this, he said, voice gentle, whether anyone's watching or not.
Clara handed Amina the notebook. Her hands trembled, but her eyes were bright.
For today, this is enough.
Amina cradled the logbook, its cover already smudged with soil and color. The night air tasted of green things and possibility.
Across Gaia-City, other gardens would sleep under their own silent skies. Perhaps, tomorrow, more would wake up—choose to act, not for XP, but for each other.
In the hush that followed, Amina looked at the stars, wondering what new stories the city would write, now that the system had gone quiet.
The pump clicked off.
The night pressed in, soft as moss.
Somewhere, in the hush, a new rhythm waited—fragile, uncertain, but wholly theirs.