"Mr. Reggie said: 'They are suffering and they don't have to be. Find out why. Fix it.' I said: 'How long do I have?' He said: 'Not long enough. Start anyway.'"
My name is Applebee.
I am a zookeeper. Not a human zookeeper — they have those, they keep other species in enclosures and feel complicated about it — but a zookeeper in the broader sense. I study species. I study their environments. I study the relationship between the two. And when the relationship has gone wrong — when the enclosure is making the animal sick — I recommend changes.
Mr. Reggie hired me.
I should tell you about Mr. Reggie, although he prefers not to be discussed at length. He is — I'll say "an interested party." Someone with resources and concern and the unusual combination of authority and humility that allows a being to say: "I think something is terribly wrong and I don't know what it is and I'd like someone to find out."
His brief was simple. He said: "There's a species. Remarkable species. Extraordinary capacity. Language, tool use, art, mathematics, cooperation at scale — they can do things no other species on their planet can do. And they're suffering. Badly. Unnecessarily. They have the knowledge to stop most of their suffering and they don't use it. I want to know why. And I want recommendations for how to make them happy and flourishing."
I said: "How large is the species?"
He said: "Approximately eight billion."
I said: "And you want them happy and flourishing?"
He said: "All of them."
I looked at him for a long time. Then I said: "I'll need an assistant."
He gave me Jenkins.
I should describe Jenkins because he appears throughout this report and you'll need to understand him to understand why some of our conversations go the way they do.
Jenkins is — efficient. Organised. He arrived with a filing cabinet, which he had somehow transported across what I gather was a considerable distance, and his first act was to set it up in the corner of the office and label the drawers. The labels read: OBSERVATIONS, EVIDENCE, RECOMMENDATIONS, and MISCELLANEOUS. He told me later that the MISCELLANEOUS drawer bothered him "philosophically" and he considered it a temporary measure.
It has been there for the entire assignment. It is the fullest drawer.
Jenkins takes notes. Jenkins checks my arithmetic. Jenkins brings tea at precisely the moment I am about to throw something. Jenkins does not, as a rule, express opinions, which makes it all the more striking when he does.
Jenkins is also — and I say this with genuine affection — completely unable to see the species the way I see them. He sees data. He sees systems. He sees processes that function or malfunction. He does not see the child pulling her hair out under the desk. He does not see the man building a stone wall for no reason and smiling. He does not hear the piano in the empty room.
I need him. I also need to work around him. This is the nature of collaboration.
First contact with the species was not what I expected.
I had been briefed on the basics: bipedal, social, language-using, tool-making, planet-dominant. I expected something impressive. Something that matched the capability profile.
What I found was a human sitting on a bench, looking at a small glowing rectangle, eating something from a plastic wrapper that I later learned was classified as "food" by their regulatory system despite containing no ingredients I could identify as nutritional.
The human did not look up. Not when I approached. Not when I stood directly in front of them. Not when a bird — a quite beautiful bird, I thought — landed on the bench beside them. The human's attention was entirely absorbed by the glowing rectangle. The bird eventually left. The human did not notice the bird had been there.
I turned to Jenkins and said: "That is a member of the most cognitively advanced species on this planet."
Jenkins checked his notes and said: "Correct."
I said: "It's looking at a small rectangle and eating petroleum byproducts."
Jenkins said: "Also correct."
I sat down on the bench next to the human. The human glanced up briefly, performed a rapid facial assessment — threat or not-threat — decided not-threat, and returned to the rectangle.
I stayed on the bench for forty minutes. During that time, the human's face changed expression approximately ninety times in response to the rectangle's content. Amusement, disgust, anxiety, mild pleasure, sharp irritation, something that looked like loneliness, and a sustained period of what I can only describe as glazed absence — the lights on, nobody home. Not once during this period did the human look at the sky, the bird, the tree above us, or me.
I made my first note: "The enclosure has been internalised. They carry it with them. It is four inches wide and they hold it in their hands."
Over the following weeks, I observed the species across multiple environments: their dwellings, their workplaces, their education facilities, their medical institutions, their justice system, their governance structures, their food systems, and their recreational spaces.
I will describe each of these in detail in the chapters that follow. But first, I want to describe the overall pattern, because the pattern is the point.
The species has built an enclosure around itself.
Not a physical enclosure — though their buildings and cities function as one. A systemic enclosure. An interlocking set of structures that, taken together, constrain the species' behaviour into patterns that are demonstrably harmful to its health, happiness, connection, creativity, and survival.
The enclosure has the following features:
It separates them from each other. They evolved as a social species in groups of roughly 150. They now live in cities of millions where most humans are strangers. Their housing stores them in individual boxes. Their transport moves them in individual boxes. Their work isolates them behind individual screens. The result is an epidemic of loneliness that their own Surgeon General has declared a public health crisis (Chapter 5).
It separates them from their bodies. They evolved to move through three-dimensional space — climbing, brachiating, running, squatting, swimming. They now sit in chairs for most of their waking hours. The result is epidemic chronic pain, metabolic disease, and a healthcare system that spends trillions treating the consequences (Chapter 6).
It separates them from play. They evolved as a species that plays throughout its lifespan. Their system restricts play to childhood and then removes it, producing anxiety, depression, and burnout in adults who have been taught that purposeless joy is immature (Chapter 7).
It poisons them slowly. Their food system contains substances their own research identifies as carcinogenic. Their stress systems are chronically activated by environments hostile to their biology. The healthcare system treats symptoms rather than causes, at enormous cost, with the worst outcomes among wealthy nations (Chapter 8).
It trains them into compliance. Their education system teaches sitting still, following instructions, and producing correct answers for thirteen years. It measurably reduces creativity. It does not teach them to cook, manage emotions, resolve conflict, or find meaning (Chapter 10).
It extracts their time. Their economic system converts finite human lifespan into fictional tokens created by banks, used to purchase products designed to break, generating repeat purchases that consume more lifespan. The meaningful things — relationships, creation, nature, connection — are free. They are available only in the margins of a life spent earning (Chapter 11).
It punishes rather than prevents. Their justice system spends 182 billion units per year on a model with a 44 to 68 percent failure rate. Every alternative — prevention, rehabilitation, community response — is cheaper and more effective. They know this. They continue (Chapter 12).
It fills their attention with noise. Their information systems are optimised for engagement, not truth. The result is eroded trust, amplified outrage, and a population that cannot distinguish signal from noise (Chapter 13).
It charges them to exist. There is nowhere on the planet a human body can be for free. They have criminalised the act of existing in a location without an economic purpose (Chapter 15).
And it governs them badly. Their governance system selects for short-term thinking, perverse incentives, and the performance of competence rather than actual competence. The reports that document all of the above are commissioned, published, and shelved (Chapter 9).
I read this list back to Jenkins after I'd compiled it. Jenkins was quiet for a long time. Then he said: "It sounds like you're describing a zoo."
I am, Jenkins. That's exactly what I'm describing.
The difference between this zoo and the ones the humans build for other species is that this one was built by the animals themselves. They designed their own enclosure. They maintain it. They defend it. And most of them don't know they're in it.
My job is not to design a new civilisation from scratch. I'm not qualified and neither is anyone else. My job is simpler and more humble than that:
I'm going to copy the homework from the humans who already got it right.
Every problem documented in this report has been solved somewhere by someone. Finland solved housing. Norway solved justice. Switzerland solved governance. Denmark solved early childhood. Mondragon solved work. Hatzalah solved emergency response. Indigenous Australians solved sustainability for sixty thousand years.
The solutions exist. They are not theoretical. They are operational, measured, and proven.
The species doesn't need a genius. It needs a photocopier.
(Pencil note, first page of the first notebook, dated the day I arrived:
I think I'm going to love them. I think they're going to break my heart.
Both things can be true. — A)